a brief reply to Rev. Phelps on Sojourn

After talking with a few other people about Stephen George's article on Sojourn in LEO-- and Rev. Joe Phelps contribution to it-- I decided to write Cary Stemle a letter about it. Hopefully, this will be published in LEO next week. (Update: it was...)
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I really enjoyed Stephen George’s article on Sojourn. He obviously took great pains (and perhaps endured some pain) to be thorough and as objective as possible. I appreciate that he covered the various facets of Sojourn’s activity and wrestled faithfully with Sojourn’s theology and its approach to a wide variety of sins.

The only disappointments were the quotes from Rev. Joe Phelps. As an insider, Joe is in a position to understand the nuance inherent in such discussions. And yet, he insisted on describing Sojourn as “fundamentalists”—as if anyone who disagrees with him should be stuck in that box and as if those in that (false) box are equivalent. Whatever one thinks of Sojourn, it is clear that they are not at all equivalent to what all of us understand to be a “fundamentalist” approach to matters religious, scientific, or otherwise. For Phelps to obliterate that line and, ironically, to feed prejudices and intolerance, is highly regrettable.
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I didn't mention this in the letter, but another irony is that Joe shares a last name with Fred.