20 Reasons I Don't Take Potshots at Fundamentalists

Here is an interesting article posted earlier this week on a mailing list which I thought I would share with my blog readers. One member of the mailing list responsed to the post as follows: "Hey Fundamentalists, see there, those that aren't know what we are supposed to be."

20 Reasons I Don't Take Potshots at Fundamentalists
June 2, 2008

By: John Piper

Category: Commentary

1. They are humble and respectful and courteous and even funny (the ones I've met).
2. They believe in truth.
3. They believe that truth really matters.
4. They believe that the Bible is true, all of it.
5. They know that the Bible calls for some kind of separation from the world.
6. They have backbone and are not prone to compromise principle.
7. They put obedience to Jesus above the approval of man (even though they fall short, like others).
8. They believe in hell and are loving enough to warn people about it.
9. They believe in heaven and sing about how good it will be to go there.
10. Their "social action" is helping the person next door (like Jesus), which doesn't usually get written up in the newspaper.
11. They tend to raise law-abiding, chaste children, in spite of the fact that Barna says evangelical kids in general don't have any better track record than non-Christians.
12. They resist trendiness.
13. They don’t think too much is gained by sounding hip.
14. They may not be hip, but they don’t go so far as to drive buggies or insist on typewriters.
15. They still sing hymns.
16. They are not breathless about being accepted in the scholarly guild.
17. They give some contemporary plausibility to New Testament claim that the church is the “pillar and bulwark of the truth.”
18. They are good for the rest of evangelicals because of all this.
19. My dad was one.
20. Everybody to my left thinks I am one. And there are a lot of people to my left.

Upon reading this list, I wondered, "If that is a description of a fundamentalist, what Christian wouldn't desire to have that attached label???"

Unfortunately, with the passing of each generation, this group of fundamentalists grow smaller and smaller in number.