Back of the Envelope

This is, unsurprisingly, a few days late. I'll move it to the proper point in the archives later.

Sluggy Freelance -- Torg and Riff get a new job--as hitmen?!

Day by Day -- Kerry, Bush, and Bill O'Reilly all get spots in this week's Day by Day.

It's Walky! -- Sarah catches up with Walky and Joyce to warn them about the attack.

College Roomies from Hell! -- The sub sinks, as does the Mad Doc, and Dave meets an angel.

General Protection Fault -- Sharon goes on her trip to France with her good friend, Craig. Unfortunately, there's a spy looking to infiltrate the conference.

Schlock Mercenary -- So they've collected the forensic evidence. Someone needs to tell the cops to keep the lawyer drones away from Schlock.

Update: I've now moved this to its correct place in the archives.

I just received word that a friend of mine from MIT has died. I've just begun trying to process it. I trust you'll understand if I don't post anything for a while.

You've probably noticed my major theme for this past week: I've been talking almost exclusively about the difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism. There are a couple of reasons for this. First, I've been pretty busy at work, so I haven't had that much time for blogging. Second, the evangelicalism and fundamentalism posts take a lot of time to compose, so most of my blogging time has been spent writing those. Finally, since my initial post was linked to by Glenn Reynolds, I figured I should milk it for all it's worth respond to some of the comments that have come up. Doc Rampage's post in particular made me realize that I needed to explain the inerrancy of scripture and being born again in more detail. It looks like I still have two more posts to write: one explaining what it means to be born again, and one which summarizes the blogosphere response and my response to the response. I should be done with this subject by the end of the week, and be back to my normal posting schedule.

Old Post: I promised I would discuss the inerrancy of the Bible in a post below.

The Intervarsity statement of faith I quoted earlier says that one of its founding principles is the belief in

The unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible.

This is a very strong statement about the Bible and its authority, but it is very careful not to say that the Bible is inerrant. I remember that this was an important point during the discussion of whether this statement of faith should be adopted by MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship. The basic fundamentalist understanding of the Bible is that if it is not a word-for-word dictation from God to the human writers, God at the least vouches for every word. Some evangelicals would agree, but many of them would not go that far. They believe the Bible is what it claims to be, and that God's inspiration made sure of that. Some books of the Bible claim to be direct dictation from God: the prophets, Revelation, and parts of the Pentateuch, for example. On these parts, evangelicals and fundamentalists would be in agreement. The Gospels, however, are a different matter. They claim to be eyewitness accounts (or in the case of Luke, a thoroughly researched history) of the life of Jesus. Thus, when there's disagreement between the gospels, such as the differences between the Resurrection accounts, an evangelical can just say that these differences are no greater than any difference in eyewitness accounts of such an eventful and hectic morning (as Lee Strobel argues in The Case for Christ). The fundamentalist must reconcile these differences, because he believes that any difference would be God contradicting himself.

All fundamentalists hold to sola scriptura, and I’d guess that most evangelicals do, but not all. Sola scriptura is the belief that the Bible alone is the supreme authority for Christian believers, and that all other authority derives from it. On the other hand, the Catholic Church places the highest authority not on the Bible, but on apostolic succession, the idea being that Jesus chose his apostles to be leaders in the Church and gave them authority, who then gave authority to their successors, and so on, through today, where the Pope is the direct heir of that succession. Some other churches also believe in Apostolic succession, such as the Orthodox and Anglican churches, although they don't believe the Pope is the direct heir. As I understand it, the authority granted by apostolic succession weakens the further removed the successor is from Jesus: thus Jesus's own words have absolute authority, the writings of Jesus's apostles have the next greatest authority, then the early church fathers, becoming weaker and weaker throughout the years. Those churches view the Bible’s authority as deriving from apostolic succession, as the Old Testament is vetted by Jesus and the apostles (in Jesus's day, there was disagreement about which parts of the Old Testament were truly authoritative: the Christian church has more or less decided which books had authority according to what Jesus and his apostles said about them, although there are some complications), the New Testament is written by those first apostles, and later codified by others in the early apostolic succession. Therefore, even in the tradition of apostolic succession, the Bible has greater authority than any other writing, but the authority of the apostles is its source.

As I said, evangelicals place great emphasis on the authority of the Bible, although not all of them claim it is inerrant. And while most of them believe that the Bible is the source of all Christian authority, the movement also includes those who believe that the authority of the Bible derives from apostolic succession. All evangelicals believe that the Bible directly applies to their lives, and put great emphasis on studying the Bible and putting it into practice.

Update: Jeremy Pierce of Parablemania has a lot of good comments. Some of them are about details I glossed over in this post, read his comments to find out which. Two of the things he said are pretty important:

I wonder if your explanation on gospel accounts is a dodge. Are there errors in some of the accounts? If so, then even evangelicals are hard pressed to agree. This is perhaps one of the places where some people want to call themselves evangelicals when I'm not sure I want to give them the name. Do they deny the infallibility of the Bible? Perhaps not, but if the gospel accounts are merely reports of what some people remembered, and it turns out that their memory was faulty, it's not an attitude toward scripture that I would consider consistent with evangelicalism.

Jeremy makes a good point, and this is the reason I tend to be more on the inerrancy side of things. Those who claim scripture is authoritative but not inerrant have two points in their favor. The first is that even if the differences in the gospels are errors due to faulty memories, the agreement between them is great enough that no essential Christian doctrines are in question, and are all attested to by multiple witnesses. This isn't a reason to believe it to be the case, but rather a reason that believing it doesn't necessarily put you outside of orthodox Christian thought. The second, and I think more convincing point, is that the gospels don't claim to be divine revelations, or more specifically, the divinity they're revealing is Jesus himself and their accounts of him. Again and again in Acts and the Letters, the apostles use their eyewitness status in their preaching, and the gospels are the eyewitness accounts with some commentary, the amount of which varies from gospel to gospel. I believe that the commentary there is (John has the most) is given the same authority as the Letters, written by those with a special relationship with and knowledge of God, granted authority to be His witnesses.

Evangelicals who believe this don't use their uncertainty to argue against doctrine so much as to reconcile the differences in the accounts. Those who do use this belief to question essential doctrine, such as the Jesus seminar ("Jesus never would have taught his disciples the Lord's prayer!") fall outside my definition of evangelical. Of course, it could be that this belief is more on the left edge of evangelicalism than I realized. Remember, I've lived in Boston for the last seven years.

Jeremy also says he's "never heard of this gradual dilution of authority view before." My "as I understand it" disclaimer probably wasn't strong enough. My knowledge of Catholicism comes mainly from my conversations with Catholics, many self-described evangelicals, rather than personal study of Catholic doctrine. They may have been more atypical of Catholics than I thought, or I may not have understood them very well. I'm fairly certain they held the Bible to be a higher authority than the Church fathers, with less authority being granted to more recent writings. The "dilution" may have been more how I viewed that understanding than they did. They probably would deny there was any conflict between the writings, but I think they would view the Bible as more foundational.

Dean Esmay is working on a novel and wants to know whether it's better to seek out an agent or to just send it to a publisher. Having looked into it myself (my magnum opus is at 90,000 words--take that, Dean!), I can tell him that according to every source I've checked, it's much, much, much better to seek out an agent. For practical advice about writing and getting published, I recommend Stephen King's On Writing or Richard Cohen's The Writer's Mind.

Parablemania is hosting the latest Christian Carnival. Check out what Christians around the blogosphere are discussing.

Old Post: This post addresses some of the comments to my previous post.

In case you're curious, I grew up in Southern Baptist churches. Since my family moved around a lot, I went to quite a few of them. Not all Southern Baptists are fundamentalists, but a lot of them are. At one time I would have called myself a fundamentalist, but now I call myself an evangelical. My doctrinal beliefs have changed some, but I still agree with most Southern Baptist doctrine. The main difference is that I no longer think that what makes someone a faithful Christian is the doctrine they believe in. As long as they agree with the minimal evangelical foundational beliefs, I believe that their faithfulness is demonstrated by how they love God and how they love others. It is not for me to judge whether someone is a good Christian or not, although there is a place for correction when someone is clearly going astray, but it is the responsibility of every believer to encourage every other believer to faithfully follow Christ. I no longer think this means trying to convince them to agree with my doctrines.

In my previous post I pointed out that the thing that separated evangelicals from orthodox mainstream Christianity was the emphasis on evangelism: hence the name evangelical. I should probably have pointed out as well that there is a strong emphasis on the Bible as the word of God, an emphasis that is not shared in all orthodox denominations. Evangelicals believe in studying the Bible, both individually and in small group Bible study, believing it to be the way God most directly communicates with his people today. This emphasis is the reason evangelicalism is stronger in Protestant churches than Catholic churches. Catholic doctrine views the Bible differently, and while they aren't opposed to studying the Bible, they don't usually encourage it in the same way Protestants do. That doesn't mean that there are no Catholic evangelicals, but it is a stronger movement in the Protestant church. (And yes, this may get angry responses, but I'm merely explaining it as well as I understand it from my discussions with Catholic evangelicals.)

In the comments, Jim M says:

I guess the most succinct way of saying the whole thing is that Evangelicals consider Fundamentalists as part of their movement, Fundamentalists do not include most Evangelicals in theirs

My personal experience has probably colored my views, but I think this is not entirely accurate. One of the important differences is that evangelicalism is a uniting movement, trying to find the common Christian heritage among various denominations. For that reason, while fundamentalism's doctrine is not too distant from what a lot of evangelicals believe, its reluctance to accept differing beliefs puts them outside of the evangelical movement.

superfly says:

Another difference is in the prohibition of some activities by fundamentalist. Most fundmentalist are opposed to any drinking of alcohol, but most evagelicals are not opposed to all alcohol use. There are also differences within the groups about charasmatic gifting. There may be some surveys to back this up.

There is some of this among fundamentalist churches. From my personal experience, fundamentalists aren't quite so legalistic as non-fundamentalists seem to believe.

I also see that Doc Rampage has commented on my post. I'll discuss some of the blogosphere responses in a later post.

Update: Having had a chance to read Doc Rampage's post, I see why he's upset. In my response, I'll talk a bit about sola scriptura and why I think it's not a common denominator among evangelicals. (For one, quite a few denominations have doctrine that would be incompatible with evangelicalism if it were.) The "born again" reference will require some discussion as well. While I believe that being born again is necessary, describing how we gain a relationship with Christ, I am no longer convinced that being born again has the rather narrow definition that I learned growing up.

In addition, I should clarify some of what I said in this post. Being a Christian requires a relationship with Christ, an adoption into the family of God, being born again. What gaining this looks like is something I plan to discuss later. When I say that doctrine does not matter, I need to be careful, since, obviously, certain doctrines do matter. Clearly you cannot be an evangelical Christian and believe that Jesus is not the Son of God, or believe that the Resurrection never happened. The eight point statement of faith I quoted summarizes what the most important beliefs are, including the importance of the Bible, which informs the remainder of our beliefs. (Certainly, Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses do not fit the definition of evangelical Christian.) However, evangelicals look around at the various denominations of Christianity and see faithful Christians in all of them. (They might be rarer in some denominations than others.) Then they look at the differences in doctrines, and wonder whether they're as important as they were thought to be when all these denominations split off from one another because of their doctrinal differences.

New Post: I discuss why evangelicals don't consider the inerrancy of scripture to be central to their faith above.

Thinking about fundamentalism made me think of Jerry Falwell, and thinking about Jerry Falwell made me think of this. Pete Abrams is a brilliant comic artist, but I think he has issues with children's television. That may stem from the fact that he has children. Enjoy!

Glenn Reynolds, aka "The Instapundit," linked to my post on the differences between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, which accounts for the over 2000 visits I've had so far today. The Instalanche is really cool, and it dwarfs my regular traffic (~50 visits). I've been reluctant to post anything new for fear of jinxing it--no, really, Blogger has already tried to mangle the post once, and I figure now would be a bad time to give it another chance. Still, the comments I've received on the post are interesting, and I'd like to try to address some of them in a later post. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.

Update: Speak of the devil. I'm not sure it was this post that did it, but the archive page for this week wasn't working for a while, leading to problems for anyone who followed Glenn's link. I apologize for that: it should be fixed now.

Old Post: This is a continuation of the discussion I started below.

I'll admit, I'm not an expert on the evangelical and fundamentalist movements, although I have gone to churches of both varieties. This rather long post gives my insider's view, which tends to be narrower than that of someone who's really studied things. I'd appreciate any thoughts or corrections.

Now that I've broached the subject in my previous post, I ought to go more in-depth. Evangelicalism and fundamentalism are both movements, and like most movements they are ill-defined. While there are leaders in these movements, and organizations within them, there is no hierarchy, no one who really says who's right and who's wrong. You can't divide the movements along denominational lines. There are some denominations in which there are few evangelicals, some in which most members are evangelicals, and some which are evenly divided. It is sometimes fair to describe a local church as evangelical or not, as evangelicals do tend to congregate, but not always. Nor is evangelicalism exclusively Protestant, as there are evangelicals in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Broadly speaking, evangelicals believe that there is a God, that Jesus is the Son of God, that the Bible is His Word to us, that human beings are fallen and sinful and need the forgiveness God offers in Jesus (receiving this forgiveness and dedicating yourself to God is often called salvation--being saved from your sins by God), and that it is our mission to introduce people to him. A more specific list of evangelical beliefs can be found in a statement of faith used by one of the evangelical organizations, such as this one used by MIT's Graduate Christian Fellowship, which is affiliated with Intervarsity, the US chapter of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.

From this list, evangelicals believe in:

• The only true God, the almighty Creator of all things, existing eternally in three persons -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- full of love and glory.
• The unique divine inspiration, entire trustworthiness, and authority of the Bible.
• The value and dignity of all people: created in God's image to live in love and holiness, but alienated from God and each other because of our sin and guilt, and justly subject to God's wrath.
• Jesus Christ, fully human and fully divine, who lived as a perfect example, who assumed the judgment due sinners by dying in our place, and who was bodily raised from the dead and ascended as Savior and Lord.
• Justification by God's grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.
• The indwelling presence and transforming power of the Holy Spirit, who gives to all believers a new life and a new calling to obedient service.
• The unity of all believers in Jesus Christ, manifest in worshiping and witnessing churches, making disciples throughout the world.
• The victorious reign and future personal return of Jesus Christ, who will judge all people with justice and mercy, giving over the unrepentant to eternal condemnation but receiving the redeemed into eternal life.

Now all of these beliefs are orthodox Christian beliefs, the same as those stated in the creeds and catechisms used by Christians of various denominations for centuries. The only thing really separating evangelicals from the mainstream of orthodox Christian belief (many of the mainstream churches are no longer very orthodox) is a strong emphasis on evangelism, of telling others about Jesus and inviting them to become Christians. It's not as if there's no precedent for evangelism in the Christian church, but it can be argued that it has atrophied over the years when Western countries were predominantly Christian, and witnessing left to professional ministers and missionaries.

That the foundational beliefs of evangelicals are so few allows there to be a wide array of different beliefs among the members, concerning such hotly debated topics as infant baptism, transubstantiation, pre- vs. post- millenialism, free-will vs. predestination, et cetera. In general, evangelicals accept that faithful Christians can have differing beliefs about these things, and are tolerant of these differences.

Fundamentalism is also a movement, but a much smaller one. Most fundamentalists would agree with the statement of faith above, but they'd want it stronger in some areas, and they would add a few points. Fundamentalist beliefs fall under the broad umbrella of evangelicalism, so that you can find evangelicals who would agree with fundamentalists on their doctrinal beliefs. However, fundamentalists can be intolerant of those evangelicals who disagree with those beliefs, not considering them faithful Christians, if they consider them Christians at all. A few of the doctrines in which fundamentalists believe and about which evangelicals disagree:

1. The inerrancy of Scripture. While evangelicals believe that the Bible is the Word of God, has authority, and should be obeyed, fundamentalists believe that it is also inerrant, without mistake (at least as originally written), and that it should be taken as literally as possible, which leads fundamentalists to reject evolution, which evangelicals may or may not do.
2. Being born again. This is a phrase used by fundamentalists to describe the conversion experience, where someone prays to God to become a Christian and receives salvation. Evangelicals do not deny the legitimacy of the conversion experience, but many of them consider salvation to be more of a process than a one time step. They tend to use the phrase "born again" to describe this process (the phrase is used by Jesus in John 3), although its association with the narrow fundamentalist definition has discouraged its use among evangelicals.
3. Pre-millenialism. Here I usually get bogged down in the technical terms, but pre-millenialism refers to one particular view of the book of Revelation and what the Second Coming of Jesus will look like. Both evangelicals and fundamentalists believe in the Second Coming. Fundamentalists have some rather specific beliefs about what it will be like. Some evangelicals agree with these beliefs, some do not. In general, evangelicals feel less certain about the details than fundamentalists, and tend to put less emphasis on Jesus's return.

So what do these evangelicals and fundamentalists believe politically? That varies. Since they both put strong emphasis on the authority of the Bible, they tend to oppose abortion and the homosexual movement. I should clarify about the homosexual movement, as evangelicals tend to be more tolerant towards homosexuals than fundamentalists. Since the Bible teaches that homosexuality is a sin, evangelicals cannot accept it as an alternate lifestyle. However, to them, homosexuality is just one sin among many, and we should love homosexuals while encouraging them to repent. What they oppose specifically is the normalization of homosexuality, of saying that there's nothing wrong with it and there must be something wrong with those who say there is. Thus, while they won't be up in arms about gays in government or the military, they will oppose them having leadership positions within the Church (the same as they would oppose an unrepentant adulterer in a Church leadership position) or redefining marriage to include male-male and female-female couples. There is not complete agreement even on these things in the evangelical movement, however. Fundamentalists tend to take a much stronger line on homosexuality, although they too will say you should hate the sin but love the sinner. (There are some who hate both, much to the shame of both movements.)

On other conservative issues, evangelicals have less agreement. There is no evangelical consensus about the welfare state, immigration, affirmative action, gun-control, the war on terror, etc. They may believe one way or the other, and they may use their religious beliefs to inform their politics, but as disagreement over doctrines are allowed, so are disagreements over politics. Their political beliefs on these matters can be more accurately predicted by other demographic factors than their evangelicalism. In the last evangelical conference I went to, in January 2003, most of the speakers were against the upcoming war in Iraq. The conference was for graduate students and academics, and most of the speakers were foreign visitors, which turned out to be a good indicator of their political positions. The church I attended in Boston was rather ambivalent on the Iraq war, and even a bit ambivalent toward the war in Afghanistan. Sometimes I think the reason evangelicalism is associated with conservatism is because it is strongest in the South, which is strongly conservative as well as strongly evangelical. [Addendum: This leads to significant overlap, obviously.]

Evangelicals believe in the separation of church and state, not because they worry about what would happen to the state if the church had too much influence--for the most part, they think the state would be better off--but because they think that the church suffers when it has too much secular power. Power brings pride, opportunism, and indifference to God, all things to be avoided by the church.

Fundamentalists tend to be more conservative. Partly, this comes from their narrower range of doctrinal beliefs, which leads to narrower political beliefs, but partly it's because they don't believe as strongly in the separation of church and state. Oh, they're not looking to forcefully convert people as some liberals seem to believe, but they see the same benefit to the state from a bit of Christian guidance that the evangelicals do, and they don't see it harming the church to provide it. They also tend to view the Republicans with some suspicion, as they aren't as open to compromise as evangelicals, which is what political parties do.

What does all this tell us? For one, if Democrats weren't so strongly in the grip of the abortion and homosexual lobbies, they'd have a pretty good chance at getting more of the evangelical vote. Maybe then they'd stop demonizing evangelicals, which is what is now driving off what they do have of it. Second, evangelicals have diverse political and doctrinal beliefs, and shouldn't be lumped with fundamentalists, whose beliefs are narrower.

Update: I fixed a few typos, and dealt with Blogger’s mangling of this post. A few stylistic changes to clarify, but nothing substantive.

New Post: I respond to a couple of comments above.

This is pretty old, but I've found myself using this quote a lot recently:

You know you're an evangelical if the fundamentalists think you're a liberal and the liberals think you're a fundamentalist.

It's from a pretty good Boston Globe article by Alan Jacobs which Letters from Babylon has commented on. I don't agree with all the author's conclusions, but it's a useful primer for those who think evangelicalism and fundamentalism are the same thing.

New Post: I discuss the difference between evangelicalism and fundamentalism in the post above.

In case you're wondering, I'm now 38% of the way through the second revision of A Phoenix in Darkness. I've started spelling it right too.

I haven't pointed out a Dave Barry column in a while, but this one is pretty good. He has this to say about outsourcing:

The point is that EVERYTHING is being outsourced. In a few years, the only industry left in the United States will be ''reality'' television. A lot of people think this is bad. Congress recently tried to pass a law against outsourcing, only to discover that all federal legislation since 1997 has actually been produced in Taiwan.

So outsourcing is here to stay. Which leads me to my announcement: Starting today, I will no longer personally write my column. It will be produced by foreign humor workers, who, rest assured, are highly trained. You will notice no dropoff in quality as you continue to enjoy the wacky hmogrins of fblsevry lftht hvfrsmnyrs aqdrfltns abtfbls not making this up rltngn alrtrds a good name for a rock band.

Go read the whole thing.

Old Post: My last post on this topic was here.

So what's going on in Fallujah? Many are upset with Bush for giving in to the terrorists. There are a couple of things to keep in mind, however. First, Bush tends to give his subordinates full authority to deal with the situation without micromanagement. In general, he sets the objectives and lets the commanders on the ground decide how to accomplish the mission. Second, all might not be as it seems. For one, the Marines haven't gone anywhere. They're repositioning while the Iraqi forces take over some of the former duties. Belmont Club has some interesting thoughts on this:

It is in this context that the perplexing cycle of ceasefires punctuated by nocturnal assaults can be understood. The Corps, besides incorporating the Chinese word Gung Ho into it's vocabulary, may have finally proved to the Arabs that they can out-hudna anyone who ever stood on a patch of sand. By alternately throttling and releasing the enemy, or in cruder terms, by a process of talking and shooting, the USMC seems to have squeegeed the foe into the 'Golan' without ever precipitating the feared crisis. ("Like a cut flower in a vase, fair to see, yet doomed to die" -- Winston Churchill)

When the Press began trumpeting a humiliating Marine withdrawal and their ignominous replacement by Iraqi Fallujah Protection Army, the Belmont Club, although perplexed by the origins of the Fallujah Protection Army, still guessed that the Marines would not be withdrawn, as per innuendo, from around the 'Golan' cordon and that the Iraqis would be employed in stabilization and police duties simply because it was impossible for a force in contact with the enemy to be replaced by a unit which had yet to be constituted.

A lot of people with a better grasp of military tactics than I think what the Marines are doing makes sense. At the least, I get the impression that the Marine commanders are the ones calling the shots, rather than being called off by the politicians back home. I am concerned with even the appearance of giving in, but I'm not sure that's what's really happening. As I said before, I hope the commanders on the ground know what they are doing.

New Post: A Marine explains the thinking behind the strategy in Fallujah above.

These were my major posts this week. As usual, the timestamp is decided in order to place this post in the correct place in the archives.

John Kerry's long slide into irrelevancy -- Yes, Kerry's sliding in the polls. I'm wondering whether the Democrats are looking for ways to get rid of Kerry and replace him with someone more electable.

Chemical weapons plot in Jordan -- More on the terror plot that the Jordanians foiled.

Why I believe in God: The Trinity -- I talk about the trinity, and what it means for Christians.

Fallujah -- The first in a series of posts about Fallujah.

Rumsfeld's occupation -- Barbara Lerner has some thoughts on what the occupation would have looked like if Rumsfeld had really been in charge.

Spirit of America fundraiser results -- The results are in, and all told, we raised a total of over $50k. Not bad.