The Surprising Truth About Christian Fundamentalism
In the September 9, 2010 issue of The Christian Century magazine, Quaker author Parker J. Palmer warns about putting too much trust, or at least the wrong kind of trust, in church doctrines and customs. “All of our propositions and practices,” he reminds us, “are earthen vessels. All of them are made by human beings of common clay to hold whatever we think we’ve found in our soul-deep quest for the sacred or in its quest for us.”
“If our containers prove too crimped and cramped to hold the treasure well, if they domesticate the sacred and keep us from having a live encounter with it—or if they prove so twisted and deformed that they defile rather than honor the treasure they were intended to hold—then our containers must be smashed and discarded so we can create a larger and more life-giving vessel in which to hold the treasure.”
Iconoclasm can be a good thing
“Doing that is called iconoclasm,” Palmer explains. Then he says something that I wish all Christians would take to heart: that iconoclasm sometimes needs to be done and that it is a good thing when it is done at those times. “Failing to do that,” he continues, “is called idolatry, which is always a bad thing. So even in the church, we need to commit conceptual suicide again and again—if we are serious about the vastness of the treasure in comparison to our flawed and finite words.”
“When people of any religion insist that the treasure cannot be carried except in their earthen vessels,” Parker Palmer observes, “they get into serious trouble—with themselves, with others, with the world and, I suspect, with God. ... Why do we do it? Because we are afraid. And what we are afraid of more than anything else, I think, is what might happen to us—what demands might be made on our lives—if we set the sacred loose, free it from domestication, and release it back into the wild.”
An illusion that dies hard
“Of course, we can never imprison the sacred,” Palmer reminds us. “But the illusion that we can dies hard.” The challenge, he finds, is to hold on to the paradox of needing the vessels but needing to stay detached from them. “The vessels deserve our respect,” he assures us, “because they enable us to preserve the treasure over time and pass it back and forth among us. But if we become attached to the vessel in ways that obscure the treasure, we must discard the vessel and create one that reveals more than it conceals.”
“If we fail or refuse to do that, we are failing to respect the treasure, which is not our possession to have and to hold; it is the love and the power that has and holds us. To forget that fact or defy it is the ultimate disrespect, and it leads not to life but to death, for individuals, for religious communities and for the world.”
Vessels that need replacing
Many of today’s Christians and adherents of other major world religions seem to be failing to respect the treasure by promoting fundamentalist interpretations of their religions. These interpretations are preserving some vessels that urgently need to be replaced with others, in order to reveal the religions’ treasures more clearly and to stop doing harm.
A short, free, easy-to-read book that can help Christians think about some familiar vessels that now distort the treasure is Fundamentalism: The Challenge to the Secular World. It’s by New Zealand Presbyterian minister and theologian Lloyd Geering. The complete book is available free at www.religion-online.org. It describes the origins, content, and dangers of Christian fundamentalism and also touches on the other religious fundamentalisms that fill today’s news.
Theologian Lloyd Geering points out that fundamentalism, while appealing to the past, is actually a new and modern religious phenomenon that does not faithfully represent the faiths in the way it claims to. It distorts genuine religious faith. Here’s how he describes the chief features of religious fundamentalism:
It rejects the human freedoms which have opened up in the aftermath of the western Enlightenment. It is committed to combat secular humanism and all other aspects of the modern world that it regards as injurious to the spiritual condition of humankind.
It asserts that humans must submit to the authority of the Divine Being, whose truths and absolute commands have been permanently revealed, in the Torah for the Jew, the Bible for the Christian, and in the Qur’an for the Muslim.
It leads people to think in black and white. It recognizes little uncertainty and no area for debate and dialogue.
It distrusts human reason. It is wary of democracy and the assertion of human rights. It does not enter into open dialogue but dogmatically proclaims. It favors strong male, charismatic leadership, both in religion and in society.
It seeks to exercise control by establishing theocratic societies that conform to divinely revealed absolutes
Christian fundamentalism is recent
Geering explains that the term fundamentalism, as it is currently used, derives not from early Christianity but rather from a series of twelve booklets published between 1909 and 1915. By the courtesy of two oil millionaires in the U.S., Geering tells us, about three million of these booklets were distributed free to every minister and Sunday School superintendent in America. They were intended to counter the spread of liberal religious thought in the churches of America, which the booklets’ authors and publishers said were undermining what they claimed were eternal Christian truths—“the fundamentals.”
The booklets reaffirmed what their writers considered the fundamental and unchangeable doctrines of Christianity: the infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, miracles, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the substitutionary atonement theory that says the sinless Jesus was killed as a substitute for sinful humans, saving them from going to the hell they deserve. But actually, Lloyd Geering explains, “the booklets expounded a rather narrow form of Protestantism, which was far from constituting the beliefs common to all Christians.”
An effort to condemn Darwin’s theory
“They were chiefly concerned,” Geering finds, “to condemn the new biblical criticism and the Darwinian theory of evolution.” The booklets gave rise to the term “fundamentalist,” which was coined by a Baptist journalist in 1920. But soon, Geering tells us, liberals started using this term, which its originators had meant to be worn as a badge of honor, as a synonym for blind ignorance and obscurantism. This usage began because the fundamentalists were rejecting what was fast becoming common knowledge, based on scientific evidence.
After the Scopes trial in 1925, in which a teacher was convicted for teaching biological evolution, fierce theological battles broke out between the fundamentalists and the liberals in seminaries and churches. With the added publicity furnished by the trial, the term “fundamentalist,” which had started as the name of a Christian phenomenon in America, began to spread throughout the world. The fact that it pointed to something that was not confined to the Christian West became increasingly apparent.
A church divided into three groups
In the year of the Scopes trial, Kirsopp Lake, an internationally known New Testament scholar, wrote that the denominational divisions of the church had become obsolete. He saw the real divisions cutting across denominations, dividing them into three groups.
Fundamentalists, who Lake saw as strong in conviction but spiritually arrogant and intellectually ignorant.
Experimentalists or Radicals, who were willing to shed all of the inherited and supposedly unchangeable dogmas in order to explore fresh expressions of Christian faith that they thought would be more relevant to the new cultural and intellectual climate.
Institutionalists, or Liberals, who constituted the main body of the church and opted for a middle way, clinging to a watered-down version of the traditional dogmas.
A church shrinking from left to right
Then, Lloyd Geering points out, Lake made a striking prophecy. “The fundamentalists will eventually triumph,” he predicted. “They will drive the Experimentalists out of the churches and then reabsorb the Institutionalists, who, under pressure, will become more orthodox. ... The Church will shrink from left to right.”
Geering sees this prediction generally describing the state of the mainline churches today. “It is the liberal wing of the mainline churches,” he sees, “which finds itself in the minority. This is because many of the liberals have been disengaging themselves from the institutional church since it showed so little sign of changing, leaving the conservatives in the majority.”
A powerful force with deep roots
Fundamentalism, says Geering, is now a powerful force with deep roots. He compares it to the iceberg that sank the Titanic. In 1900, he observes, the Christian world of the West entered the new century with highly optimistic hopes of where modern science coupled with an ever more liberal Christianity was leading. But wars and other disasters in the nations of Christendom soon strengthened fundamentalists’ convictions that Christianity had lost its way. As a result, they resolved to go on the offensive against modernism. And still today, Lloyd Geering explains, “That is the motivation which lies behind fundamentalism.”
Geering points out that fundamentalism is not one movement but a collection of movements. Some are bitterly opposed to each other, but they have a common enemy, he sees, “and it is that which leads us to the heart of all religious fundamentalism. It believes the modern secular and humanistic world is the enemy of religion and hence injurious to humankind.” As a result, fundamentalisms have launched a war on that enemy, and, Geering warns, “it is a serious error of judgment to dismiss fundamentalists in any cavalier fashion.”
A second Axial Age
The world that fundamentalists see as their enemy, Lloyd Geering points out, has emerged in large part because of the knowledge explosion. A similar period of sudden cultural change, now called the Axial Age, gave rise to the great world religions, in the few hundred years before and after 500 BCE. Geering sees it as having subordinated ethnic cultures to religious supercultures. Now, he finds, “the Second Axial Period is subordinating the religious supercultures to a new and still emerging culture. This culture does not look to supernatural causes but to natural causes. It is not religious in the traditional way but humanistic. It is secular in the sense that it focuses on this world and this time.”
The Second Axial Age is our age. It began with the 18th-century Enlightenment, when belief in a personal God started being replaced by belief in an impersonal first cause. Dependence on human endeavor and discovery and human religious experience started lessening dependence on divine revelation. Religion started being seen as practical service to others. As a result, Geering tells us, the people who would soon become known as fundamentalists became very afraid, because they started seeing that what they saw as timeless truth might not be true.
This fright is leading today’s religious fundamentalists to try to stifle, shun, oust, or even kill those who don’t share their views. It’s leading them to try to keep women veiled or at least submissive to men. In the U.S., it’s leading them to try to preserve “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military. It’s leading them to claim that President Obama is a Muslim and was not born in the U.S. In the church, it’s leading them to try to keep homosexuals out of the ordained ministry, and to insist that Christianity is the only route to God and heaven.
These behaviors are based on beliefs that aren’t fundamentals of Christianity. Some of them actually contradict the essence of Jesus’s teaching. They’re vessels that won’t hold water or treasure.[1]
Different from traditional conservatism
In Fundamentalisms Observed, the start of a multi-volume study (Univ. of Chicago, 1991, Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, eds.), Nancy Ammerman cites features that set North American fundamentalism apart from traditional conservatism:
evangelism: actively seeking converts for the salvation of individual souls;
inerrancy: unwavering faith in the literal text of the Bible;
premillennialism: a focus on the End Times, before Christ returns to establish a new 1000-year reign, in some cases implying the so-called Rapture of the born-again;
separatism: uniformity of belief and withdrawal from those seen as sinners whom evangelistic efforts won’t be able to convert.
Selective 19th-century nostalgia
Fundamentalists try to fortify their identity, Ammerman observes, by selectively retrieving certain doctrines and practices from the past. However, “when today’s fundamentalists speak of tradition or orthodoxy or ‘what Christians have always believed,’ they are most likely referring, even if unknowingly, to ideas, images, and practices that were prevalent in the late 19th century.”
In The Battle for God (Ballantine, 2000), Karen Armstrong describes the development of fundamentalism in the three major monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and she also emphasizes how recent it is. “There have always been people ...,” she observes, “who have fought the modernity of their day.” But Christian fundamentalism, she points out, is essentially a 20th-century movement, a unique reaction against the scientific and secular culture that first appeared in the West.
Reason and doctrine suppress myth
Armstrong explains that, unlike us, people of the ancient past saw two essential ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring knowledge.
Myth, concerned with meaning, was primary. It directed attention to the eternal and universal, rooted in what we now call the unconscious mind. Stories were not intended to be taken literally, but were more like an ancient form of psychology, bringing to light deep emotions that affect our lives. Myth became real when embodied in rituals of sacred significance. Narratives such as stories about the Israelites’ escape from Egypt were written to bring out this eternal dimension.
Logos, by contrast, was the rational, pragmatic, scientific thought that enabled people to function in the world. By the 18th century, Armstrong explains, Europeans and Americans saw logos as the only means to truth, so they discounted myth as false and superstitious. As a result, more and more of us, including fundamentalists, try to turn the myth of our faith into logos, making symbol into doctrine.
Fear of annihilation leads to militancy
Marty and Appleby’s book describes fundamentalisms as embattled forms of spirituality that have emerged as responses to perceived crises. Because fundamentalists see life as a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil, they may see conventional political struggles as life-or-death issues. They fight back, using modern resources, even against people who merely seek compromise.
Armstrong sees fundamentalisms as a militant form of piety based on fear of losing oneself. She finds that the deep fear and anxiety in which fundamentalism is rooted cannot be assuaged by purely rational argument. She sees, too, that under attack, fundamentalism invariably becomes more extreme, bitter, and excessive. In her view, this development leads to a defeat for the religious traditions the fundamentalists are fighting to preserve, because it leads them to overstress the more belligerent and intolerant aspects of their traditions, and to downplay compassion, which all world faiths insist is the primary religious virtue.
By the late 20th century, when Armstrong wrote The Battle for God, she was already seeing polarization and hostility in society, and a deep ravine running through American religion. Creationism and biblical literalism had become central to the Christian fundamentalist mindset. Polls showed the religious population of the U.S. divided into two almost equal, mutually antagonistic camps, with major denominations split down the middle and fundamentalists occupying the right of the political spectrum. Yet few Americans called themselves fundamentalists.
Definitions of fundamentalism vary
Even now, over a decade later, many U.S. conservatives and evangelicals don’t see themselves as fundamentalists. Yet surprisingly many still fight for literal interpretations of certain doctrines and scriptures: especially, belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, his virgin birth, his unique supernatural divinity, and his unique ability to give followers access to heaven after death.
Many of these churchgoers fit a broader definition of fundamentalism, such as the one given by theologian Harvey Cox in The Future of Faith (HarperOne, 2009). He sees fundamentalisms as having these characteristics:
insistence on obligatory belief systems;
nostalgia for a mythical, uncorrupted past;
claims to an exclusive grasp on truth.
Adding political “fundamentals”
By this broader definition, much conservative Christianity is indeed fundamentalist. And in practice, many conservatives seem to expand the definition, consciously or otherwise adding new “fundamentals” to the beliefs they treat as Christian. For many Americans today, these even include some political views that actually contradict the teaching and example of Jesus. I’m thinking of ...
Uncritical patriotism—seeing America as uniquely good, uniquely deserving of God’s favor, and uniquely called to act on God’s behalf. The result of this American exceptionalism can be overt hostility to foreigners and immigrants.
Unfettered capitalism. God’s call to protect the poor, strangers, widows, and orphans goes almost unheard as companies become giant corporations and the market gains near-absolute power.
“Family values” interpreted as patriarchy and unjust gender roles. Only one kind of family structure and sexuality is seen as Christian, and God is consistently portrayed as male.
Unchecked individualism. Top priority goes to what will benefit the most fortunate individuals rather than to what will promote the common good.
A selective focus on side issues. Abortion is treated as evil, but denying health insurance and education funding is not. Assault rifles are allowed, but drug offenders get decades-long prison sentences.
I’m almost more concerned about Christians’ mistakenly treating these opinions as Christian fundamentals than about their misinterpreting doctrines and scriptures literally.
What are the real fundamentals?
Fundamentalism is based on fear, say the writers I’ve read. It sees many aspects of the modern world as threats.
Reacting in fear is not always bad, but we can’t lose sight of what really deserves fear and what doesn’t. Aspects of modern life that we need to resist actively are those that cause real suffering or pose real threats to our continued existence.
When we focus on the fundamentals, we must be sure they’re really fundamental. Christianity, along with the other major religious faiths, sees compassion as the central purpose of religion. If we want to be real religious fundamentalists, compassionate action should be our highest priority. [2]
[1] October 2010
[2] July 2011