Are Sydney Anglicans Fundamentalists?

The insistence on the authority of Scripture means that, theologically speaking, Sydney Anglicans are very conservative. They are anti-progressive in the sense that the Word of God ‘stands written’: there is no further revelation, nor any virtue in ‘moving on’ from Scripture. It is a good deposit to be guarded, the ‘faith once delivered to all the saints’ (ref). But it would be a mistake to call them ‘fundamentalists’ in the modern sense. They often are so called by their detractors, but the term of abuse is for the most part inaccurate and unfair.

There are Christians who would call themselves ‘fundamentalists’, chiefly living in the USA. Fundamentalism was a movement that began in 1920 in response to theological modernism and originally indicated that one was committed to the ‘fundamentals’: the basic tenets of orthodox Christianity. Chiefly today, Christian fundamentalism is distinguished by teachings like six-day Creationism, pre-millennial eschatology and a particularly right-wing approach to politics. None of these things is characteristic of Sydney Anglicans. Like millions of other Christians, they trace their heritage to mainstream and orthodox theologians like John Calvin and Martin Luther, who upheld the supreme authority of Scripture in the church. Holding to the supreme authority of Scripture does not in itself make you a ‘fundamentalist’, however irritating this is to Christians who differ. What it does mean is that tradition, reason and experience will never trump Scripture as an authority.

In a piece entitled ‘What Shall We Do With The Bible?’, published originally in 1987, Archbishop Donald Robinson recounted the shift in the usage of the term. When he went to Sydney University in 1940, he was not unhappy to own the label ‘fundamentalist’. It merely indicated then that he was not a modernist, and was committed to the authority of Scripture. As the term increasingly was being used by the opponents of evangelicals to caricature and abuse them, prominent evangelicals began to disavow it from the 1950s on – especially in the UK. Leading British evangelical Anglican John Stott was in the vanguard. As Robinson writes:

He said we ought to discard it [the term fundamentalist] because it had become associated with three extravagances, first, a total rejection of all biblical criticism, secondly, excessively literalist interpretation of the Bible and thirdly, certain rather mechanical theories of the nature of biblical inspiration. Those extravagances, he said, were no part of the orthodox evangelical position or of the IVF in particular.

J.I. Packer, another leading British evangelical likewise detested the term as a description for evangelicalism, and authored a book called ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God – with the inverted commas in the title indicating that he thought that the word was not something he could now own.

It was clearly a word that made evangelicals wince, and so their opponents continued to use it. And evangelicals continued to seek to distinguish themselves from it. A leading American evangelical named E.J. Carnell argued that fundamentalism had become more of a religious attitude than a theological position. Fundamentalists claimed to sit under Scripture’s authority, but in fact they followed their own traditions and habits in interpreting the Bible. They had not developed an affirmative world view and would not try to connect their convictions with the culture. Their only goal was to negate modernism. But once modernism itself had died away, fundamentalism had no obvious raison d’etre. It became a highly rigid and ideologically driven form of Christianity, incapable of recognising incompleteness and inconsistency in its own position or of tolerating it in anyone else. As Carnell wrote:
‘Fundamentalism is a lonely position. It has cut itself off from the general stream of culture, philosophy and ecclesiastical tradition. This accounts, in part, for its robust pride. Since it is no longer in union with the wisdom of the ages, it has no standard by which to judge its own religious pretense’.

This characterisation of fundamentalism as a mentality rather than a particular position was taken up by Old Testament scholar James Barr in his 1977 book Fundamentalism, in which he offered a sweeping critique of the Inter-Varsity Press and its publications.

Donald Robinson is at pains to show how his evangelical commitment to the authority of Scripture does not operate as a mere ‘religious mentality’. He concedes that some evangelicals are indeed guilty of the kind of attitudes decried by Carnell and Barr. But being committed to the authority of Scripture ought to result in a theological method that is not subject to the charged laid against fundamentalism, not at all. Robinson wrote:

The first task of theology as I see it is the understanding of the revelation of the Scriptures in their own original terms, that is, in the language and cultural forms in which it was originally given. The second task is to express and interpret that understanding in relation to the language and cultural forms of our own day and in response to questions and concerns which arise from our own life, some of which did not arise in the life of Bible times. Yet even the disciplined theological task which I have described is not a static of isolated one. It does not take place in a vacuum. There is an always has been the continuous fellowship of the people of God, the actual living of the life of faith by individuals and churches, the preaching of the gospel and the exercise of various spiritual ministries .

For Robinson, the practice of the authority of Scripture ought to result in a rigorous Biblical scholarship and attentiveness (though not concession) to contemporary questions and concerns. And it ought to take place in conversation with and with respect to the venerable tradition of Christian – and not necessarily just evangelical - interpretation of the Bible.

In outlining this method and in exemplifying it in his work over four decades as a churchman and a scholar, Robinson bequeathed to Sydney Anglicans the possibility of an intellectually robust evangelicalism. He showed how a Reformation conviction about the supreme authority of Scripture need not be at odds with scholarly integrity; nor need it result in the kind of defensive obscurantism displayed in fundamentalism. To this day, the students at Moore College, who have access to the best and most comprehensive theological library in the southern hemisphere, are encouraged to read and to learn from the works of scholars from a variety of traditions and not just those that agree with them.

The challenge remains though for a new generation of Bible-believing card-carrying evangelicals. It is easier, in a sense, to be what your critics claim you are. Fundamentalism as a mentality is an easy temptation to fall for, especially when the authority of Scripture is under attack. But it is a lazy and ultimately corrupt form of thought. Are Sydney Anglicans fundamentalists? I don't think they have been in the past, as Archbishop Robinson explains.