Fundamentalism, Pt. One

DEFINITION— Fundamentalism is a religious phenomena where belief and rigid adherence is placed in certain fundamental principles or core propositions and that is intolerant to other views and reactionary to modernity. "Fundamentalism is modernity’s most determined adversary" (Richard McBrien, Catholicism, p. 96) A world-wide phenomenon, it has many faces, not only Christian—there are fundamentalist Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant expressions and forms; indeed, every religion has fundamentalists. These fundamentalisms “in a direct and self-conscious way fashion a response to modernity” (Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby “The Glory and the Power: The Fundamentalist Challenge to the Modern World,” Boston: Beacon Press, 1992, p. 10).

Although often aligned with the politically Right, it would be a mistake to conclude that fundamentalists and religious conservatives are one and the same. They are most certainly different; however, many fundamentalists disguise themselves and think of themselves politically as conservative. But whereas religious conservatives recommit themselves to traditional practices and teachings while keeping modernity at arm’s length, fundamentalists say “THIS FAR and NO FURTHER!” They hole up, pitch camp deep, make a trench, and lash back. Conservatives remind us to prudently move forward not forgetting who we are—fundamentalists are culture warriors. “They want to reclaim a place they feel has been TAKEN from them. They would restore what are PRESUMED or CLAIMED to be old and secure ways retrieved from a world they are losing. Fundamentalists will do what it takes to assure their future in a world of their own defining” (ibid., p. 17).

“Fundamentalism is, in other words, a religious way of being that manifests itself as a strategy by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group” (ibid., p. 34). Fundamentalism is audacious world destroying, world-building work, analogous to all the dangers in “Project Genesis” from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. Such labors demand leadership both charismatic and authoritarian added to an inner core team well-disciplined and a huge group of sympathizing supporters. Their sociomoral code, rigorous, sets them apart from both compromisers within their “flocks” and the unbelievers. Their culture warfare is one of established boundaries, naming and investigation of their enemies, prosylitizing recruitment, and intimidation of enemy forces and groups.

The term “fundamentalism” derives from the preceding assumption that the fundamentals of Christian faith are easily knowable and not at all subject to scientific criticism. Concretely, the term describes a movement within American Protestantism which has sought by various means to preserve the “fundamentals” of Christian orthodoxy and the principle of Biblical infallibility from the encroachments of modern science, historical scholarship, and social optimism.

We must distinguish then between the terms “fundamentalism” (in general and a religious phenomena) and “biblical fundamentalism” (specific, of which is Protestant fundamentalism is even more specific). When I use the term “fundamentalism” I do not mean only those United States Protestants with a narrowly defined set of beliefs traced back to the late 19^th and early 20^th century movements against Modernism that rallied around the so-called “Five Fundamentals”—from whence the term “fundamentalist” originated. The REALITY of fundamentalism is MUCH older. Indeed, there are Catholic fundamentalists too. Truly, wherever one finds religion in the modern world, one may encounter fundamentalism. But all Protestant Fundamentalists are fundamentalists in the general sense.

Fundamentalism is a religious phenomena that is global, it resists modernity, and is against the spirit that is being in the Modern World. It resists appropriating the faith in light of the enormous and rapid developments of modern times that have changed the world, namely transportation and communications technology. Mind you, fundamentalists don’t reject all benefits of modernity and they have no problem MAKING USE and TAKING ADVANTAGE of such technologies. There are so many fundamentalists online, for example. Yet fundamentalism is modernity’s most determined adversary for they are antagonistic toward the values that seem to accompany these remarkable advances.

Featuring an unyielding adherence to rigid doctrinal and ideological positions—an foundation that affects the individual’s social and political attitudes as well as religious ones— fundamentalism indicates a person’s general approach to life. Fundamentalists make a god out of their beliefs—it is idolatry. Here are some qualities all fundamentalists share:

1. Fundamentalism is wrought with self-righteousness and paranoia. Always we are threatened by some terrible enemy OUT THERE. We must fight it and ultimately destroy it.

2. Fundamentalism ALSO fears and rages even more intensely against the enemy WITHIN OUR RANKS, including bishops, priests, pastors, rabbis, sisters, teachers, and theologians. These people must be reported about and TERMINATED—or worse! This is dangerous because of the divisiveness it brings to faithful.

3. Fundamentalism is marked by “the myth of the Golden Age.” For example, some Catholic Fundamentalists think that just prior to Vatican II, the 1950s Church was exactly as God intended it, in a state pristine and ideal, without problems or deficiencies of any sort. Also consider the Hindutva, a group of ardent nationalist Hindus who seek India to return to its pristine Hindu state, before outsiders contaminated everything.

4. Fundamentalism spreads the false notion that all truth is to be found in a single source. For Muslim fundamentalists, the Koran and for the Jewish fundamentalists, the Torah. For Protestant fundamentalists, it’s the Bible (Sola Scriptura can be interpreted in several ways that are not fundamentalistic—ask Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer). And for Catholics, it’s the pronouncements of the pope and the Roman Curia.

5. Even though it is not really conservative, Fundamentalism links its adherents with right-wing political regimes and movements. This is to service the hopes of advancing their own theocratic policies. This is seen in Catholic fundamentalists, who typically are unenthusiastic about a holistic approach to Catholic social teaching.

Protestant Fundamentalism / Biblical Fundamentalism

Protestant fundamentalism has always been of a biblical variety, a “Biblical fundamentalism”. Contemporary “Protestant Fundamentalism” is from whence the term “fundamentalism” originated. The five propositions considered “fundamental” by such fundamentalists are:

I. The inerrancy of the Bible

II. The virgin birth of Jesus Christ

III. Jesus Christ’s substitutionary atonement

IV. The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ

V. The immanent personal return of Jesus Christ

Again I caution you against the mistake thinking that these were, historically, the “first fundamentalists”, as if the reality of fundamentalism in religion is as old as the term! This KIND of American Protestant fundamentalism began as a negative reaction against three modern developments at the beginning of the 20^th century:

1. Evolutionary theory associated with Charles Darwin

2. Biblical and historical criticism

3. Christian ecumenical movements

Then developed and emerged a second American subgroup (around 1940) that was Protestant but opposed to what was called “Fundamentalism.” This neo-evangelical group disliked the first group’s anti-intellectualism, its “otherworldliness,” and its sectarianism. This neo-evangelical group sported figures like the preacher Billy Graham. And yet, “Neo-evangelicalism” remains individualistic and politically conservative, and, according to evangelical theologian Richard J. Mouw, is “dominated by a concern for exactitude in formulating a doctrine of biblical authority.” Hence, although distancing themselves from the “Five Fundamentals” of the first group, this group is nonetheless a branch of Protestant Fundamentalism and fundamentalism in the general sense. (See “Hartford and the Future of Evangelicalism: New Alignments,” in “Against the World For the World,” edited by Peter Berger and Richard Neuhaus 1976, pp. 99-125.)

Inconsistencies in Protestant Fundamentalism

Protestant fundamentalism stems from the basis of the premise that all Scripture is God-breathed (in Greek, theopnuestos) or inspired (Second Timothy 3:16) and, therefore, is also infallible and inerrant. Scripture alone—as interpreted by fundamentalist authorities, mind you!!—are the way by which we measure truth and the moral life. But like all fundamentalisms, this Protestant variety is really based not on Divine Authority or “Word of God” as frequently claimed, but rather on rational principles. For it is by a process of rational deduction, not by appeal to Scripture itself, that the Protestant fundamentalist concludes that Scripture is infallible and inerrant and is the exclusive source of divine revelation. We must admit that it is “by a process of rational deduction”, the reason being that NOWHERE does the Bible itself claim to be infallible or inerrant—thus, one must deduce the principle of inerrancy rationally from the principle of inspiration. One also has to determine by process of reasoning, not by appeal to Scripture itself, which books are inspired and which are not, which are canonical (meaning which belong to the table of contents or of the official “list”) and which are uncanonical.

Where does one look in the Bible to find out how we know the books that belong in it and which do not? Answer: NOWHERE. Where in the entire Bible does it say that it is central, or exclusively authoritative, for the faith and life of Christians? Answer: NOWHERE—all Second Timothy 3:16 claims is that Scripture (in Greek graphe for “writings”) is “profitable” for teaching, etc. And where in the Bible does Jesus ever sanction New Testament? Answer: NOWHERE.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that the Bible is unimportant in the lives of Christians! Heaven forbid! Rather, it is the radical inconsistency of the Protestant fundamentalist which I desire to underscore. For his or her social, political, and ecclesiastical views the Protestant fundamentalist claims divine authority which is superficially appealing—but really to support this view he or she must rely on rationally deduced principles. A form of rationalism is fundamentalism that is without warrant.

Ridiculous Rationalism and Debate Hogs

Today Protestant Fundamentalists think of themselves as culture warriors fighting culture wars. They fight the likes of silly atheists like Seth Macfarlane and Bill Maher and other secularists as if they were great threats to belief. But it is the serious atheists, Neitzche and the nihilists, who directly challenge faith. Whereas Maher and friends deny God yet somehow claim to discover meaning and purpose in their lives, for the nihilists human life HAS NO VALUE—it is pointless, useless, and worthless, everywhere unstable, fragile, and EMPTY. This is the serious atheism of serious atheists, the stuff not of Family Guy but of Watchmen.

On and on the Protestant fundamentalists rant trying to PROVE by ARGUMENT their beliefs. But only practice can validate belief in God and Protestant Fundamentalists are somehow incapable of comprehending this. Believers authentically living out the Gospel INCARNATE “ARGUMENT” for faith. We simply cannot prove or disprove faith. Any attempt to do so is only the beacon for rationalism and hence counterfeit faith—so many Protestant Fundamentalists get argued into atheism! The job of apologetics is NEVER proving the faith! Rather, REAL apologists demonstrate that faith and reason go together as a marriage and show that belief is not irrational; apologetics is that part of theology which tries to show the reasonableness of the Christian faith and to refute objections against it. We have seen of late a counterfeit “neo-orthodox” apologetics from various Christians in the 20th century which strove to establish the Christ’s Divinity on the foundation of the claims he made and the miracles he performed in support of those claims—both attested to in the pages of the inspired New Testament. How ironic that these apologists were now using THE EXACT SAME METHODS that had been employed by the Rationalists against the faith for centuries—these “apologists” didn’t only DEFEND the faith; they thought they were “proving” its truth by history and logic!! Again, while faith can be shown to be “reasonable” (that is, not contrary to human reason), its truth cannot be “rationally” proved!

Nihilism cannot be simply refuted by our “arguments.” There is to life a “thorough-going uncertainty.” But we EXPERIENCE (not argue) that nihilism is unprovable also—“being, despite all the menace of nothingness, continually puts up fresh resistance to any kind of absolute denial.” Fundamentalists, like nihilists, don’t enjoy being shown this. They want a solution! Well, decide then. DECIDE for YOURSELF—that is your solution.

Theology is an outcome of faith, not rationalism. We do theology when we think that we have perceived God’s presence and activity in our own history or experience and we then try to express that presumed perception of God. When a certain person, event, or series of events gets interpreted by an individual or community to be the vehicle and expression of the work and presence of God in the world, this is theology. Two things make theology possible:

1. God is real.

2. Human beings are capable of perceiving God’s reality.

But our human situation is LIMITED—given its context, can we EVER be absolutely certain that we are doing theology? Can we ever be absolutely certain that God is actively present to human life and history?

The fundamentalist would have it that we can prove this, but this is delusional. We are NOT convinced that God is present by rational deduction and logical argument! Rather, we are convinced in FAITH in the presence of God and simultaneously we recognize the precariousness and the frailty of that judgment! And this weakness, hardly the “culture warrior” of fundamentalism, this humiliation begs that our procedure be MODEST and WITHOUT PRETENSION. TO EVERYONE our ears are OPEN. We sift the thoughts of ALL. We acknowledge that ALL OF US (those belonging to our faith and not) are brothers and sisters in the quest for the True, and the Good, and the Beautiful. But this is not so for the fundamentalist—he or she demands absolute certainty as tentative truth is intolerable. The Protestant fundamentalist is blind to the fact that every theological statement, even those contained in Sacred Scripture, is a statement of interpretation.

The Dangers of being Biblical Bozos

With the biblical fundamentalist it is almost always a blunder to get into an argument over a particular text, because as one receives the canon-blast of certitude it is futile to make the proper distinctions.

Some things Protestant Fundamentalists are oblivious to:

1. The Bible is first and foremost the Church’s book. You don’t get more biblically “fundamental” than the meaning of the term canonicity. The question of canonicity—from where does the Bible get its official canon or list of books?—is a “fundamental” question for anyone studying the Bible. The canon of Sacred Scripture was never self-evident. The Church determined which books belonged in the Bible, particularly the New Testament, and which did not. The word canon also means “rule.” A canonical book is one that is found on the list of books which the Church considers to be inspired and to contain a rule of faith and morals. Some books were accepted as part of the canon very early. Others were placed on the list only after doubts about them were resolved. But always it was the Church that made the decision. There is absolutely no basis in Scripture itself for determining which books belong and which do not. Thus, when the fundamentalist quotes from one of the books of the Bible, how does he or she know that the particular book is inspired and, as such, belongs on “the list”?

2. Hermeneutics provides the rules by which we interpret the Bible. When we apply those rules to a particular text this is called “exegesis.” It is one thing, therefore, to say that the Bible is the word of God. It is quite another to equate your interpretation of the Bible with the meaning intended by God. How do you know they are one and the same? And how did you arrive at knowing that? This is what hermeneutics is all about.

Every fundamentalism is a shallow reproduction of a not-too-distant past. Fundamentalism goes hand-in-hand with rigidity, one which unfortunately is often too uneducated to distinguish the medieval from the baroque, and the romanticism of the 1800s from the daring of the Fathers. It is a lazy apprehension of things in which thin beliefs and vague pieties supplant real theology.

The essence of Protestant fundamentalism is the essential historicization of every story in the bible. The fundamentalist does not distinguish between truth and fact—when he or she calls the Bible “true” he or she mean that it all must be factual and historical essentially. Certainly fundamentalists accept that there are parables and nonfactual tales in the Bible such as the story of the Samaritan (Lk 10:29-37). But in these cases, the Fundamentalist defends his or her reading of these sections of Scripture as nonfactual and nonhistorical due to instances wherein the context makes it clear that this is a story being told (after all, Jesus “told them many things in parables,” Mt 13:3). But the fundamentalist CANNOT ACCEPT that an account MAY APPEAR TO BE FACTUAL (e.g., the stories of Jonah and Job in the books by their respective names) when REALLY it is a fictional poem or story with a moral. Likewise the Protestant fundamentalist cannot accept that the numbers and details of the book of Revelation do not enable one to with certainty predict the actual Final or Second Coming of Jesus; they cannot accept that these numbers are symbolic, giving us NO knowledge of the “when” of future events.

It isn’t just that Christian Protestant fundamentalists are literalists. A literalist would be someone who takes literally ANYTHING that CAN BE TAKEN LITEARALLY in the Bible—they would recognize obvious metaphor, and not conclude because Jesus is called the Lamb of God that Mary had a little lamb for a baby. But everything that CAN BE TAKEN LITERALLY must be taken literally. A Protestant fundamentalist is such a literalist for sure, but more—such a fundamentalist would claim that anything in the Bible that can be taken literally must be taken literally AND IF YOU DON’T TAKE IT LITERALY you are not a Christian, and if you suggest that it shouldn’t be taken literally, you are then an ANTI-Christian who “disparages the authority of Scripture.”

So now the person with a different approach to interpretation is not only wrong but are going against God’s Will. It isn’t that I believe what you believe is wrong; it is that you are against God. This is a germ of murder and war and genocide, because it is not a far stretch to go from here in the ideological to the notion that those with different opinions are evil and forfeit their human rights in the physical. It is easy to go from fundamentalism manifest in the ideological and rhetorical into fundamentalism manifest in the physical and violent. The fundamentalist can easily begin to start talking about how people who oppose God (= against their literalist biblical interpretation) do a great evil, and people who do great evil don’t deserve to exist. That fundamentalist who says that may not have the ability to do anything about it—indeed, he or she may not even wish to do anything about it—nevertheless, his or her ideology may become ESCALATED: “anyone who interprets the scriptures differently than me is anti-God.” This then becomes rhetorical through questions: “What do we do with those who are promoting evil?” And then the time is ripe for a fanatically violent response: “anyone who promotes evil should be put to death, or assassinated, or executed, or utterly humiliated and destroyed, etc.” This is the genocidal germ of fundamentalism.

Now I would not suggest that ALL fundamentalists are ready to spill blood!! Many would never DREAM of doing violence. Nevertheless, by going around and talking about different people as anti-Christian, and anti-God, and false teachers, and those who confuse others by spreading a different Gospel you are preparing the soil for someone down the line, were he or she to gain power to do something about it. In the 1920s Hitler didn’t say, “Go out and kill the Jews!”, rather he wrote about Jews and Judaism in pathological terms—as an infection, as a virus or disease. He never said then “KILL THEM ALL”—but what do we do with viruses and infections? We eradicate them, no? See the nightmares this thinking breeds?

Let me be emphatic here on the dangers of fundamentalism. Say I believe that most of the world is evil and dying, that God assuredly is going to utterly destroy that world while I and the elect soar off to “heaven” then there may be nothing to stop me, should I have the power to do so, to create say nuclear, biological, or chemical attack because, after all, that’s the will of God, right?

What lies underneath this Protestant fundamentalist view of scripture? It is a univocal approach to biblical interpretation. The fundamentalist cannot accept that SOME passages of Scripture are historical, some not; and telling the difference is not always an easy thing to do (e.g., did the writer of Genesis chapter one intend his readers to accept literally the six days of creation? Couldn’t it be that he only wrote symbolically, and that the Christian view of creation is compatible with the contemporary scientific view that it took billions of years to create after all?).

Indeed, as Orthodox priest Vladika Lazar comments, the Scriptures are inerrant, without error, meaning in TERMS OF THE ACTUAL CONTENT OF SCRIPTURE. But Scripture is not inerrant in terms of our own contemporary historical and scientific models of reality ABOUT the contents of Scripture. When one (via rationalism) bases his or her faith on the IDEA that Scripture is inerrant as we interpret it, and that it therefore contains all the actual facts concerning the universe, and COMPLETELY MISUNDERSTAND THE FACT that the Scriptures are a collection of ancient Semitic stories told in ancient and religious Semitic styles and ways which unveil the profoundest truths and that the Scriptures are full of metaphor (the older the language, the richer the metaphor) added to the terribly incorrect notion that Scripture only contains statements of fact and reality in passages that can be interpreted literally to the dismissal of any possibility of metaphor is the stuff of the idolatry of biblical fundamentalism.

Understand that biblical fundamentalism is idolatry pure and simple. If we took the chronology of the Old Testament’s canonical narrative literally, Adam would have died sometime during the time of Egyptian culture. Also, Noah’s flood would have happened during the height of Egypt’s pyramid construction. O, and lest I forget, at the time of the Flood which canonically is BEFORE the Tower of Babel, we know that Egyptians spoke a different language than the Chaldeans. For thousands of years "before" Adam, there were Native American cultures thriving.

What is the problem here? Lazar explains that it’s almost funny considering how Protestantism is one of the greatest processes of deconstructionism historically speaking, that Protestantism was a deconstruction of Christianity. That process of deconstruction fell into more than a thousand denominations all of which have more or less separated themselves from the living Tradition and Body of the Church which went on living and thriving since Apostolic times left them with only a book. Consequently they had to DEIFY that book, they had to think of that book (on a practical level at least) as equal with the essence of God. Not only were its Scriptures inerrant in the proper sense, but it was inerrant in every conceivable way—inerrant in every form, inerrant in every concept, inerrant in every word, and in every direction inerrant. By doing this they abolished the true meaning of Scripture and reduced it down into a dry rationalistic and legalistic sauce of a document concerned with (almost exclusively) with law and ultimately attributing to God a whole collection of petty fetishes which, should one violate one of them, they would get cast into a torture chamber for all eternity worse than anything the human mind could possibly conceive—BUT GOD IS LOVING AND FORGIVING, OF COURSE!—but nevertheless He is going to cast you into this pit and torture you to eternal death IF you violate one of his fetishes or taboos. This is what fundamentalism does to the Holy Scriptures.

The scriptures are inerrant in what they present us: the nature of the human being, the fall, his nature in the fall, his lifelong struggle with idolatry, the necessity of the direct intervention of God in the Incarnation to redeem mankind from his bondage and make us partakers of the Divine Nature, and even in that great and terrible sacrifice which the Son and Word of God made for us we still struggle with idolatry and unfaith. But egotism and centripetal self-love leads us to the idolatry of identifying God with ourselves rather than identifying ourselves with God. This then is the origin of all idolatry, and certainly that belonging to Protestant Fundamentalism: the horrid, vengeful God who has this horrific torture chamber called hell which he creates as a literal physical place to torture mankind for all eternity should they have some minor issue with or breaking of a few laws or taboos. Ultimately fundamentalist Protestantism, unable to distinguish between apocalyptic language from eschatological message, while they declare that “man is saved without works,” says nonetheless that you can be tormented and tortured for all eternity if there is something amiss about your works.

But this is all too subtle for Bible Fundamentalists who need things blunt and explicit. They have to get everything correct and all completely grasped by way of their mental gymnastics. They would do well to remember the admonition of St. John Chrysostom: “a comprehended god is no god.”

More later…