Are Oneness Pentecostals Fundamentalists?

The short answer is no. Now, let me take the broad view and then narrow it. So in the secular media, the term fundamentalist is often used for any conservative group that believes the original tenants of the faith. So you can have Muslim fundamentalist, Hindu fundamentalist, Christian fundamentalist. It's usually used in a negative way of people who are ignorant who don't accept modern science or modern culture. And of course we would not want to be associated with any extremism which is usually attached to that label or any u rejection of modern science and technology or modern knowledge.

And so that label we we reject that even though we are conservative in believing the teachings of the Bible. But then more specifically you're correct the term fundamentalism is a very specific label with a capital F in Christianity. Uh so here's what happened. In the late 19th century, mainline Protestantism became increasingly liberal. So they started denying the virgin birth of Jesus, the uh the substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, second coming of the Lord. They begin to focus more on the universal fatherhood of God. God is the father of everybody. The universal brotherhood of man, we're all one. and um doing good works, social works to improve society.

And it was often associated with postmillennialism. That is if we all improve society, then we will bring in the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth, so to speak, in a symbolic sense, and we'll get better and better. So, the church will improve society, the whole society will adopt Christian values, and we'll all love one another, and we'll all usher in the kingdom of God. And that was usually kind of all religions will merge. We'll get rid of any distinctive doctrines that would divide us and we'll just believe all in one God and we'll believe that Jesus is a good moral teacher and we'll all do good works and you know there won't be any sin because we'll improve ourselves and there won't be a need for a savior because we'll be you know righteous people.

And so that was the direction of mainline Protestantism which pretty much has come to pass today with your mainline organizations such as the Presbyterians, the Methodists, the Lutherans, the Congregationalists um and and so forth. Episcopalians and so forth. So in reaction to that conservative Christians began to write books that in fact a very specific movement from 1910 to 1915 they wrote a series of books called the fundamentals and there were five main teachings. The Bible is the inspired inherent authoritative word of God. Um Jesus Christ is truly God manifest in the flesh although in a trinitarian context. Um, and he was born of a virgin.

Uh, Jesus truly died for the sins of the world. He took our place substitutionary atonement. Uh, Jesus literally bodily arose from the dead in the resurrection. And Jesus is coming back at the end of time for his people. So those are the five fundamentals. Now actually we believe those five fundamentals. So you might say we are fundamentalists in that in the sense of believing these things. However, this was a specific movement. At the same time, they rejected the idea of miracles today. So, it was a very rationalistic response. So, if you think of liberal Christianity is saying, "We're going to privilege rationalism." So, we're get rid of all the supernatural, all the miracles, all the things we can't explain because modern culture privileges human reasoning.

Ever since the Enlightenment, that's been the key of Western culture. So we're So the liberals conformed to modern culture of denying miracles, denying the supernatural, except finding a place to keep God, but only a God who is very rational and does what we want him to do basically. So the problem with the fundamentalists is they fought back on the same rationalistic terms. So they argued for supernatural things but on a very rational basis. They conceded the big thing. No, God doesn't work miracles today. The the life of Jesus in the first century church that was unique. That was different. But no, we shouldn't expect the miraculous today.

But the Bible is like our scientific book and we believe it and we're going to follow it. Absolutely. So that led to a lot of unintended consequences of rejecting a lot of modern science that they couldn't agree with. A debate over creationism versus evolution. But unfortunately uh I don't think they handle it the best way. Uh it became the fundamentalist in the popular culture became seen as anti-education, anti-science, anti-modern culture because they were just against everything. And and so to by and large it was a failure. It didn't succeed. There are fundamentalist churches today. Um but I will say out of that came the evangelical movement which has been relatively successful until recent times.

It's also starting to decline. But the evangelicals in say the 1940s and 50s begin to realize, you know, this is too negative. So while we believe these fundamentals, we don't want to be called fundamentalists because we're not anti-education, we're not anti-science, uh we're not anti-culture, we just think it needs to be re reinterpreted or understood. And so people like Billy Graham and the National Association Evangelicals, the Southern Baptists, they try to have a more moderate stance, but it's still based on rationalism. It was still based on rejection of miracles for today by and large and so forth. Okay. What you need to understand is in 1910 could be the official demarcation of the fundamentalist movement.

Well, the Pentecostals actually formed in 1901 and it was a move of the spirit. I would argue that the early Pentecostals were a similar reaction to liberal Christianity, but instead of choosing rationalism as the method of fighting it, they chose the spirit. So, they're basically saying, you know what? Yes, all these people are compromising. They're abandoning the faith. What we need is a revival. What we need is a move of God. And they went back to the New Testament and they saw,"Well, well, no wonder we're missing the baptism of the Holy Ghost. We need speaking in tongues. We need miracles. We need healings. We need signs and wonders.

The Lord is coming back. We need a revival." And so, so the Pentecostals share with fundamentalists these basic teachings of the Bible that the five points I mentioned. So, in some in that way, we sometimes call ourselves fundamentalists. the small F. But I would argue that ultimately that's a bad choice because we're not a rationalistic response to liberal Christianity. We're spiritual response to liberal Christianity. And so while we do believe in reason, of course, we do believe in using reason to understand the Bible, we believe the Bible supreme, but we believe that the spirit leads us. So we what I would say the fundamentalists have the word only.

That means everything on the word. And so if you're in a culture that believes the Bible is the word of God, they can be very successful. But as today the both the fundamentalists and even the evangelicals, their modern ears have the problem. What if people don't even believe the Bible? Well, then all your appeals to the Bible, all your rationalistic explanations of what the Bible teaches falls on deaf ears because your fundamental authority, they don't even believe anymore. U but Pentecostals, we have the word and the spirit. So even if people don't understand or agree with the word, they can feel the spirit. They can the spirit can draw them.

They can see miracles. They they can realize, well, there's more to this than what I thought. And then of course, we will lead them back to the word. We're not going to, you know, we're not a spiritual experience at the expense of the word, which you might characterize charismatics generically more interested in the spirit, not so much the word, but we would emphasize word and spirit together. So in short, we should reject the label of fundamentalists because we're not a rationalistic reaction to liberal Christianity. We are a spiritual movement that's trying to restore the first century apostolic church by the word and the spirit.

And so we have a positive identity. U now why does that make a difference? Because if we characterize ourselves as fundamentalists, we are subject to those stereotypes or labels partly justified, partly unjustified. And some of us sometimes we adopt the same mentality. And here's the reason why. So for all their flaws, the fundamentalists did start start Bible schools. They did start cranking out books and resources. Well, the early Pentecostals didn't have all that. So a lot of times they would go to a fundamentalist Bible college or they would pick up fundamentalist systematic theology books or doctrinal books. In fact some one of the early Assembly of God's leaders assembly of God leaders said we are fundamentalists who speak in tongues.

But at the same time he was saying that the fundamentalists were openly rejecting the Pentecostal movement. They said it's not of God. Miracles don't happen anymore. It's of the devil. Um and and so they very definitely rejected fundamentalists. And so how can we really identify or have fellowship with people that don't believe in the move of the spirit today that don't believe in speaking in tongues that you know all these things that we believe are vital part of the new testament faith. Uh so but the problem is a lot of times we were influenced by using these books using these Bible colleges and so for example the whole issue of women in ministry.

The Methodist movement allowed women in ministry. The holiness movement that came out of the Methodists they allowed women ministry. The early Pentecostal movement that came out of the holy movement they allowed women in min ministry because all based on the work of the spirit. But it was the fundamentalist who took a very narrow approach to a couple of verses of scripture and pounded that to say we don't believe women preachers. So they're writing the books against it. Early Pentecostals don't have any resources. So some of them pick that up and they adopt those things. The same thing with probably most of us conservative politically. But the fundamentalists took a very definite conservative approach.

When it came time for the civil rights movement, many of the fundamentalists stood against the civil rights movement under a misguided theology of racial segregation, tried to justify it by scripture, interracial marriage, tried to say it was sinful. And so some of the Pentecostals just following that culture. And so that's the real danger is we're not fundamentalists. So we got to be very cautious about using those resources or accepting those political and cultural and theological positions that are not really part of the Pentecostal movement that are not really part of the move of the spirit that are borrowed from a movement that rejected the move of the spirit that rejected the Pentecostals.

Uh, so I discuss this more in my book, A History of Christian Doctrine, Volume Three. I talk about both the pros and cons of the fundamentalists and the evangelicals, how we're similar to them, related to them, but different from them. At the end of the day, I would say we as Pentecostals, especially oneness Pentecostals, we are not fundamentalist, and we're not really evangelicals. Now, like the evangelicals, we do believe in personal conversion. We do believe in missionary efforts. We do believe in the fundamental teachings of the Bible. Uh but we're also different from the evangelicals in that we first of all as oneness people, we're not going to accept the doctrine of the trinity, which both of those movements are adamant in and and they'll even go so far as to say we're heretics or maybe even a cult because of that.

Uh so we can't try to uh seek their approval because they're adamantly opposed to that. And even today, most evangelicals don't believe in speaking in tongues or if they concede that it's possible, they still do not believe in the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking in tonesues. So, at the end of the day, we can cooperate with them on protecting religious freedom and protect the right to life. And so there are a lot of conservative political issues that we will want to uh you know be partners with them just as with some conservative Catholics that we would partner with. But at the end of the day we need to say we are not evangelical.

We don't want to be evangelical. We have to develop our own theology in every major area. And it's interesting. I participated with the Society for Pentecostal Studies since 1989. And these are the scholars that work with the Pentecostal charismatic movements. The vast majority would be trinitarian Pentecostals including Sundays of God, Church of God, Charismatic and various other groups. And a interesting theme has been over the years uh they're worried about the Pentecostal movement becoming evangelicalized. So minimizing the work of the spirit, minimizing spiritual gifts, all merging into one generic version of conservative Christianity, and all adopting the same political and social positions, not so much from a Pentecostal heritage, but from a fundamentalist heritage.

And so it's interesting to me the trinitarian Pentecostals are having the same argument. I would likewise say on every major issue from hermeneutics to the doctrine of salvation to the doctrine of God to how the church should engage society to our moral values to our teaching of holiness uh to our pastoral theology to our church government. We need our own unique uh resources and wellthoughtout theology um which I'm glad we have our own Bible colleges. I'm glad for Ian University Graduate School of Theology and and our Pentecostal resources group because we're trying to develop our own unique understanding identity, culture, and resources for what does it mean to be an apostolic Pentecostal Christian instead of borrowing from the fundamentalists and the evangelicals.

So, I appreciate many of their good works and many of their stands for the Bible, but at the end of the day, we are a spiritfilled movement that has our own unique identity.

Yes, it's important to understand our heritage so we can better understand what we should be today.