I’ve been a fundamentalist. I’m not one. Do I consider myself to have “recovered”? I left fundamentalism. I separated from it. I didn’t escape it. I didn’t recover from it. I stopped being a fundamentalist. I didn’t go through a process of recovery. I saw it was wrong to be one, so I stopped being one. I did some separation from fundamentalist organizations and institutions, but that’s not all that I’ve separated from in my life. Sanctification itself is a process of separation. Be ye holy means be ye separate.
If someone really understands fundamentalism, what it is, he knows there are good things about fundamentalism itself, including ideological and institutional preservation or conservation. The idea of fundamentalism, which some fundamentalists like to use to describe their continued support of fundamentalism, has good parts to it, worthy of respect. Those parts should be and can be kept. They are biblical. In other words, don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.
On the other hand, the concept of recovering from fundamentalism smacks of going back to something of normalcy in the realm of psychology. “Recovery” is a common terminology now for “getting better” from mental illness. Very often today it is used for the process of discontinuing an addiction to drugs or alcohol. These are considered diseases and recovery includes treatment for the addiction so as to prevent a relapse. People who use recovery to speak of fundamentalism or anything religious are treating it parallel to types of apparent mental illness or psychological disorders.
Fundamentalism itself isn’t a disorder or a mental illness or an addiction. The use of “recovery” isn’t true. Someone does recover from some illness or physical injury. He might even recover from the pain of a difficult time in his life. There may be a death in a family, a runaway child, loss of a job, repossession of a house, a splintered marriage, or a lingering illness. Using recovery as a description of departing from fundamentalism is a pejorative to deride what someone came from. It isn’t helpful anymore than it would be to mock Mormons after someone left Mormonism.
John Ellis professes to have been a fundamentalist and then to have become a drug addict. He testifies that later he was converted to Jesus Christ, and on July 8, he wrote a post advocating the Recovering Fundamentalist podcast. Ellis starts with this paragraph:
For those who didn’t grow up in it, the world of fundamentalism is beyond weird; it’s utterly foreign. How do you make sense of rules that often include things like prohibitions on women wearing pants and the condemnation of music with syncopation and watching movies in the movie theater? For those of us who grew up in fundamentalism, those rules, and their many, many companion rules, are well-known. However, most people lack a touch point for our fundyland experiences. This has resulted in ex-fundies using the internet, specifically social media, to connect and share our mutual experiences. These online relationships take many forms, from the nostalgic all the way to embittered wholesale denunciations. For many ex-fundies, though, our reminiscences take the form of an honest appraisal of the good and bad found within fundamentalism. Count me among that latter group.
Recovering Fundamentalist features three evangelical pastor friends, who, having left what they call IFB (independent fundamental Baptists) or fundamentalism, talk about their experience. I would contend that they left a mutation of fundamentalism, a virulent, pragmatic form of revivalism or Charismaticism, a strain that especially affected the American South, even as sampled in their video, that is neither independent, fundamental, or even Baptist. This contrasts almost 180 degrees from the beginning of fundamentalism, tied to The Fundamentals. The perverse variety of revivalism that arose in the American South bares much resemblance to the new religion of the recovering fundamentalists. They kept the philosophical underpinnings, while dropping the symbolism. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree.
Fundamentalism itself isn’t the boogie-man of the recovering fundamentalists. Southern revivalism had deep theological problems. At the root of them was a form of mysticism, continuationism, and ongoing divine revelation. God spoke directly to the leaders as manifested in numerical growth spurred by counterfeit manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Also aiding the growth was pragmatic methodology the results of which were used as evidence of God’s work. The standards set themselves up against cultural decay and the anti-intellectualism against the Northern, liberal elites provided a natural enemy, like Mormonism does with its persecution syndrome. None of what I’m describing, again, is independent, fundamental, or Baptist.
The three “recovering fundamentalists” do not get an audience based on dense exposition of scripture, but based on the shared bitterness and malice of the misfits of Southern revivalism. The Holy Spirit doesn’t manifest Himself this way either. Their niche group isn’t holy or spiritual. “Recovery” isn’t moving to something biblical, but shared experiences, another generation complaining about their teeth set on edge because their parents ate sour grapes (Ez 18, Jer 31). Their authority is eerily similar to Southern revivalism: audience size and anecdotes, like what would come in the illustrations of the revivalist preacher. It’s like a Goth girl laughing at everyone else because they’re all just following the crowd.
The movement from which the three former “fundamentalists” recovered isn’t independent, because the Southern revivalists were tightly banded together around Charismatic figures and large organizations, based upon cleverness and oratorial abilities. Part of their mystique was holding up the Bible and then preaching things that weren’t in it. They were spouting their own opinions and gave people the impression that their thoughts were received from a direct pipeline to God. There was vice-grip like control about the emphases of Southern revivalism, everyone taking from the same script or talking points, and if anyone left that script, he would or could be excluded from the group, and miss out as a headliner for a main conference roster or prominent mention in the newspaper or magazine.
As I have already written, the movement wasn’t fundamental either. Fundamentalism was preserving the old and Southern revivalism is untethered from historical Christianity. It is akin to all the various heresies that have risen since the first century, actually emulating some of the ones that have come on the scene. At the root, it isn’t even Christianity. It doesn’t represent the Jesus of the Bible, but for some of the same reasons that a perverse evangelicalism emerging from Southern revivalism doesn’t represent Him either.
The movement isn’t Baptist, because Baptists believe in biblical repentance and have the Bible as their authority — for doctrine, for practice, and for worship. Practice includes methodology. Baptists regulate their practice by scripture, not by non-scripture.
The Southern revivalists had standards, ones actually closer to the Bible than the recovering fundamentalists. They are not examining their standards based upon the Bible and the practice of biblical Christianity through history, but based upon a reflex rejection of the old standards. They deem their new standards superior because they are different than Southern revivalism. Mussolini may have got the trains to run on time, and throwing out fascism doesn’t mean slower trains.
Recovering fundamentalists emphasize standards as much as who they criticize. They are left-wing legalists, who require wokeness, more egalitarian marriages, and worldliness. The pragmatism is a left-wing pragmatism still using fleshly means to gather the crowd. It is a new symbolism that is equally untethered from scripture.
Post-reformation church leaders said, semper reformada, always reforming. I’m not attempting to validate reformers, just to say that mid-twentieth century fundamentalists saw a need of semper reformada, perhaps semper fundamentalista The fundamentals of early twentieth century could not meet the downward trajectory of biblical sanctification. True fundamentalists and non-fundamentalist true churches reacted with repulsion to cultural degradation that they saw entering the church. Their militancy on cultural issues mirrored the early fundamentalist movement. This should not be confused with Southern revivalism even though the latter took the same tact, much like Jehovah’s Witnesses go door-to-door. The liberalism that started with doctrine moved to unravel holy living, and true Christians rose up against corrupted goodness and distorted beauty.
Hollywood isn’t a friend of biblical Christianity. The movie theater that Ellis talks about is a danger. It is a pollution of idolatry that the church in Acts 15 prohibited. The explosion of homosexuality and transgenderism didn’t start in a vacuum. The symbols of God-designed roles were abandoned to conform to the world system. Professing Christians who join them do wrong but also ignore the ramifications. Ellis chooses to engage important issues with sound bytes in favor with lasciviousness. Satan and the world system do not attack only the transcendentals of truth and goodness, but also beauty, and the avenue of an attack on absolute beauty does more to distort a right imagination of God than a distorted doctrinal statement.
Southern revivalists popularized a false gospel accompanied by unbiblical methods. That isn’t the interest of the recovering fundamentalists, because both the former and the latter depend on pragmatism. New “converts” of Southern revivalism might never indicate conversion. Neither will the evangelicalism of the recovering fundamentalists. This is an identical perversion of the grace of God. Southern revivalists mark sanctification by keeping the rules, but left winged legalists, like the Pharisees, reduce the law to the rules they can keep.
Ellis and his recovering fundamentalists do damage to the belief, practice, and preservation of the truth, goodness, and beauty. They don’t even recover from their earlier error. They just change the label. Do not be fooled by them. Do not join them. Their god is their belly, their glory is their shame, and they mind earthly things.
As one of the hosts of the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast, I welcome criticism and correction. However, based on your post it sounds like you haven’t listened to much, if any, of our podcast. If you haven’t listened, your opinions are born of ignorance and irrelevant. If you have listened, you misrepresent our message and mission, massively!
You close your article by quoting from Philippians 3:19, which in context is referring to unsaved false teachers. If you believe we are unrepentant sinners based on what we communicate on the podcast, I would like to know your Biblical argument for your claim. If you are just spouting hateful rhetoric to build an audience or sound relevant, I get it. If you would like to have an adult conversation about the gospel, I am available. Thanks
I too am a host on the RecoveringFundamentalist.org as Nathan said, we welcome rebuke/correction/criticism…. however make sure you can back your rebuke/corrections/criticism with facts!
Truth never fears a challenge and we welcome it! please go to our website click connect with host we would love to chat!
RFP Host
JC Groves, Nathan Cravatt & Brian Edwards
Hi Nathan,
Your comment sounds in tone like your podcast. I read some reaction to John's article, then read it, and then listened to two episodes of you. I was commenting on both and also the concept in general, because it isn't limited to you. I didn't title it The Myth of the Recovering Fundamentalist Podcast. I wouldn't even have written about it if it was meant as an expose of you. My conclusions were about all of this, including the last line of the post.
You talk about your growing audience size and you get that by bashing what you call fundamentalism by mocking it and its adherents in a public manner. You can find those glad to hear that. Your show mocks what you came from. Mockery isn't spiritual warfare but carnal weaponry. I'm not mocking you. I would agree that what you came from was very bad, but I'm also challenging the swing to where you landed, whether you properly assess the problem, or offer the solution. I'm saying no and no and no.
This idea of the "recovering" fundamentalist isn't new, treating fundamentalism (and the whole with the use of the term) like it is a pyschological disorder. The internet is filled up with that. You lump fundamentalism as a movement with the dumpster fire that you left, and there is a wide chasm between those two.
I read what's happening in evangelicalism and as much a distortion of the gospel there as in southern revivalism, sometimes identical, a paper thin difference between Hyles and Hybels, both perversions of the grace of God.
From what I listened to, you take a different, unbiblical view of sanctification that also distorts the gospel. I have written a lot about that view here, not to sound relevant or build an audience. Just like there were saved people in the southern revivalism from which you come, this isn't a judgment of whether specific individuals are saved, but that it will lead to much lack of conversion. Paul was warning believers in Philippi, a very good church, about what was out there. In all of these churches, there was still a mixed multitude and the influence of those whose god is their belly, their glory is their shame, and they mind earthly things, they aren't representing a true gospel. They still might "believe in Jesus" though. Hyles believed in Jesus, right? Curtis Hutson believed in Jesus, right? A true gospel needs to be differentiated from those three characteristics. I'm challenging, yes, whether you, and those like you, do.
“Mockery isn’t spiritual warfare but carnal weaponry.”
Tell that to Jesus telling the parable of Lazarus. Tell that to Elijah against the prophets of Baal.
Tell that to Paul whenever he started ranting about anyone he hated.
All humor has a derivative of mockery, even if it is about a concept inside of creation instead of a person that God created.
Further, if you can recover from any cult, then you can also recover from fundamentalism.
All evangelical denominations are by definition fundamentalist, and all of them base the faith on terror and hate that is spread in the name of love and holiness. All put more energy into proselytization into what you think and say you think than what you do. All if them dread new ideas. All of them believe that humans have no desirable qualities, and that all of them deserve worse than to be tortured enslaved and raped for eternity because they were born sinners.
Such mindsets are dysfunctional when not suppressed and compartmentalized. Such self-hatred is a source of mental disorders when internalized. Nobody wants to be in constant danger of God’s seething hatred for them if they turn out to not actually be saved. Nobody can life their life with the impression of gratuitous guilt in the front of their minds. Learned worthlessness, Stockholm Syndrome, and learned helplessness are things to recover from.
Gordon,
It’s difficult to discern what your point is. Thanks for dropping by though.
I notice how people who can't respond to criticism with near-certainty start with the "they didn't actually read me" line, but then to be safe, caveat it to the effect of "well maybe they did, but I just didn't bother to check." I have to say it's a great way to look like you're responding.
However if one reads this particular article, it seems like the person being responded to is actually John Ellis, whereas the title of, and a part of the article dealing with their group, is derived from Ellis' quotation. Now the question of whether the type of person he is appealing to ever escaped from error in the first place is an interesting question in its own right, one which Brandenburg deals with in part here.
My thoughts, prompted by the above responses:
A person using the terminology of "recovery," or more specifically "recovering," in the clinical psychology sense, is bringing in along with it a whole host of presuppositions and inferences, from the "soft," and largely or entirely qualitative social sciences, such as psychology, which are not really a discipline of natural science at all but merely political activism under the cloak of it. The term "recovering" implies an ongoing normalization from some kind of state of clinical illness, into what modern day secular psychology deems "well-adjusted." However, when "well-adjusted" in the average world view means all kinds of moral depravity of which we are well aware, it is surprising one would want to make such a connection. And yet this is exactly what politicizers who seek to normalize everyone to the world-system will do, by using their language, as a signal of acceptance of those who speak and do the same. So, Brandenburg here is appropriate to observe and render criticism of this concept. The concept "recovering" as a whole is questionable.
Also, the idea of basing ones identity around criticism of another (such as recovering from "fundamentalism," whatever that term is supposed to mean to the person using it), rather than a positive assertion of truth is questionable as well. This is similar to how the "critical theory" used by the academic left operates, not by asserting any truth but only by unendingly heaping criticism (often unfairly as I've observed) upon others. Since we all believe in the objective truth, should we not rather be trying to correct course toward the truth, instead of endlessly cutting others down.
But our progressive "comrades" are not actually interested in that pursuit at all, they are only content with degrading others without offering anything better. Their outward claim to this pursuit, if they make it, is merely cynical.
Kent, I appreciate the reply. I made it clear in the preview episode that we didn’t mean “Recovering” in a therapeutic sense. “Recovering” is a play on words… we agree that “Fundamentlism” isn’t inherently bad… we want to recover it from those who have hijacked it and we also still fight against legalism in ourselves.
As far as Sanctification, I believe it is a lifelong process, it is a work of the Holy Spirit, it involves being “set apart” from sin (Biblical definition not man made standards), being set apart to God for the work of ministry, and that it is an inside-out work of the Spirit rather than external checking of boxes. The goal of Sanctification is to be like Jesus… to be conformed to His image! I will look at your posts to see where you stand.
Honestly, you are making a lot of the same points we make on the podcast…
Nathan,
It's not a problem for someone not to be a fundamentalist. Leaving that is very fine. Fundamentalism itself isn't needed anymore, so no one needs to recover it. Being biblical, as you say, is enough.
I can't remember now what episodes I heard or give you an exact quote of what I heard about sanctification on them. I do remember the concept of what was said that I hear a lot now in evangelicalism, attractive to young people leaving fundamentalism. I'm glad you believe it is a lifelong process. Do you think that works has a place in sanctification or what part do you think that works has in sanctification? How is someone set apart?
Southern revivalists would say the goal is to be like Jesus too, I'm sure you know, and to be conformed to His image. No one should be just checking boxes, I agree. I understand people trying to do that in any church, just getting by tithing of their mint and cummin.
If we're sanctified by the truth, like Jesus said even He was in John 17, what about a command of scripture, like "let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth." How do we know what corrupt communication is? There is no list of words in scripture. The Bible doesn't tell us not to smoke crack pipes. Are we going beyond what is written if we forbid crack, or does scripture imply that we need to apply what it says? Historically, sola scriptura meant the only infallible authority for faith and practice, but not the only authority.
I'll leave it at that for now. I like our adult conversation.
Being Biblical is enough… I couldn’t agree more!
The Bible clearly teaches that good works have a central place in Sanctification. We are saved by grace through faith… not OF works… We are His workmanship… (Saved) FOR good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Eph. 2
How is someone set apart? The New Testament speaks of being set apart for God by salvation, set apart from sin (the works of the flesh), and set apart for service in the ministry of God. (Alliteration was unintentional)
Corrupt communication (σαπρός saprós, sap-ros'; from G4595; rotten, i.e. worthless (literally or morally):—bad, corrupt.) is clearly defined by what it does not do in Eph. 4:29-32 – it does not build up and minister grace to the hearers. It comes from anger, wrath, and malice rather than kindness and forgiveness. That example is pretty clearly spelled out there and elsewhere in the New Testament. I agree that Sola Scriptura is not our only authority… it is our final authority, but interpretation of texts must happen and we must weigh Scripture against Scripture. (Rightly dividing) I don’t think we disagree at all on this point.
I agree that this would now qualify as an adult conversation and is beneficial. Would you be interested in being a guest on the RFP? This would make an incredible episode.
Nathan,
I didn't know which of you were saying this in episode one, but I heard this that related to sanctification:
"What stands out to me, listening to this . . . . that phrase, we're trying to please God, it touches on the true motivation of people that are entrapped in legalism. We want the approval, the love, the acceptance of God, but we're forgetting that Christ has earned that acceptance for us, so we keep trying to earn it through our actions."
There is no doubt that, perfect tense, we are accepted by God in Christ. We have a standing in grace, but in sanctification, we labor, as Paul wrote, that whether present or absent, we might be accepted of him. We present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God. We've got to think, is this acceptable unto God. That is conforming to the image of the Son. Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Rom 8:38-39), but one of Paul's motives for living for Christ was to be accepted of Him. He was laboring to please Christ. Sure, this is out of love, but that isn't legalism. This is where I hear a false evangelical legalism, and I'm talking about the Tullian Tchividjian, Jesus Plus Nothing Equals Everything. Do you ascribe to that? Paul wrote the Thessalonians that your sanctification is, abstain from fornication.
The above is rampant in the recovering fundamentalists, speaking of the concept I read out there.
Related to everything else you were saying in that episode, the issue is still language that one of you said, Ask God into their hearts and save them. That isn't a true gospel. The reason why they are "getting saved again and again" isn't because they are trying to please God with a short haircut, but because they aren't even being preached a true gospel. I don't see how someone could keep using that terminology if he had come out of that.
If I was going to give the major critique of what you came out of, having know which one is you and your testimony, it was:
A watered down gospel. Not thorough in the explanation of salvation.
Mysticism. Emotionalism. Experience based, weak doctrine.
Lack of expository preaching.
A form of continuationism through music, prayer, and God speaking to you, untethered to scripture.
A wrong view of God not found in His beauty and then through a lack of reverence in worship — trite, carnival like songs.
That isn't fundamentalism. But because you think it was short hair on men, long skirts on women, not mixed swimming, and the perpetuity of the church, that true churches have always existed since Christ, no on the movie theater, and in personal separation — that was the problem. I'm saying, no, that wasn't the problem. The cultural degradation does matter. I understand that it was almost sacramental in nature so that it was akin to a sacrament in IFB, like closed communion, but that it wasn't something produced by the grace of God.
I might appear on your show some time, but I'm sure we wouldn't be on the same page, and I would argue with you in a civil manner. I just moved to Oregon to start a church with my wife and elderly parents, my dad with alzheimer's, after starting a church in the SF Bay Area and pastoring it for 33 years, so that's a priority.
I ask you to consider what I'm saying, Nathan. I like your name, by the way.