FundamentalDan
Dan was a graduate of Oklahoma Baptist College (big Jim Vineyard) and was making his exit from that form of fundamentalism. He was very contemplative and if I remember correctly, he had his own blog where he wrote of the problems within OBC/HAC/Funnymentalism.
At the time that he was participating on the forum I was a bit defensive of that brand of fundamentalism and I did not know his identity. I discovered who he was sometime later after he had written and participated on the forum fairly extensively. It turns out that Dan had been in the OBC singing group (The Ambassadors) who toured throughout the summer, and we had hosted him and the other members in our home on a stop at our church.
As we hosted them that evening, we had lots of fun talking to him, shooting pool, and getting to know those young men who were to be Christian ministers in training. In the course of conversation one of the boys from the group confessed to us that while he had been touring as an ideal representative of the college, that he had tremendous anxiety, because he was hiding a secret, he knew that he was not even saved. It was an eye-opener for me because he had been raised in a Christian home, son of a deacon, attending a fundamentalist Christian college, but he didn’t know the saving grace and transformative work of the gospel of Christ. Can you imagine the guilt and hypocrisy he must’ve felt? It reminded me of a “rip your face off” type of sermon that I had heard from Jeff Owens, titled “Don’t go to Hell from Hyles Anderson College”, which was basically a severe warning to not live an outward life of Christianity, going about doing good, living a pretend Christian life, and then dying and going to hell.
Anyway, sorry about the trip down memory lane, but I wonder what Dan is up to today.