Fundamentalists can be scary. If you spook them, they will lash out at you and then tell you god told them to do it. You have to be nice to then and not show interest in science while they convert you. And nothing spooks them more than finding out they aren’t quite the original faith that they fashion themselves to be. They are every bit legit, as sure as Evolution is a lie of Satan, and they will tell you so.
In The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox is not afraid to take on Christianity’s chief revisionists: American Fundamentalists.
Seriously, by “Fundamentalists,” I don’t just mean someone who is ultra-conservative, anti-thinking, and pro-blowing-stuff-up. We all know that’s true for some of them, but really, I use the term “Fundamentalist” here in the technical sense that its own members in the past defined themselves as, referring to a list of non-negotiable beliefs as well as a mindset that is often implied by such an outlook. I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense. I’ve attended and served in several fundamentalist churches, and while Fundamentalism may be something I no longer identify with personally, it is the mother of my faith; and in that sense I owe Fundamentalism my very faith. So it is a part of my faith’s past that I hold lovingly.
The History of Fundamentalists… who seldom know they are Fundamentalists
The Christian Fundamentalist movement can trace its roots to late 19th and early 20th century counter-reformations that emerged in response to theological liberalism at the time. Scholarship, as well as trendy notions that Christianity would dissolve into a single command (Love) and no more, upset the religious commons and they began to respond with a high dependence on safe beliefs. In 1910, a movement indignant at what they saw as the syncretism of accommodation began to publish a pamphlet called The Fundamentals, and widely circulated this pamphlet. They gallantly took the name Fundamentalists for themselves, using it not as a negative term, but instead with intent to show fidelity to the Faith. The Five Fundamentals chosen were 1) the divine inspiration and total inerrancy of the Bible, 2) the Virgin Birth of Christ, 3) the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, 4) the bodily resurrection of Christ, and 5) the imminent second coming of Christ in glory. Each was picked do to particular battle being waged at the time with the academy. So inherent to the birth of Fundamentalism, as inflammatory as this may seem, is a sort of anti-intellectualism which the movement was birthed in response as. History, science, textual criticism, and the academy that pushed these things, all became suspect to the fundamentalist. And Cox notes significantly, not one of those imperative Fundamentals had anything at all to do with the life and teaching of Christ.
A mere fifty years before (mid 19th century) had seen the rise of language such as “accept Christ as your personal Savior” in popular terminology. And now with the paramount importance of (these 5) beliefs over actions, Fundamentalism was a functional and coherent converting machine, though dooming itself to have little to say on the life and teaching of Christ.
They sought to “get back to the teachings of the early church,” all the while loathing the scholarship trying to shed light on the variant and amorphous teachings of the early church. But a revisionist history will serve a group quite well so long as the collective operates by the narrative. Each fundamental was a response to liberalism: inerrancy countered growing application of historical research and literary methods; virgin birth and resurrection countered Christ being painted as a mere moral exemplar; immanent second coming was meant to cease ideas that man was coming closer to bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. The second coming fundamental inaugurated the 20th century American church’s obsession with novel and localized (both in time and history) interpretation of isolated texts in Daniel and Ezekiel, combined with Revelation, into a belief that we are on the precipice of the Apocalypse. It’s a popular misunderstanding of prophecy and eschatology. This belief in a Rapture and coming 7 year Tribulation represents well the way in which a revisionist history (and worldview resistant to others) can permeate a subculture to the point that believers presume this is only the conservative, orthodox belief and that anything contrary is new. But this was just as fundamental as the rest.
Harvey Cox makes a compelling case that while non-fundamentalist sects of religions have made great strides in interfaith dialogue (always a good thing), this has often come at the expense of intrafaith dialogue. As it is suspect of syncretism at any inter/intrafaith dialogue which does not aim at conversion, Fundamentalism has been similarly cut off from conversation with the broader church, to the detriment of all. This dichotomy has created on one side an elitist Christianity unwilling to take Fundamentalists seriously, and on the other a Fundamentalist Christianity which sees itself as a victim struggling against the forces of evil (though evil may come under the façade of a more liberal Christian) in its endless battle to get back to the good ole’ days of pure belief (which are themselves a myth).
In his chapter entitled “Get Them into the Lifeboat,” Cox walks us through his own phase as a fundamentalist. It was a moment of nostalgia for me. I grew up Southern Baptist until my family moved to a non-denominational church when I was 13. And though I was vaguely aware that there were specific dates at which the Baptist or Non-Denom movements started, we tacitly just knew that we had the “real” faith, the one that had been around since the very beginning. Cox had a similar stint with Fundamentalism, exposed through a college campus ministry, doing door-to-door evangelism, and getting people saved. It began to loose sway for him, much as it did for me, as he grew in awareness of textual criticism, the problematic history of Christianity and the text, and the general threat that questioning seemed to pose. The threat taken at honest, seeking questions was the greatest single destabilize in my own fundamentalism.
With these fundamentals nailed down for the true believer, Cox quotes the great evangelist Dwight Moody who said, “the Lord told me, ‘Moody, just get as many into the lifeboat as you can.’” American Fundamentalism was persuasive and argumentative from its birth, and has continued so on, especially given its preeminence placed on particular items of beliefs to be decided on. But the problems with the Bible, over which it separated with Mainline Christianity over, still arose. If the bible was inerrant, which version? Was it the very words, the thoughts, or just the overall concept? And which Bible? Though the Bible has never gone more than a few hundred years without being added or subtracted from, this did not concern an entirely Protestant sect until the findings at Nag Hammadi, the growing awareness of other ancient gospels and apocalypses, or the simple fact that the old manuscripts we have don’t match. What do you do with Mark if it ends 20 different ways depending on which manuscript you grabbed today? And are we then making ourselves a “Paper Pope,” which, although inconsistent to everyone around us, we see as inerrant?
Many more problems were to come, not the least of which was Fundamentalism’s, along with its close cousin Evangelicalism, growing estrangement from the culture at large. The gap was wide enough that this was considered a good thing.
Though the particular fundamentals have changed focus somewhat, they are still remarkably similar a century later. The worldview has not changed much, and so powerful is the idea that we are the norm and just getting back to original Christianity that most fundamentalists seem to be unaware that they are, in fact, fundamentalists. Again, I don’t mean this term to be taken in any derogatory sense, but I do think it would be better for dialogue inside the church if fundamentalists could recognize themselves as every bit as new as the liberals on the other side. Fundamentalists are not recovering the early church, nor are they recovering orthodoxy. It is not there to be recovered. Instead, they are a later movement that appeals to a certain mindset. The unquestioning, unceasing faithfulness of the fundamentalist is admirable. But it is still a 20th century North American theological movement.
In combating theological liberalism, there is a sense in which Fundamentalists accidentally and unwittingly created *wince* … a newer liberalism. But don’t point that out to them.
Cox closes with this bit:
“Having once experienced at least a hint of the vigor that drives Christian fundamentalists, I am always fascinated by their movements and still feel a touch of empathy with them. I cannot help but admire their commitment and dive. I still find myself at times humming the soaring hymns I learned with them. Still, I also know how much effort it requires to be a fundamentalist. It can get tiring. You must constantly fight not only the skepticism of those around you, but the doubts that arise within yourself. Mainly fundamentalists evoke from me a sense of sadness. Their pathos is that they expend such energy on such a losing cause.”
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