For those folks who just consider the Christian flag to be too ecumenical there is now the Baptist Flag
There’s even a pledge to it:
I pledge allegiance to the Baptist Flag, And to the Faith once delivered unto the Saints. I will ever remain faithful to the tie that binds us together, The Book, the Blood, and the Blessed Hope of our Lord’s soon coming.
Onward, Baptist Soldiers!
Today marks post #100 on this blog. Thanks to everyone who has had an encouraging word for me as I write these little bits of nonsense.
If you have suggestions for topics you’d like to see written about on here, send them along to stuffundieslike@gmail.com and I’ll be sure to put them on my list of ideas.
Also feel free to send pictures, cards, letter, large sacks filled with small unmarked bills, or whatever.
There’s still so much more to talk about. Onwards…
As a result of living outside of popular culture, fundamentalist preachers often end up preaching against a lot of obscure and outdated things. Lyrics from popular bands may not be as shocking as the ones from some little known death metal band named the Flaming Satan’s Army of Human Sacrifice so inevitably the latter’s songs will be the ones quoted. As an unintended consequence, many teenagers also find a lot of new music this way that they would otherwise have never heard about.
There are also the sermons against Mohawk haircuts, Baywatch, Vanilla Ice, and a host of other things that have long since passed their prime as pet sins. And it’s not just preachers that tend to form their standards from bygone times. Fundy colleges and schools will make new rules to combat fleeting fads and enshrine them in their rulebooks, leaving students years later scratching their heads and asking “what are pegged pants?”
The good news is that if the worldly ways of years ago happen to come back into vogue, fundamentalists preachers will already be preaching against them.
If a fundamentalist church is of any size at all they will inevitably have a choir of consisting of at least fourteen women and no more than six men. It is possible in smaller churches for the choir to outnumber the rest of the congregation.
Most fundamentalist choirs don’t have a professional director. The guy with the title Music Director usually spends the bulk of his time teaching 5th grade science at the Christian school and cleaning the church bathrooms. They also lack expensive sound equipment, choir robes, and auditions. All that is required to join the choir is a healthy pair of lung and the desire to make a joyful noise. Professionals who think they know better than the choir director and keep whining about things like musical pitch and meter need not apply.
In addition to singing at weekly services the Fundamental Baptist choir is also responsible for the yearly Christmas cantata, Easter cantata, God and Country Sunday, and special music at revivals. The miracle is that they do it all on thirty minutes of practice before the Sunday evening service. It’s a good thing that fundamentalists don’t believe in singing too much new music.
Break out the song books and fire up the organ. As they say in southern churches, “Y’all pray for us now, we ain’t practiced much.”
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…