J. Gresham Machen's Reasons for Not Accepting the Label "Fundamentalist"

Below is J. Gresham Machen's position regarding Fundamentalist Protestantism in the late 19th and 20th centuries. In case you don't know Machen, he helped found Westminster Seminary and the Orthodox Presbytarian Church in America, and was an ardent defender of orthodoxy.

"Do you suppose that I do regret my being called by a term that I greatly dislike, a "Fundamentalist"? Most certainly I do. But in the presence of a great common foe, I have little time to be attacking my brethren who stand with me in defense of the Word of God (see note 19)."

What he didn't like was

1) the absence of historical perspective;
2) the lack of appreciation of scholarship;
3) the substitution of brief, skeletal creeds for the historic confessions;
4) the lack of concern with precise formulation of Christian doctrine;
5) the pietistic, perfectionist tendencies (i.e., hang ups with smoking (see note 20), etc.);
6) one-sided other-worldliness (i.e., a lack of effort to transform culture); and
7) a penchant for futuristic chiliasm (or: pre-millenialism).

The full text of this short bio on Machen can be found at:

J. Gresham Machen's Response to Modernism (by John Piper)