By Ken Camp
Managing Editor
BIRMINGHAM, England--Fundamentalism characterized by rigidity, domination and exclusion--practiced primarily by authoritarian males--divides Christians by adding restrictive requirements to the simple gospel message, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter told delegates to the Baptist World Centenary Congress.
"Divisions in the river of faith that divide us into swirling eddies and meandering tributaries" constitute the most serious plight currently facing the church, he said. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter leads a Bible study at the Baptist World Congress. (Photo by by Ferrell Foster)
Carter, a deacon and Sunday school teacher from Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Ga., taught what was billed as the largest Sunday school class in history at the international meeting in central England. About 13,000 Baptists filled the National Indoor Arena in downtown Birmingham, England, for the Sunday morning event.
Taking his lesson from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatian church, Carter focused on a rebuke to early church leaders who added additional requirements for fellowship and salvation beyond the clear gospel of grace.
To redefine the gospel always has been a temptation, Carter said, "either to liberalize and dilute the gospel so it becomes meaningless," or to add to the gospel, constructing creeds and imposing them on others--a practice Baptists traditionally have opposed.
He compared the first-century threat to Christian unity among the Galatians with modern-day fundamentalists, pointing particularly to Southern Baptist Convention leaders who cut off fellowship with the Baptist World Alliance.
Characteristics of fundamentalism include the leadership of authoritarian males who want to subjugate women, the tendency of leaders to draw clear distinctions between themselves as "true believers" and other people whose beliefs are suspect, militancy in defending their beliefs and an inclination to define themselves and their circle of fellowship in increasingly restrictive terms, he said.
Carter did not minimize the importance of controversial issues such as abortion, homosexuality, separation of church and state, Jesus Christ as the standard for biblical interpretation and the relationship between pastoral authority and the priesthood of all believers.
But he criticized fundamentalists who "demagogue" selected social issues and make differences over non-essential matters a test of fellowship.
"Rigidity, domination and exclusion" are key words to describe fundamentalist movements, he said.
"To add any issue--no matter how important--to the gospel message of salvation is an abomination and an impediment that dams up the mighty stream of evangelism," he said.
The gospel can be reduced to one simple statement, Car-ter said, and he led the crowd in reciting it: "We are saved by the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ."
"This is adequate as a foundation on which every Christian denomination on earth can unite in harmony and peace and mutual cooperation to spread the gospel of Christ to all people," he said.
Instead, too many Christians choose to narrow the parameters of fellowship and cooperation over side issues, such as the SBC's insistence that women are disqualified for pastoral ministry because man was first in creation and woman was first to fall into original sin.
Carter decried the "continued practice of discriminating against women, depriving them of their ability to serve God."
Jesus treated women as equal to men--a view dramatically different from prevailing practices, Carter said. But some Baptists "want to keep women in their place."
Carter acknowledged some passages from the Apostle Paul's writings have been used to promote the idea that women should be submissive to their husbands and silent in church. But Paul affirmed women in other texts such as Romans 16, where he expressed appreciation to some women among a list of deacons, apostles, ministers and saints, he said.
"Paul was not separating himself from the lesson Jesus taught," Carter said. "His clear message is that women should be treated as equals in their right to serve God."
Carter cited Paul's statement in Galatians 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus."
If being Jew or Greek, slave or free does not impact a Christian's equal opportunity to serve Christ, then being male or female shouldn't either, he insisted.
"Should we Baptists, Christians, exclude more than half the devout Christians on earth from fulfilling the call of God to service of Christ?"
Carter acknowledged various Baptist groups within the BWA may disagree over the role of women in ministry, but that should not prevent them from working together, he said.
"The vast and diverse Christian world needs to rise above divisive controversies, adhere to the basic Christian message, to emphasize healing of differences," Carter said. In drawing close to Christ individually, believers also will draw close to each other, to "follow our Savior, the Prince of Peace, in reaching out to the lost and alleviating the suffering of others."
Tony Cartledge of the North Carolina Biblical Recorder contributed to this report.
The Rev Dr Jimmy Carter once again demonstrates his ignorance of theology and biblical interpretation!
Make haste and soak thy head.
Given his public pronouncement that "St Paul was wrong" on some issue of Scripture . . .
I guess BUNNY MAN can decide that his Bible says whatever he wants it to say.
I strongly suspect God has a different thought on the matter.
It appears Jimmie Carter doesn't believe in the spiritual gift of pastor-teacher or evangelist as gifts from the Holy Spirit provided to particular believers, only given to men today as they were only recorded as being given during the first several centuries of the Church after Pentecost.
From the article, I suspect the author isn't cognizant of that doctrine regarding gifts of the Holy Spirit and perhaps neither is Carter.
There does seem to be a coordinated effort to demonize 'fundamentalism' without studying the doctrines of such beliefs or to rewrite their interpretations without considering the Scriptural basis for those doctrines.
But then again, if one were to study those basic doctrines from their Scriptural foundations, one would then be categorized as a 'fundamentalist' and prejudged as in error regardless. Go figure.
Looks like Jesus is a fundamentalist.
Matthew 25:31-33
31 When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Even the bare bones version of the Gospel which Carter enunciates here implies (accurately) that one is only saved through Jesus, which many of Carter's fans would no doubt consider "exclusive" and "divisive."
"Fundmentalism" is merely a buzzword used to marginalize people who believe the things that Christians have always believed.
Isn't Carter being divisive by singling some Christians out for derision?
["The vast and diverse Christian world needs to rise above divisive controversies, adhere to the basic Christian message, to emphasize healing of differences," Carter said. In drawing close to Christ individually, believers also will draw close to each other, to "follow our Savior, the Prince of Peace, in reaching out to the lost and alleviating the suffering of others."]
This is the "social gospel" preached by liberal religionest members of the dead and liberal churchs of Christiandom and these people have rejected the true gospel of salvation by grace through faith. By refusing to recognize the author of the Holy Bible as God, they too are lost and are like Cain. If God sent the man anti-Christ today, they and all religionists would bow to this false Christ and believe him.
Carter is a fool and a liar.
As usual, former Prez Carter is long on rhetoric and short on specifics.
He didn't mention one thing evangelicals are specifically doing wrong other than supposedly "discriminating against women."
And even that is simply an accusation taken straight out of the Democratic fairy-tale handbook.
Once again Jimmah Cahhtah proves that he is out of touch with God's Word and twists it in order to serve his own purposes.
Jimmy the peanut strikes again.
Christians must remain uncompromising about our core doctrines, but charitable in our discussions with those who differ from us. The liberals messed up on the first point, the fundamentalists on the second.
Narrow is the path, Jimmy. Christ said it Himself. Not all that say "Lord, Lord" will enter into Heaven.
My gag reflexes prevented me from reading the rest of the article. Did St. Funk of Malaise offer any specific examples?