“I’m a fundamentalist Christian, but I am happy to have Muslims, Jews, liberal Christians and non-religious types in our government.”
For those who might not know, Dever started the 9Marks movement and was, in his day, what we used to call a “mover and shaker.” He’s not taken as some dimwit from Podunk, NY, though the above words testify to just the opposite.Where to start?
1.) Dever obviously isn’t smart enough to realize that there is no such thing as “non-religious” types. Of course there are those who claim to be non-religious but the claim and the reality are separated by a vast chasm.
2.) All Dever has told the reader with the above quote is that his “fundamentalism” is of a liberal variety. In other words Dever is a “Liberal fundamentalist.”
3.) Of course Dever is a Baptist and being Baptist the quote should not surprise us.
4.) Dever here communicates that he is for societal pluralism. Societal Pluralism is a nice way of saying “polytheism.” Dever, in the quote above states he is a polytheist. We wants to invite all the gods and their adherents into the public square.
5.) Although he doesn’t say it, we presume that Dever would also be fine with Biblical Christians being in the government. On the other hand he might not be, since a Biblical Christian would oppose “Muslims, Jews, liberal Christians and non-religious types in our government.”
6.) This Dever quote goes a long way towards proving my contention that “fundamentalist” is an inescapable category. Everyone you meet is a fundamentalist of one stripe or another. I am a Classical-Historical Calvinist fundamentalist. Illhan Omar and Zohar Mamdani are Muslim fundamentalists. Bibi Netanyahu, Bill Clinton, and Jeffrey Epstein were or are NWO fundamentalists. I never meet someone who is not a fundamentalist.
7.) However, Dever certainly is no fundamentalist Christian, though he may well be a “fundamentalist” “Christian.”
8.) Dever thinks he is being broad minded here but Dever’s statement really betrays a very narrow-minded approach. Dever is perfectly fine with any liberal system that embraces pluralism until someone shows up and says to Mr. Broadminded Dever … “Would you mind too terribly much including in your pluralism my view that abominates pluralism?” So, Dever is pluralistic just so long as what is not included in his pantheon of gods is a God who says, “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.” At that point Dever’s pluralism ends. He owns the god who teaches that all gods in the public square is fine except for any God who says all other gods have to go.
9.) When it is the case that one has Muslims, Jews, Liberal Christians, and “non-religious types” in one and the same government where does one find the ultimate transcendent reference point needed to rule? I mean, all the gods of all these people oppose one another. Given that opposition what ground does the government operate upon in order to make law? The Bible? The Talmud? Sharia? Humanist Manifestos?
I don’t think Dever and other’s like him have thought this through.
10.) Rev. Dr. Dever is not a wise man — and that regardless of how many degrees he has behind his name.
Thank you for the Odgen link. They got into quite a bit of trouble recently by intentionally saying on a podcast they wouldn’t recommend membership for a black person unless they knew he had sworn off black culture, but I haven’t heard them address kinism recently. They needed an entire podcast about the black issue to clear up their initial statement, and I didn’t think they backed down. But their recent black talk might be cultural, not kinist.
Regarding Dever, based on the conversation I shared here previously, about getting heavy push against me for not wanting our Christian holidays replaced with multiculti one-world order ones, I think I can square the circle of your questions and his ability to bypass them.
It’s the R2K mind virus you often write about. His piety requires him to say the things he does. He’d be going against his conscience and eating meat to idols in his mind if he said to expel the foreigners, except as visitors.
Like the professor I talked with, Dever might see no basis for any government in the Bible. So, if I’m right, then hopefully he’s said somewhere – “I don’t care if all the Christians are being jailed and tortured with zero homes and freedoms because all that matters is our faithfulness and the rest is in God’s hands and I believe that’s how the Bible instructs people to live.”
Is that possible he thinks that way, but isn’t aware enough to know it?
Hello Kurt,
Baptists tend to think that way just in being Baptist. Baptists have historically believed in hard separation between church and state.
Indeed, many have said that R2K is the Baptistification of the Reformed faith.
Thank you for being around here Kurt,
Bret
Here’s a post by Zach Garris, who is responding to DG Hart. Hart’s position is the exact same as the one the professor in my church holds.
“Zach: D. G. Hart in his review of Baird’s book makes a mistake regarding the New Testament:
DG Hart: “Unlike the Old Testament’s divine right monarchy, the New Testament presents a people, persevering and waiting for the return of their Lord. The only political instruction they receive is to honor the emperor, a Roman official who sometimes persecuted and killed Christians.”
Zach, “On the contrary, the New Testament gives us the political instruction that God desires political rulers (“kings and all who are in authority”) to be Christian (“to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”) because this will help the church practice “godliness and dignity.” The New Testament therefore instructs Christians to offer “prayers” to this end (1 Timothy 2:1-4)”
Another contradiction I’m noticing is that the tendency of PCA folks I know is to shame me out of conversation by saying I’m out of my lane, ie, work on myself and either run for office or don’t think or pay attention to anything. However, they say nothing about public schools being out of their lane. That’s a bit amazing, making mini-Marxists and white-haters is okay, but me saying the schools are Marxist is not.
Why is gatekeeping the church more important than fighting the wolves attacking it?
That reminds me, a couple of years ago, my pastor went also short aside warning us passionately about deconstructionists. But he didn’t name names for examples. It made me think of Bush’s war on terrorism that never named Islam. It’s like a shepard saying to watch out for canines but never telling the sheep the differences between wolves and golden retrievers. “War against canines.”