By this definition, one could take the statement “come out from among them, and be separate”, and impute a motive of “fear” to that. I mean, in one sense of the term, I have no difficulty admitting that I fear liberal theology: it is a system of lies built upon a disregard for the truth of the Word of God, and if you want to label a healthy concern that people are not swallowed up by it as “fear”, then so be it. In that respect, though, and using that definition of “fear”, wouldn’t anyone operate with some level of “fear” in their lives?

Doesn’t Kate Michelman operate out of fear that Roe will be overturned? Doesn’t Rick Warren evangelize because he “fears” people going to hell? Pick just about anyone who holds dearly to anything, and I can make the case that that person “fears” something…and so can you.

For Rick to put it as this column quotes it, though, suggests that the primary, driving motive behind those who hold to what might be termed “fundamentalist” beliefs is fear. Sorry, but that is just out of line.

One thing that I’ve realized about how we evangelicals operate is that it is very often out of fear. I think Warren is saying that we feared AIDS, and so we refused to do a whole lot about it. I’ve seen it in a number of ways: We feared liberalism, so we separated from academia and started our own institutions. We feared American culture, so we set up legalistic rules about what we could and could not do. We feared new ideas, so we labeled anything from outside our evangelical tradition as heretical and not worthy of a listen. This may be something that is in your own past, Byron, for you often admit that you were different in your old “fundy days.” As much as we think we’ve progressed as evangelicals, our fundy past still holds onto us in various and subtle ways, and to deny it is to not be honest with ourselves.
Warren is just articulating what we all have said to ourselves on a number of occasions.