Musings about Fundamentalism
Hengroen
What is Christian Fundamentalism?
Fundamentalism is a term popularly used to describe strict adherence to
Christian doctrines based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. This
usage derives from a late-19th- and early-20th-century transdenominational
Protestant movement that opposed the accommodation of Christian doctrine
to modern scientific theory and philosophy.
Note this page has been updated/revised February 12, 2003.
Click here for the previous version.
Are Christian fundamentalists just raving, Bible-thumping fanatics? The
answer for many is no. In fact, they are a very diverse and often divided
group. Here I will try to dispel myths and take up where the above
dictionary definition leaves off. Let's look at some of the many issues
surrounding "fundamentalism" as it is today.
I will strongly note here that "fundamentalism" as used here is a
political and social movement. This is not to question Jesus or the Bible.
Two-thirds of born again Christians reject the intolerance, bigotry, and
social politics of groups often affiliated with the Religious Right.
Liberals, often hostile to all Christian beliefs, also distort the issue
by an over emphasis on the small number of extremists and fanatics. This
website defines "religious fundamentalism" of all kinds as political and
social, not religious.
Don't think for one minute these are a bunch illiterate rednecks, they
aren't. Their main activists are rich, white, most are "baby-boomers, and
their agenda is power and money. Their leadership is college educated and
not a bunch of country bumpkins. See chart below
In the 18th century the Enlightenment and Evangelical revivals would
moderate each other. By the 1870's until today, fundamentalist
Protestantism would be at war with both modern science and personal
liberty. (Modernism) Today fundamentalists make up about 20 percent of the
American population. Most are law-abiding citizens but about one-fourth
(5% of the population) belong to assorted fringe churches and operate a
kind of low-level terrorism such as attacks on abortion clinics, racism
and anti-Semitism, the militia movements, etc. They are obsessed with
conspiracy theories claiming Jews, Freemasons, Satan, etc. control America
and an apocalypse due any day.
The five "fundamentals" of Christian belief that were enumerated in a
series of 12 paperback volumes containing scholarly essays on the Bible
that appeared between 1910 and 1915, entitled The Fundamentals. Those
included:
1. Biblical inerrancy
2. The divinity of Jesus
3. The Virgin Birth
4. The belief that Jesus died to redeem humankind
5. An expectation of the Second Coming, or physical return, of Jesus
Christ to initiate his thousand-year rule of the Earth, which came to be
known as the Millennium.
1) A strong emphasis on the inerrancy of the Bible;
2) a strong hostility to modern theology and to the methods, results and
implications of modern critical study of the Bible, and
3) an assurance that those who do not share their religious viewpoint are
not really "true Christians"
They also believe in "six-day" Creationism, the doctrine that the universe
was created only a few thousand years ago, rather than the billions
claimed by modern science, and that God created man and woman and all the
species outright, rather than by a process of evolution. Also included is
the belief that only King James Version Bible of 1611 is the only correct
text.
Christians who clung to the old belief that every word of the Bible was
literally true -- called biblical inerrancy, claim only the belief, they
do not follow or live by the rules or teachings of Jesus. The Protestant
belief of "faith alone" which Calvin and Luther took from Saint Augustine,
makes all of that at best optional or morality of any kind, irrelevant.
The only things they really see as "sin" is, matters of sex, not following
their religious teaching teachings, and questioning authority.
Because Calvin, Luther, and Augustine all see humans as "depraved" and
"born into sin" produces a very negative outlook on humanity. Also their
idea of the "elect" creates an attitude that they are somehow "chosen"
above all others. This puts them at odds with "mainline" or liberal
Protestant churches that reject the Augustinian notions of human
depravity.
Fundamentalists trace their roots back to the N.T., but fundamentalism
really arises at the end of the 19th century. They see themselves as
"keepers of both the Christian heritage of the first century and the
American heritage of the Puritans and the Founding Fathers," though; the
sense of religious mission associated with the Puritans disappeared even
before the American Revolution. They will quote Puritans this and that as
the foundation of America, but the Puritans founded some backwater English
colonies, not the United States of America.
In fact Protestantism had been undergoing massive changes prior to the
American Revolution and continues to change to this day. The majority of
Americans in 1776 (if we exclude Indians and Catholics) were Protestant,
forming a "Protestant empire." The first and second "Great Awakenings"
seemed to insure the role of Evangelism in America. Those days are what
fundamentalists long for. Yet even before the American Revolution, the
European Enlightenment had made inroads into Protestantism.
Fundamentalists have a loathing of democracy when it applies equally to
others. One bitter fundamentalist had this to say, "democracy is the cause
of all world problems...humans are under the law of God, and thus they
CANNOT do anything they want or speak anything they wish to
speak...democracy ultimately started with Satan...we can't rule ourselves.
God must rule us...those who actually set up America, and drew up the laws
were people who did not favor Christianity. Christians living during that
time disagreed with those in power or rather the founding fathers. They
saw them as ultra liberals, and of course, they were."
The American Revolution was a conservative revolution unlike the violent
French Revolution that set the stage for fascism and communism. The
American founders sought liberty and freedom of conscience within the
framework of the established society. They knew issues such as slavery and
the status of women couldn't be resolved in their time, so they left a way
open for later changes. They emphasized individualism, which already
existed within Protestant culture to begin with.
The French Revolution sought immediate change by the use of force to
destroy the entire culture and society of France. (Communism would borrow
from this model.) In Catholic France there was no real sense of
individualism as in Protestantism nor did they have the earlier, far less
bloody English Revolution to build on.
But it was a belief in God that did guide the Founding Fathers, but not
the raving bible-god of Augustine and Calvin. To quote: "Jefferson and
other founders were Deists, believing in a universal God and a scientific
universe. Since their writings constitute the legal foundation of the
government, it is worth noting what they wrote and from where they derived
their principles: Natural Law. Drawing from Locke, the Declaration of
Independence grounds its legitimacy in the people; but why are the people
the ultimate authority? Because "they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights" and institute governments to secure these
rights.
In some ways the Civil War broke the back of Protestant America. With
thousands dead and one-third of the country in ruins, changes began to
occur to form a modern industrial state. Quoting Nancy Ammerman:
Science, technology, and business were taking over where tradition, prayer
and faith had left off, streams of European immigrants arriving with
Catholic and Jewish traditions, and religious pluralism was becoming a
fact of American life.
"Old assumptions (mostly Protestant) were replaced by new dogmas of
industrialism, historicism, and secularism...Religion gradually became
compartmentalized in the private, family, and leisure spheres, leaving
political, scientific, and economic affairs to the secular experts."
In the human sciences, psychology and sociology began to question the
nature of human responsibility, destiny, and free will. In the natural
sciences, Charles Darwin's ideas began to change the way scholars viewed
the physical universe. While evolution in no way disproves God, it does
disprove a particular fundamentalist' view of creation. The claims of
Six-Day Creationism are the largest single problem they have because it's
so discredited in every major scientific field. In the process they
discredit the entire faith.
In theology, scholars began to analyze biblical material as if it were
ordinary ancient literature that reported events that might also be
explained in natural, human terms. This included a shift in public
education from church dominated curriculum to one that prepared students
for an industrialized and democratic society.
While fundamentalism is a reaction against modernism, it also adopted all
kinds of new beliefs and practices. Most of these churches have been
infiltrated by non-Christian modern theology themselves such as Christian
Identity and Christian Reconstructionism. Much of this is loaded with the
occult, racism and anti-Semitism. Christian Identity in particular is
dangerous due to its apocalyptic theology that creates a mindset of
paranoia and ease of infiltration into churches.
19th Century Beginnings
The tent revival was the mainstay of many early wondering evangelists and
is still with us today. In a way these became sideshows competing for the
time (and contributions) of small town and frontier farms all across a
growing America. Starting about 1830 a great backlash against education
and scholarship in many churches began and continues to this day. Many of
America's cult churches began here.
Many of these preachers were at best semi-literate who rejected most
mainstream churches and education in general. They tended to rely on the
fallacy of the Bible being the only source of inspiration and preached
their own opinions. This is how we got so many new cults/churches of
today. In this way anything could be łthe word of God.˛
The rise of modern Premillennialism (end-times theology) is common to a
variety of religious splinter groups: the Plymouth Brethren (developed
Dispensationalism), the Millerites (became the Adventists), Mormons,
Jehovah's Witnesses, and Pentecostals. This nonsense has infiltrated many
Baptist/other churches as well.
Most of these churches try to discredit historic Christianity by claiming
that all the prominent commentaries, all the church fathers, and even the
Reformers (Luther, Calvin, Knox, etc.) were deluded by "man-made
doctrines." New revelation" is claimed and their leaders even claimed to
have received "new truth" or at other times "rediscovered truth" that had
been lost since the apostles. Enthusiasm was whipped up on the false
pretense that Christ's coming was imminent. Frequent false predictions did
not seem to deter this enthusiasm.
See Christian Confusion and End Times Nonsense
Dispensational Premillennialism was marketed the same way as the cult-like
groups. For these groups the only Scriptures addressed specifically to
Christians were the gospel of John, Acts, and the Epistles and Book of
Revelation. Their moral code is that of the most brutal sections of the
Old Testament and the Ten Commandments. One will hear "born again" (John)
endlessly but little relevance is paid at all to the other Gospels of
Matthew, Mark, and Luke that contain the core of Jesus' most important
moral teachings. The moral teachings of Jesus thus become optional thus
fundamentalists believe they are saved and their personal conduct, no
matter how un-Christian, is forgiven. This "faith alone" nonsense is
salvation for nothing. They construct God in their own image.
It should also be noted that these cult/splinter churches all hold
Catholics and mainline Protestant churches as "spirits of the Antichrist."
(Pat Robertson) Most of their claims are totally non-Biblical such as
"secret rapture" and the word "rapture" isn't even in the KJV Bible at
all. What they really preach is their own politics and the occult. I do
not consider these churches Protestant (they are separate sects) and
really question if they are Christian at all. All of their leaders such as
Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, etc. have no recognized
credentials as theologians. Yet the damage they do to the emotional well
being of others can't be calculated.
This occult nonsense comes through leaders such men as A. T. Pierson, A.
J. Gordon, and C. I. Scofield (Scofield Bible) to A. C. Dixon and Reuben
Torrey, William Jennings BRYAN, and J. Gresham Machen.
Make no mistake, their stated purpose is to impose, with force if
necessary, a theocracy and eliminate all modern scientific theory and
social philosophy. This means entire scientific fields and research would
be banned, restricted, or curtailed. All civil law as we know it today
would be replaced by Biblical Law based mainly on the most brutal sections
of the Old Testament. Even many Christian churches would be banned for
their lack of "Christian correctness."
The potentially lethal mix of politics, religious bigotry, and the belief
in non-Biblical dispensationalism is a menace to our free society. This
was behind the Y2K fiasco that had fundamentalist preachers wiping egg off
their faces. This along with their social structure is why Christian
Fundamentalists are cults.
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