Fundamentalists strove to achieve purity
I. Until the 1930s, Fundamentalists strove to achieve ecclesiastical purity by attempting to force the modernists out of the mainline denominations.
A. To Fundamentalists, such was the biblical model-removing from the churches any who represented that which is contrary to sound doctrine (2 John 1:9-11; Galatians 1:8-9; 1 Timothy 6:20-21).
1. No passage of Scripture explicitly instructs believers to separate from churches.
2.The Bible instructs churches to separate all unscriptural elements from their own fellowship in order to preserve ecclesiastical purity. a.Because conservatives failed to act swiftly to accomplish the removal of liberals, even from places of leadership, the movement eventually had no New Testament model to follow b.In other words, there is no list of clear, biblical passages to which minority members in predominantly liberal churches may appeal for guidance. c.The problem was that most Fundamentalist leaders up to 1930 were primarily attempting to preach the modernists out of denominational leadership positions.
3.There were two problems with this approach. a.First Fundamentalists needed to do far more than preach b.Secondly, their hands were tied within the denominational political structures.
4.There was a strong trend toward centralization of denominations around the turn of the century that paralleled the rise of big business in America a.Unfortunately for the church, it was the men who exhibited the most loyalty to the denomination, rather than to the Scriptures or the doctrinal purity of the Church that were promoted to high position. b.Furthermore, ecclesiastical machinery always moves slowly-far too slowly to accomplish swift purges. c.Ideally, local churches should have purged out modernism on their own level, and the denominations themselves should have ousted those churches that preached modernism.
B. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Fundamentalists began to realize that under the broad umbrella of evangelicalism a distinctly "new evangelical" movement was emerging-an evangelicalism that appeared committed to regaining respectability in the eyes of the world even if that meant carrying on dialogue with liberals and joining with them in ecumenical campaigns.
1. 1950s Billy Graham had clearly emerged as the evangelist of this new movement.
2. Abandoned in an increasingly conspicuous, peripheral position, Fundamentalism had now begun to practice holiness yet another way-
3.by separating from churches and institutions where new evangelicals had ascended to key p]aces of leadership and control. a.By going this route, Fundamentalism had clearly changed in its practice of holiness. b.While Fundamentalism prior to 1930 had separated primarily from worldliness, and the Fundamentalism of the 1930s and 1940s had separated primarily from modernism, c.Mid twentieth-century Fundamentalism had come to the conviction that, in the face of a new enemy within the camp, they must also separate from disobedient evangelicals.