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This Usenet posting presents another perspective on Darby's place
in history.
rom: shunter@dodgecity.net (Weatherguesser)
Subject: The origin of fundamentalism
Date: 24 Jan 1999 00:00:00 GMT
Message-ID: <36ab91e6.107678847@news.dodgecity.net>
Organization: League of Wily Weathermen
Newsgroups: alt.christnet
Contrary to what its adherents claim, the fundamentalist flavor in
Protestant denominations in the United States emerged only recently -
largely in the 19th century.
Although some of this stream came from the Puritans, the majority
arose with what may be called "DISPENSATIONAL PREMILLENIALISM."
Its major proponent was one John Nelson Darby, an Englishman born in
1800. He studied law in Dublin and was ordained to the clergy of the
Church of Ireland in 1824. In the 1840s he broke from this church to
form a breakaway faction known as the Plymouth Brethren or Darbyites.
It was this faction that propounded the beliefs of dispensational
premillenialism. Premillenialism was resurrected from obscurity by
this sect. It is a belief that the cryptic apocalyptic visions of the
Book of Revelation and elsewhere mean that Christ will return to earth
and establish a 1000 year reign centered at Jerusalem. The
dispensational
aspect refers to the belief that human history is broken up into
several
periods, or dispensations, during each of which people lived under a
different set of divine laws and criteria for salvation. The present
age is the "church age," or sixth dispensation, which Darby
characterized as one of apostasy and erosion of Christian morality.
This will be followed by the Rapture, when all SAVED Christians will
ascend to the sky to meet Christ and be protected from the Great
Tribulation, a time of violence and death for those unsaved still
remaining on earth. Then Christ will return for his reign and Last
Judgment of humankind.
The movement (subsequently called DP), as stated earlier, has little
precedent. The main Protestant body before the 19th century, the
Baptists, held LOVE and total FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE in theistic
beliefs.
Wrote Phillip Jones in a 1909 book about TRADITIONAL Baptist tenets:
The individual has a right to express his religious or
antireligious convictions.
And also:
It is love and not law that is supreme...God is love and love
is God.
For these reasons, early Baptists opposed interference by the
Government
in legislating belief. They corresponded regularly with Thomas
Jefferson,
pleading with him to oppose such legislation and to legalize
separation
between church and state.
What brought about the change that allowed the DP movement to
infiltrate
the Protestant churches? It's complex, but several events were
critical.
- The breaking away of the Baptists in the South in 1845, which
eventually coagulated in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). The
primary reason for the break? To support theistic
rationalizations for slaveholding, which many in their congregations
did.
- Response to the perceived threats of the "Higher Criticism" and of
Darwin's alternate proposal of human evolution as evidenced in his
Origin of the Species. The former was pursued by biblical scholars
and attempted to examine the historical Jesus and expose biblical
errors
and contradictions. These were seen as threats to Christianity itself
and so a doctrine of biblical inerrancy and legalism were adopted
under
a siege mentality.
Darby's name is hardly known today, and his direct followers are small
in number. This type of thinking is mostly absent in the churches of
Europe. But his influence was far greater in establishing the
foundations of legalistic Protestant belief in America today. The
core of his theology was expanded in the tent revivals and apocalyptic
creeds that swept the nation in the 19th century. It is accessible
to the great masses of poor and uneducated, and panders to the
anti-intellectualism and feelings of disenfranchisement among them.
It makes an idol of certitude and scolds free thinking, even telling
believers that such thinking is Satan's implant. The lack of such
beliefs in Europe leads to much of the fundamentalist railing against
"world government" and the United Nations.
The religious Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom says that although
adherents
of dispensationalism claim to be biblical literalists, its extensive
use of typology, its commitment to numerology, and its dependence on
highly debatable (not to say fanciful) interpretations of some obscure
apocalyptic passages have led many to insist that its interpretation
is anything but literal.
So, what is the moral here? Know the ORIGINS of ANY organized set of
beliefs. Do you trust yourself to think on your own? If so, one MUST
question such beliefs. I believe there are many jewels of wisdom
in the Bible, particularly several attributed to Jesus. But one must
look
critically at the CONTEXT of any book of the Bible, and the intent and
circumstances surrounding its author. For example: Like other
enlightenment rationalists, writes the theological historian Jaroslav
Pelikan, [Thomas] Jefferson was convinced that the real villain in
the
Christian story was the apostle Paul [author of the book of John], who
had corrupted the religion OF Jesus into a religion ABOUT Jesus.
Small wonder that Paul was a Pharisee lawyer, who brutally persecuted
Christians, before converting. He laid the foundation for the Church
of Law that has become so powerful that it assaults the ramparts of
politics and Congress, all the while maintaining its tax-exempt
status.
This movement is truly the "wolf in sheep's clothing."
I'm not here to convert; only to get those on the fence to see the
light of reason.
--Weatherguesser
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