This just in: we are all irrelevant.

Have enough conversations with those fundamentalists who read SFL today and you’ll hear that we here are all firmly rooted in the past. All these things written and discussed may have been true three decades ago but today’s Independent Baptists are much more sophisticated — except for when they aren’t. This blog, we’re told, is nothing but an echo chamber for malcontents.

We’re bitter. We’re angry. We don’t realize that their camp of fundamentalism has nothing like the things written here. Except, of course, the things that are. But most of the time they’re nothing like the fringe lunatics featured here. You know, those crazies from the likes of BJU, PCC, Hyles, Fairhaven, Crown, WCBC, Sword of the Lord, that institute run by Ruckman are all just on the fringes. Sure, they have groups in from all those colleges, and they read their newsletters, and they buy those textbooks for their schools but they’re nothing like them. Nothing at all. Mainstream fundamentalism apparently consists of “my church.”

Even these detractors will admit that maybe once in a while something said here in a post or comment does hit home for their church or school. This only serves to prove that SFL is out of material to discuss if they’ve left poking fun at the crazy fundamentalists and are now attacking perfectly reasonable, well-balanced, and not at all insane churches full of people who may look like those other people, and hold to the same standards, and speak at the same conferences, and glorify the same heroes but are NOT AT ALL like those fringe fundies you read about here every week.

Denial is a beautiful thing.