REFORMING FUNDAMENTALISM  
Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism
George M. Marsden  
Published by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Grand Rapids, MI

The sub-title of this book is “Fuller Seminary and the New Evangelicalism.”  It as an appropriate title.  Fuller Seminary is one of the flag-ship institutions of the New Evangelicalism. It is the New Evangelical Seminary.  Fuller sets the philosophical tone and provides the intellectual leadership for the movement.  While the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association involves the masses in the movement, and while Christianity Today disseminates its propaganda, it is Fuller that trains its cadres.  And it is Fuller professors that write the papers and author the books that drive the ideology of the movement.   

Marsden is a church historian who used to be a professor at Calvin College and currently teaches at Notre Dame.  Obviously, he is no therefore no fundamentalist and is quite comfortable with the New Evangelicalism especially its ecumenical side and its cooperation with Catholicism.  However, he is a competent historian and was asked by Fuller to write its official history.  He accepted based upon having total editorial control and had full access to their records and their personnel.  So this history is somewhat friendly and the data is as they say, “straight from the horses mouth.”  This makes the book extremely valuable and all the more “damning” as it documents the compromise, confusion, and apostasy at Fuller.   

As the title indicates Fuller’s founding objective was to reform Fundamentalism, the Old Evangelicalism, into something new.  What they created is what we now call the New Evangelicalism.  Rejecting the separatist position of the former it scorned any line drawn in the sand between belief and unbelief, between the faithful and the apostates.  Marsden documents the extreme lengths to which the institution went to obtain the blessing of the mainline liberal denominations on their school.  He documents the internal struggles over defining this new movement that was to be neither fish nor fowl and was to straddle the middle with a foot in either camp.  He then documents the futility of this balancing act and the progressive slide into theological liberalism especially noticing Fuller’s retreat from the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy.  This is substantiated not only by the history but by an interesting appendix statistically demonstrating the progressive theological liberalism of Fuller graduates on such issues as inerrancy, abortion, extra-marital sex, feminism, etc.   

Marsden’s history clearly shows that what was driving Fuller was never loyalty to Scripture but a passion for numbers, for acceptance by the world, and for intellectual respectability in the secular academic community.  He shows their successes, such as becoming a mega-seminary with many thousands of students and having mainline secular publishers accept manuscripts from their professors etc.  He also shows the price that was paid to achieve these unbiblical objectives.  He notes the acceptance of Catholics and Charismatics to drive up the numbers and the persistent attacks on the Old Evangelicalism to ingratiate themselves with the ecumenical movement and the worldly culture that they were trying to impress.   

This is an extremely valuable Book.  It defines the New Evangelicalism from the inside as no external critic could do.  It removes this definition from the arena of dispute and controversy and makes the philosophical, theological, and practical compromises of the movement a matter not only of historical record, but a matter of as how the movement consciously defines itself.  If you want to study the New Evangelicalism, its history and its influence in America, this book is good place to start.