Baptist and fundamentalists

[Frankie]

One word of caution. If you do start reading on the UO section, prepare to be confused at the teachings floating around over there. They are not Biblical teachings.

 

[Sinai]

Baptist and fundamentalists
What's the differance?

"Baptist" generally refers to a wide variety of Christian denominations or to being a member of one of those denominations; although some of the beliefs and practices vary from group to group (and even church to church and member to member), as a general rule of thumb Baptists tend to be among the mainstream of Christian denominations regarding their principal doctrinal beliefs, but also have historically considered the Bible to be their sole authority, have insisted that each Christian has the right and responsibility to read and interpret the scripture for himself, and to pray directly to God (without having to go through a priest or pastor). Baptist churches are generally autonomous and their associations with other Baptist churches tend to be strictly voluntary. Thus, the power structure tends to be from the bottom up rather than from from the top down (as is the case in most Christian denominations).

"Fundamentalist" is a term that has a variety of meanings that depend largely upon the context in which it is used. Christian fundamentalism is generally traced back to Milton and Lyman Stewart, who published and distributed 12 small books entitled The Fundamentals: A Testamony of the Truth about 90 years ago. Although the books reasserted the literal inerrancy of the Bible, they emphasized five basic doctrines as absolute essentials for the Christian faith. In other words, they were allegedly setting out those basic or fundamental doctrines with which virtually all Christians could agree. Within a few years, however, the word took on almost an opposite meaning after other people expanded the list to include their own particular beliefs in a number of fringe areas--and then claimed that the list was a litmus test for delineating essentials for qualifying as a "true" Christian. In other words, instead of being a unifying list of those doctrines that virtually all Christians could agree upon, fundamentalism became identified with focusing upon those areas that divide and separate Christians. Nevertheless, no matter which way the term is used, fundamentalism still generally insists upon a "literal interpretation" of scriptures and upon the "inerrancy" of the original texts--though you will find some differences among fundamentalists as to what they mean by those terms.

Although some Baptists are fundamentalists and some fundamentalists are Baptists, the terms are not interchangable.