Because nothing says “modesty” like playing softball in a pair of wide-legged pants that ride up like crazy when you try to slide into second.
Culottes
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Preacher Boys
Preacher boys occupy the lowest rung on the fundamentalist ministry ladder. Above them are the youth minister, Sunday School superintendent, music minister, associate pastor, senior pastor, and finally, pastor of the church that runs the bible college where the senior pastor got his degree. Below them is everybody else.
There are not many qualifications for being a preacher boy other than having had the call to preach — a mysterious and mystic experience wherein the preacher boy transforms from being one of the regular Joes who merely go to church to being one of the chosen few who get to scrape gum off of the bus seats first thing each Monday morning. The call is also accompanied by an affinity for wearing dark suits, carrying gospel tracts in a front shirt pocket, and begging for chances to preach at every possible opportunity. Since there is no age requirement, anyone from thirteen to ninety-three is welcome to take up the mantle and the gum scraper.
Preaching is, of course, the natural goal of all preacher boys and they do it with vigor at every possible opportunity. Friends, family members, co-workers, and even random people on the street become test audiences for a fledgling preacher’s forrays into the exciting world of crying aloud with a voice like a trumpet. As a last resort groups of preacher boys will even practice preaching at each other, even though they all know that they don’t really need it.
Someday, when the time is right and the door opens, some of these fine young men will actually enter full-time ministry. For the others, there’s always insurance sales. After all, they’ve already got the suits.
Thanks to John for the topic idea.
“Camps”
Fundamentalists eschew denominations preferring to imagine each of their churches as completely separate and independent from every other church. Members often hear the claim that “nobody is going to tell us how to run things around here, amen?” As with most things, it doesn’t really work that way in practice. While fundamentalists do not have denominations, they do have “camps.” These are not the fun and games type of camps, however.
Fundy camps are loosely defined power structures with unwritten charters that revolve around some particular institution or personality. In many ways camps are sort of like gangs but without the hand signs and spray paint. There are even the occasional wars between camps wherein gallons of ink are spilled over things like whether the King James Version is inspired or just a perfect preservation and translation of inspired originals. Casualties are many.
Fundamentalists may belong conference of churches with pastors who all graduated from the same bible school, believe the same things, preach the same way, use the same gestures, and have the same haircut but that doesn’t make them a denomination. There’s nothing like being exactly like everyone else to demonstrate one’s independence.
Alternative Medicine
Evidently, peach pits cure cancer…
Disclaimers
Because of their emphasis on separation, the body of approved source material for fundamentalists is a very small and often changing list. Quite often when a fundamentalist goes to look for a book or sermon on a given topic there just isn’t one by one of the three fundamentalist leaders he’s still on good terms with. This problem has created an extensive taxonomy of disclaimers as fundamentalists attempt to quote experts while maintaining a proper separated distance.
The Anonymous Quote The easiest way to avoid being pinned down to supporting a particular person is just not to name them at all. Pastors use this one all the time. “Someone once wrote…”
The Parenthetical You can slip the warning right into the middle: “I’d like to read this quote by John MacArthur — now we know that John MacArthur is a Calvinist and that you just can’t trust anything he says about salvation, the gospel, or witnessing but I’d like to read this anyway…”
The Vague Warning This is the catch-all warning for when a speaker just doesn’t want to get into it: “Unlike the books written by fundamentalists, you need to read this book with a lot of discernment but there is this one good sentence which reads…”
The Book Label “The contents of this book are not necessarily endorsed by [insert institution name here]. In fact this book may be complete heresy but we keep it in our library anyway in case there is something that really fits well into a sermon illustration someday.”
When you’re separated from everyone it sure does make using a good quote tricky. Imagine a fundamentalist pastor repeating something he read on this blog for example…