So far this year has seen three significant figures pass from
the Evangelical and Fundamentalist scene. The torch is being passed and at this
point there are only a handful of leaders remaining from that older generation
that rose to prominence in the 1970s with the creation of the Moral Majority.
The remaining voices, men like James Dobson and Pat Robertson are now in their
eighties.
The most recent noteworthy death is that of Jack Chick. He's
probably the most obscure figure on this list and many will be unfamiliar with
the name. He's famous for his comic-book style tracts that have permeated the
globe. I've found them in airport bathrooms, on gas station pumps and on cafe
tables in Venice. He represented a fairly extreme version of Baptist
Fundamentalism and had a penchant for really offending people.
The tracts contained a great deal of speculative information
and not a little in the way of questionable conspiracy theory. Yet for all that
the offense that most people found was due to the Gospel message. I think the
most controversial aspect (to some) was the highly anti-Catholic nature to his
work.
He lived in obscurity, few people having seen his face and
his death will have no discernible impact. And yet the proliferation of his
tracts has had a small but noteworthy effect on the Culture Wars and certainly
some of the internal debates between Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism.
I still encounter his tracts from time to time. Most recently
I found them at a couple of Fundamentalist churches I visited and it's
noteworthy these congregations are also adherents to the ideas of another man
who just recently died in 2016, namely Peter Ruckman.
Ruckman
was famous for his chalk drawings and mean spirit but mostly for his somewhat
peculiar and unique take on the King James Bible. King James Only-ism has a few
variations but the one most commonly encountered has Ruckman's stamp. The older
King James Only movements were usually centered around commitments to the Textus
Receptus and the Byzantine family of Greek Texts. The advocates of this
position (such as the Trinitarian Bible Society) reject the Critical Text and
thus all the modern Bible translations derived from it.
Ruckman's view is significantly different. He argued the 1611
King James version was newly inspired, a new Autograph as it were. The Greek
and Hebrew texts were no longer needed because the English King James Bible
replaced them. There was a new era of Divine Inspiration so to speak that occurred
in the 17th century. If you want to translate the Bible into a new
language you wouldn't rely on the available Greek or Hebrew texts but the
English King James.
While I think the modern views concerning the Critical Text
need to be rejected and even decried and thus I too reject the textual basis of
translations ranging from the NIV to the ESV, Ruckman's position can only be
described as cultic if not just plain bizarre. This is especially true given
the nature and history of the KJV vis-à-vis the Geneva Bible and the Protestant
churches of the era.
A peculiarly American position it has spread both here and
abroad. I first encountered it at a Baptist missionary congregation in Italy back
in the 1990s. Today in my local area I have to say that virtually all the
Fundamentalist churches have been affected by it. I know of but one
Fundamentalist congregation which embraces the Textus Receptus only version of
King James Only-ism. They would still insist on the King James and reject
translations such as the Geneva or New King James even though they are based
off the same Greek text, but they don't go as far as the Ruckmanite position
regarding Double Inspiration or a new Autograph.
But all the rest virtually hold to Ruckman's view and I have
to say it comes up in every single sermon. For them, the proper King James
position has become a mark of the Church and of the Gospel itself.
Sadly many of the most popular critiques of this movement are
also flawed because usually they are being conducted from the standpoint of
pro-Critical text arguments, which (to me) are equally dubious when examined
both in terms of theology and history.
In passing I would note there are at least two necessary
components or aspects to Sola Scriptura that if rejected leave the doctrine in
shambles.
One is the idea of Sufficiency, the notion that the
Scriptures are comprehensive enough to answer all doctrinal questions and
provide a framework for the Church as a whole, as well as the lives of
individual Christians. When people innovate with regard to the doctrine of the
Church, theology as a whole or in terms of individual Christian piety they are de facto denying this doctrine.
Thus for example, I would argue the Lutheran formulation of
Sola Scriptura is defective. In addition there are many ways in which this
doctrine is abused, the most popular being its divorce from Covenantal context
and its application to Dominionist concepts of the Christianisation of culture.
Second there is the idea of Providential Preservation. Just
as Christ promised the Apostles that the Spirit would bring all things to
remembrance, this doctrine insists the Divinely inspired writings and thus
teachings of the Prophet-Apostles would survive and be available to the Church
for the duration of This Age. This process of Preservation can be messy,
sometimes the text has been protected and perpetuated by persons and groups
that were probably something less than Christian, and certainly did not revere
its teachings. That said, the text has been preserved as infallible. To reject
this notion is akin to atheism, a rejection that God is Providentially governing
history and has preserved His Word for His people.
It also must be said the idea of Canon and Canonicity are wed
to this principle and an improper understanding of Providential Preservation
will lead to its erosion as well. There are historical evidences that can be
pointed to but in the end this is an article of faith, not unreasonable but at
the same time it is not something that will meet the criteria of verification
by the standards of modern scientific inquiry. The Bible is a spiritual book, a
miracle in itself and the case for Preservation can be made from within the
text itself.
This teaching is under assault by both the secular academy as
well as Conservative Evangelicalism. The doctrine of Inerrancy introduced in
the late 19th century was something of a compromise with the
ascendant Biblical Criticism of the day. While we certainly believe the
Scripture to be Inerrant, the modern doctrine focuses on the inerrancy not of
our existing and historic texts and translations, but of the now missing
Autographs, the original documents produced by the authors of Scripture. Using
modern 'scientific' methods, available texts are examined, edited,
deconstructed and finally reconstructed. The modern text is a production of
scholars and governed by their methods, insights and certainly the
Evangelical's desire to maintain standing and respectability within the
academy.
Both the modern Evangelical embrace of the Critical Text and
the Ruckmanite re-constitution/re-inspiration or Double Inspiration of the text
in the 17th century are rejections of Providential Preservation.
Both positions (to some extent) argue that in times past
we've had the wrong Bible or to put it differently the Bible we ought to use today is different from
that which would have been employed by the Church in the Middle Ages, Vulgate aside.
There are other nuances regarding this position. Some base
Preservation on the basis of what could be called an Ecclesiastical or for some the Confessional Text, an
argument rooted both in the Text itself and a narrative regarding the Church
and Historical Theology. It's a complex but certainly fascinating issue.
But one thing is clear, Peter Ruckman's shadow looms over the
modern Fundamentalist scene and certainly transformed it. While the early
Fundamentalists looked askance at the Revised Version and the ASV, their views
were nothing like the Ruckmanite position which began to appear in the 1970s
with the publication of The Christian's Handbook of Manuscript Evidence by Peter Ruckman. I have a copy sitting on
my shelf, given to me many years ago by one of Ruckman's disciples.
Ironically it's kind of like a Dan
Brown version of textual history. There's some truth, a great deal of error and
not a little speculation, some of it straying into the 'wild' territory.
The next 2016 death of significance is a person far better
known and perhaps in some ways more influential and that would be Tim LaHaye.
Best known for his Left
Behind series which made him fabulously wealthy and did much to promote
Dispensational theology to the masses he was also a very important figure
within the Christian Right.
Dispensationalism was already dominant in Evangelical circles
and the works of earlier authors such as Hal Lindsey did much to promote that
school of thought. I grew up reading Lindsey's works as my father was a big fan
and his books sat on the shelf next to the Scofield Bible. Yet, LaHaye
popularised the teaching in the form of thriller fiction and I was consistently
amazed to find people from Mainline and even secular backgrounds reading the
books.
That said the theology continues to shift and reconstitute
itself. The doctrinal foundations are held by fewer and fewer teachers today
but the Eschatological scheme regarding the 'End Times' and of course the modern
Zionist nation of Israel is retained. It's an exciting and interactive theology
that interplays with the news and yet it is without Biblical warrant.
Apart from LaHaye's promotion of Dispensationalism and his
political activism I often associate him with the introduction of psychology
into the Church. He and James Dobson led the way in introducing these errors
into the Evangelical fold. LaHaye's recasting and reintroduction of the Four Temperaments
was and continues to be popular in Evangelical circles. This was part of a larger
poison that was injected into 1970s Evangelicalism and continues to dominate
today. Thanks to figures like LaHaye the modern Evangelical church is little
more than entertainment packaged therapy and politics.
He also was involved in the formation (with Henry Morris) of
the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) in the San Diego area of California
where he also pastored at the old Scott Memorial Baptist Church which today has
been transformed into David Jeremiah's Shadow Mountain congregation. I remember
the old Scott Memorial building. In fact I was in a Christmas play there during
LaHaye's tenure. If I'm ever in the area again I want to be sure to at least
drive by the new facility but I doubt I'll recognise the place or even much of
the area.
In 1981 LaHaye formed the Council for National Policy which
has functioned as a sort of Bilderberg for the Christian Right and is
overshadowed by many, frankly dark associations with political and international
figures, money and even paramilitary and geopolitical endeavours. This is the
Christian Right at its darkest and some of the figures associated with it can
only be labeled as nefarious. Tim LaHaye remained a driving force within the
CNP and the Christian Right until his death.
Tim LaHaye will not be missed. His damage and evil schemes
could almost be described as incalculable.
Finally there's another figure who died this year, and while
technically not an Evangelical still belongs on this list. And that would of
course be none other than Phyllis Schlafly. Her last acts were to promote
Donald Trump, certainly a noble epitaph and legacy.
She was better known to an earlier generation in her crusade
against the ERA and argument for traditional gender roles. Of course the irony
was (and is) that the Christian Right's anti-feminism is usually headed by what
can only be described as feminists. The Catholic Schlafly was no exception.
Schlafly was also part of the shift in the Christian Right
that moved the needle away from a Classical Liberal framework and sought to
re-cast the Founders and American History in terms of a Throne-and-Altar type
paradigm. This Revisionism would prove far more amenable to both Catholic and
Protestant-Dominionist sensibilities.
Paired with Anti-Communism, Schlafly was not alone in
continuing to support the positions, methods and aims of Joseph McCarthy and
still continued to call for the reconstitution of HUAC and the McCarthyite
inquisition. Despite all the rhetoric concerning so-called Constitutional
Originalism, these positions along with erection of the Military-Security complex
and the Originalist support of it belie their claims of continuity with the
Founding Fathers. The positions of Schlafly while conservative in some ways
also constituted a serious break with the foundations of American thought.
This is not to endorse the Founders or Schlafly but is
instead an observation. Schlafly perhaps more than any other figure associated
with the Christian Right displays and demonstrates its own contradictions and
dissonance. Classical Liberalism, the worldview (as it were) of the Founders
has always been progressive and forward looking. While many of its ideas have
been absorbed and synthesised with the values of the Christian Right, they in
fact represent an arrest of its impulse and a countering of it basic narrative.
In their own ways, these figures have contributed to and to
some degree shaped the current state of the American Church. Someone like Jack
Chick wouldn't have got along with Phyllis Schlafly but ironically they are
found to be playing more or less on the same team.
A generation is passing and it's a good time to reflect on
some of these issues.
For further reading regarding the text of Scripture: