The Nutty Fundie
Try this sometime. Go on a public, internet message board or chat room and make a few positive comments about the Bible. It should not take long for someone to call you a Fundie. I have heard the expression used as a gentle inquiry: “Are you a Fundie?” More often, I’ve seen it used with derision and hatred. Either way, our modern culture seems to be on the alert for the “nutty fundie”. What is a fundie, you may ask? Originally used by Isaac Asimov in his 1941 novel “I, Robot”, the term “fundie” is a modern day abbreviation of the word “fundamentalist”: that is, someone trying to live by and conserve the fundamentals of their faith tradition. I heard one Bible scholar, Hank Hanagraff, refer to the fundamentals as “the main and plain things in Scripture that even a child could understand”. The world, of course, needs fundamentalists. Without them social focus would simply drift apart. Without a constant return to the fundamentals, for example, a game like baseball might eventually be played with a tennis racket and water balloons. No social structure or institution would hold meaning or shape for very long. However, the popular idea of a “fundie” today is far from a benefit to society. It is more of a closed-minded Christian who is rather backward and judgmental.
The 3 main things that annoy pop culture about fundies is when they forward literal interpretations of the Bible that are silly, (second) when they put God’s loving, mysterious and obviously variable salvation plan into an exclusively tight formula and (third) when their thirst for justice and the ultimate resolution of good and evil seems to turn inhumane and heartless. For example, when fundamentalist take the Bible as so absolutely true in every phrase that they propose Noah took all 350 million species (x 2) on board the floating arc, it actually discredits religion. Now, I completely believe there was a Noah and an arc but I will not suspend my God-given, rational thought to image it was a global event. Besides, phrases in scripture that mention “the waters covered the whole earth” obviously didn’t refer to “planet Earth”: such concepts are modern interpretations of “the whole earth”. When a fundie tries to defend a silly, literal interpretation of the Bible by saying something even more foolish like “There are sea shells at the tops of mountains that prove the planet was once covered in water”, then they end up driving rational people from genuine, religious inquiry.
Perhaps, even more damaging is when fundies advance a tight formula for salvation like “calling on the name of Jesus and accepting baptism”. As a Christian, I am all for calling on His Holy Name. I am for baptism too. But, it is a terrible scandal to go about with a smiling “I’m saved” attitude of exclusion. Our God is a big God who has said in the Bible, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy”. Therefore, we probably shouldn’t write-off anyone. My grandmother, for example, was scandalized very early in her life. She witnessed a phony, faith healer handing out crutches to healthy people behind a “Christian revival” tent in the 1930s. It deeply affected her. She refused to consider God or religion seriously after that day. Do I think she is now burning in Hell fire? Hell no. She devoted her life to helping children with learning disorders. She earned the title “Woman of the Year” for founding such schools in the San Diego area in the 1960’s. She was gentle and loving and taught me how to read; but I can still remember my mom crying over grandma’s stubborn refusal to be baptized on her deathbed. (Mom later admitted to me she thought God let grandma go to heaven anyway.) When fundies seem to dismiss Gandhi and an enormous list of decent human beings, like my grandma, as “lost”, it reveals a kind of shortsighted view of reality that often attracts the scorn of rational people.
What draws the most criticism, however, is when the “nutty fundie” goes on the offensive. When an abortion clinic explodes or a 9-11 occurs in the name of a “return to the fundamentals”, religion seems to cross the line of public toleration. There has developed a popular, unwritten rule today that I don’t entirely disagree with. It is, “believe what you want as long as it doesn’t hurt others”. Perhaps, the worst thing a religious fundie could do is to stop trying to transform a wayward society with truth and goodness for the lazy device of smashing evil people. There is, of course, a time and place for smashing evil acts and trends like Nazism; but, a crowd of fundies can be viewed as quite inhumane and coldhearted to actually cheer for “the destruction of the homosexual community by fire” as preachers like Benny Hinn rant from the pulpit. Yes, everyone has a deep need for conflict resolution but impatience with the merciful delay of God’s ultimate justice is a big scandal. Consequently, when people become obsessed with the “End Times” it is often just a thinly veiled impatience with their own inner suffering. It is also a sign of an underdeveloped intellectual and spiritual maturity. Later chapters will explore the clash between society and religion further. Here I will just say, society needs decent fundies but can sometimes group all fundamentalist with the fringe of immature, nutty fundies. And, society may, as Rosie O’Donnel unfairly did in 2006, lump all religious fundamentalist together as equally dangerous.
The Historical Fundamentalist
The history of fundamentalism within Judeo-Christianity can be traced as far back as the prophets and judges who called the people back to a true relationship with the one God of Israel—Yahweh. (The word “religion” itself refers to this “binding back” of the people with their Creator.) The most important highlights in this long history would include the great prophets like Elijah and John the Baptist, the life and teachings of Jesus, St. Paul and his writings, the Church councils and Doctors like Augustine and Aquinas, great Popes like Gregory, the Protestant reformation and the 4 Great Awakenings which include a modern movement nicknamed “The Religious Right”.
The First Great Awakening started in about 1730 with a call to Christians of Great Britain and early America to turn from sin, own a Bible and experience the Lord personally. The sermons of the time were called “fire and brimstone” for the emphasis was to contrast the eternal pain of Hell with the joy of Salvation. One of the most famous sermons of the era was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” given by Jonathan Edwards in Massachusetts in 1741. One interesting aspect of the era was that preachers used a newer, more emotional style in their sermons. They were called “new lights”.
The Second Great Awakening (1800-1830’s) marks the beginning of the early Social Gospel movement. The period consisted of calls to personal, spiritual renewal based on the fundamentals of the Bible and large, emotional, outdoor revival meetings where there could be dancing and shouting for several days. What resulted was a kind of social activism that spawned various reform movements like the Temperance movement, woman’s suffrage and the Abolition of slavery. A new emphasis on uniting to change the evils of society, coming to the rescue of the anawim (like the mentally disabled) and the importance of religious feelings came to the forefront.
The Third Great Awakening was the full-blown Social Gospel movement itself. The preachers of the era had to address serious religious and social concerns that crossed multi-denominational lines. People of all faiths and no faith were affected by the horrors of rapid urbanization and predatory industrialization. Therefore, the Social Gospel preachers were inclusive in 2 ways. They crafted their message to bring about spiritual salvation by an emphasis on morality but primarily by unified social reforms that would include people of all religions; while, at the same time, they began to accept many of the tenets of the Enlightenment including criticism of the veracity of the Bible as well as acceptance of Darwin and even Freud’s new theories.
Historians explain how the Fundamentalist movement was originally a widespread reaction to the Enlightenment and the resulting criticism of the Bible. A deep call to return to Sola Scriptura also followed the popular uprising of Darwinian evolution. But when the Social Gospel preachers began to craft their message to fit not only a mul
ti-denominational workforce but also began to buy into popular trends in philosophy and to compromise basic Christian ideals regarding the authority of the Bible, the Fall of Man and salvation, it provoked a strong reaction. 64 British and American theologians composed a publication of 94 essays entitled “The Fundamentals: a Testimony to the Truth”. Nearly 3 million copies of these writings were passed around by 1915. Some of the Christian basics were:
--The inerrancy of the Scriptures
--The virgin birth and Deity of Jesus
--Jesus atoned for our sins so that we could be saved by God’s grace through faith
--The bodily resurrection of Jesus
One of the earliest clashes of Fundamentalism with a secular branch of the compromised Social Gospel movement was the famous Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The Social Gospelers were more and more accepting of social science theories and evolution. There was even a move away from religious idealism. There grew up a huge anti-idealist movement (pacifist movement) within the Social Gospel before World War I. One such movement was the American Union Against Militarism (AUAM) that emphasized world socialist solutions rather than biblical morality and idealism. The AUAM eventually became the thoroughly secular ACLU. The Scopes Trial, orchestrated by the ACLU, pitted the Fundamentalist movement of biblical creationism against the teaching of macro-evolutionary theory in public schools. In a wider sense it was the first great battle of what is now known as the “Culture Wars” and the Fundies lost.
Fundamentalism has since fought many such “battles” in Europe and America and the outcomes were similar. Hence, the Fundie movement started to dull and scatter. However, when a series of hugely secular spasms hit the world in the 1960’s-1980’s, the Fundies realized a 4th Great Awakening. This Fourth Awakening is most certainly a reaction to the rapid displacement of Judeo-Christian ideals in the legal and political structure of Western civilization by philosophical naturalist “structures”. In plain English, the rejection of our ability to know “truth” during the Enlightenment had led eventually to a rejection of Judeo-Christianity which had been the basis for our laws and social structures. As the laws changed gradually and social structures weakened over 100 years it was often hidden from the common man but when the courts struck down prayer and bible readings in the public schools in 1962, it outraged many millions of Christians. By the time of the Supreme Court ruling of Roe v Wade in 1973 to legalize abortion, a mass counter-movement had begun. There were, in America, calls to return not only to the fundamentals of the Bible but also to “our founding principles”. This new revival was overtly political and refused to be marginalized. It was nicknamed “The Christian Right”, “The Moral Majority” and, more recently, the “Religious Right”.
However, orthodox Jews and Muslims and Theists of every stripe have their own versions of fundamentalism. To the Jews fundamentalism would entail a return to a more orthodox interpretation of the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of the Bible). To a Muslim fundamentalism might involve a return to the basic moral teachings of Mohammed in the Koran. To a Theist it would be simply a foundational belief in a Creator and the existence of Truth and a moral order. My definition of the fundamentals would be closer to this last group because it incorporates all the others and reflects what I believe is most people’s baseline for salvation.
What is a true “Fundie”
There is an age-old question that children sometimes ask aloud: “What is the LEAST I can do and still go to heaven?” Adults usually dress up the same question with a nobler sounding “What are the fundamentals for salvation?” It would seem that we are not expected to know everything in this world because none of us has the capacity. It would also seem to be obvious that few of us have the capacity to understand complex religious doctrines and dogmas. Therefore, it follows that a fair and just God would not have our salvation based on fundamentals that are inaccessible to most every human mind and heart. I believe, however, that there is a fundamental basis for salvation. There is not only a baseline, but there are actually 3 baselines revealed within the biblical texts.
Without getting too technical, the 3 ways to be “saved” are God simply applies the grace of salvation to you. This is the ultimate baseline—God acts with unilateral mercy as He told Moses “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy”--Roman 9:15. The real “fundamentals” for salvation is, therefore, entirely up to God.
Liberal theology tends to rely on this broad mercy of God while the more Conservative position doesn’t presume this special grace. As a Christian, I hold to the conservative position yet I have a very basic idea of salvation: that all souls are saved by the applied grace of Jesus. For example, that means a decent, little Hindu girl can live without a clue as to who Jesus is and still go to heaven…by the applied grace of His sacrifice for her sins. That also means that decent men and women throughout history could have recognized a Creator, lived according to God’s law which is written in our hearts and been “saved”. I would call this second type of baseline: God’s practical baseline of salvation. The “fundamentals” for salvation, in such a case, are based on what seems practical and rational.
However, liberal you may consider my views, I still believe every person is accountable to God for the amount of “light” (knowledge) they receive within the circumstances of their life. So I also ascribe to a 3rd type of baseline for salvation: the relative baseline. I believe there is an entire spectrum of the faithful in heaven. There are those who respond well to God with what seems to be the most minimal knowledge of Creation. And, there are those in heaven who rigorously obeyed a greater intimacy with the Divine. Therefore, I do not worry much about remote villages where the Gospel has yet to have been preached. I trust that God is there before me and that He is both just and merciful. Nor do I worry about the good and decent Muslim or Jew. I share the light I have but trust in God. I worry more for the person who is highly educated in the Divinity of Jesus and the biblical texts who then rejects everything for a wild life and a presumption of the applied grace of God. Such a person is not a decent fundie. Decent Fundies, as I see it, are those who respond to the light they receive and cling to it: be they Muslim, Jew or whatever.
An illustration of 2 of these fundamental baselines of salvation, and my view of fundies, can be found in the Biblical tale of Jonah. Here we find an intimate friend of God, a Jew named Jonah, who is directed to warn the capital city of Assyria (Nineveh) of God’s impending judgment. Jonah seems to utterly despise the sins of these pagan people and he longs for the simple resolution of God’s wrath wiping them out and restoring order. (Please note: Jonah almost defines the “nutty fundie” yet God shows him great kindness.) There is, indeed, a natural drive within the human soul to seek direct resolutions of conflict. The inner conflict Jonah revealed was that he knew a whole series of natural, Divine and biblical laws that the people of Nineveh were violating and it bothered him that God didn’t immediately whack them for it. As a personal friend of God, Jonah had clearly defined fundamentals for salvation that required a more personal responsibility of him that he assumed were required of everybody. Therefore, when Jonah finally went to Nineveh, preached the cold message of God’s destruction and the people turned from their sins and proclaimed a fast, it bothered him. The inner pain and conflict of Jonah’s idea of “fundamentalism” with God’s actual, merciful basis was so great that he asked God to let him die. What follows is one of the most beautiful passages in the Bible where God says to Jonah:
And should I not be concerned over Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than one hundred and twenty thousand persons who cannot distinguish their right hand from their left, not to mention the many cattle?”
The tender kindness of God shines bright in this account. The God of the anawim—the poor, the widow, the orphan and the stranger—shows He also
has compassion on the ignorant and confused. And, that is a hopeful thought for our own time.
The New Left
As a child, you squirmed a lot
with impatient desire
empowered by a new box
of multi-colored crayons
and enough blank pages
to narrate any tale you could inspire
but chose instead
to scribble violent swirls of red and black
death.
Now, we hang your gory,
little drawings
from every corner of culture
like an embarrassing
refrigerator story.
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