The term “fundamentalist” sets off all sorts of warning bells with people. It conjures up images of angry, rigid, and uneducated religious fanatics or suicidal terrorists.

In either case, the imagery is not becoming.

In a recent article in The Savannah Morning News, newly-elected Bishop Scott Benhase declared his belief in a “different way of being Christian,” which would offer a path of avoiding being either “virulent fundamentalists” or “cultured despisers of religion”……Historically, however, the term comes from a series of scholarly articles, written (in part) by several faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary.

Published prior to World War I, The Fundamentals covered the authority and inspiration of Holy Scripture, the Virgin Birth and Deity of Jesus, the substitutionary nature of Jesus’ crucifixion, His bodily resurrection, and the reality of His second coming. These foundational truths of the Historic Faith were considered to be eroding in American culture and The Fundamentals were written to reaffirm such essential truths in the face of a more eclectic religion posing as Christianity.

One of the champions of such “fundamentals,” Professor J. Gresham Machen, professor at Princeton Seminary in the 1920’s, recognized this “different way of being Christian” as something dangerous and misleading: “It proceeds from a totally different root, and it constitutes, in essentials, a unitary system of its own…It differs from Christianity in its view of God, of man, of the seat of authority and the way of salvation.”

From a cultural point of view, we are again at a crossroad where true faith in the fundamentals of Christianity is under fire. The Gospel message entrusted to Wesley and Whitefield by their predecessors and faithfully passed along to us is now competing against a host of religions which are more reflective of the relativistic culture surrounding us than the Gospel and its claim to ultimate truth and divine authority.

We are exposed to books, films, lessons and lectures that cut Christianity out of the realm of truth and fact and paste it into the realm of opinion and preference where it poses no “threat” to our personal values. Now, rather than creatures of the Living God striving to walk in the light of the Truth He has revealed to us, we are consumers at a philosophical and religious smorgasbord, and our personal authority to choose the religion or mix of religions we want has become an idol worshipped by many.

What Bishop Benhase claims as a “different way of being Christian” is not so different or new after all, with roots going back over a century. Such a “different” way may be alluring at first glance, but it is radically different from historic Christianity.

Marcus B. (Marc) Robertson is rector of Christ Church, Anglican in Savannah, Georgia. This letter first appeared in the online version of the Savannah Morning News.

For more, read here.

The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of The Aquila Report.