Blog on the Lillypad
Thursday, September 23, 2004
 | Yes, We Should Fight the IFB Myth Machine
A recent post on the FFF by an extremely young man lamented that now that Lester Roloff is gone, with Tom Malone, and some other preacher I never even heard of, soon to follow, how will we fare without such great preachers left? My jaw still hurts from when it hit the floor. Man, are these guys still feeding this crap to kids? I have communicated with survivors of the Roloff homes. By my count, 90 percent of them consider their time spent in his homes as one of being abused, belittled, and stunted in their growth and development. Those homes were prison camps. Some of these people have been damaged forever by the trauma. |
But I saw the self-referential eulogizing all the time in the fundies when I was young. Jack Hyles would routinely eulogize men who were sitting on the platform getting ready to preach. And he was eulogized. John R Rice was held up to us; so was Lee Roberson. And BJ Sr.
There was an entire stereo-opticon that you were supposed to look through that saw these men in a hazy glow of holiness, a view that missed the larger picture of all Christian endeavour and actually trained the focus of young people onto these men as the centers of Christianity.
Fundies routinely talked about "staying the course" and "holding the line" and "maintaining the cause of righteousness," even though they embraced so many tangents to the heart of the Gospel that they themselves were trivializing the course, tangling the line, and confusing the definition of righteousness.
While Hyles and the IFBs were out making dress length and hair length cornerstones of Christian holiness, BJU was drawing the attention of millions to itself not for the cause of the Gospel, but because they wouldn't allow inter racial dating. And in the 70's and 80's, an entire generation of Fundamentalist preachers got into "practical preaching" and introduced so many errors into Fundamentalist thinking that it still has not (and perhaps never will) recovered. Theology was left behind. The focus on diligent study of Scripture was abandoned (except at BJU and a few other schools, where there were still intense courses that weeded out pastoral candidates).
Many IFB schools became "practical". But practicality soon turned to "expedience," as we have seen in the bad morals, bad ethics, and bad teachings of places like First Baptist of Hammond and the clown circus that follows Hyles.
Did some of these people do good works? Yes! Were there good people in the hazy idealizing of fundamentalist leaders? Certainly. Were some of the leaders themselves godly men? Yes.
But the problem of myth making is that sooner or later harsh realities enter the myth. Then the believers of the myths have to either cling harder to the unreal world of myth that is comfortable and familiar to them, or they have to go through the trauma of letting go and finding the right view.
I hope that young people will strenuously object to myth making and insist on an academic and theological honesty that keeps the focus firmly on the centrality of Christ leading His people and providing for them. The myth making of my youth in Fundamentalism has cost many people dearly ebcause they became disillusioned. Abandon it now, young person. Men will fail; even good men will fail; Christ will prevail.
