What is Christian fundamentalism? It is a set of protestant tenets published, in the early 20th century, as a response to the theological liberalism and higher criticism of the 19th century. It is a doctrinal statement and nothing more. These positions include concerns about the virgin birth, inspiration, literal interpretation, German higher criticism, the Holy Spirit, and other expected doctrinal statements. Authors included men like B. B. Warfield, R. A. Torrey, and James M. Gray. Those familiar with these names may recall Warfield among the Princeton Presbyterians, Torrey’s association with the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and both Torrey’s and Gray’s association with Moody Bible Institute.
Fundamentalism began as largely a north-eastern movement, though it did spread west. (Dr. Wenger provides a useful summary of the movement’s beginnings and social attitudes.) It began regionally because of the concentration of liberal theological training in the north-eastern U.S. As a result, the Southern Baptists and other Baptist, and many other evangelical groups, were not part of the movement because they were not in a position to challenge liberal theology. Though many others held to these same tenets, it was the challenge of liberalism which motivated this movement and the publication of the statements.
Fundamentalism is not a call to social action. It is a reaction to the social gospel, yet more to the theology behind it. So, while an AFA staffer recently made a call for the death of a whale, that is not fundamentalism. Secularist paranoia says that this somehow represents fundamentalism.
Sometimes people ask me why we get so worked up about the Religious Right here at Americans United. Fischer’s column, as daft as it is, is a good answer to that question. Here’s a guy who wants to kill (by stoning, yet!) a 12,000-pound whale that he believes is guilty of murder – all because of a blind adherence to his fundamentalist reading of the Bible. (emphasis mine)
History differs with Mr. Boston. (I do sometimes wonder why the term thinktank exists. It appears that many are only in the tank.) Even Wikipedia, while obviously lacking, provides a better definition that he does.
Similar calls for secularization are quite common. But God did not create the church as a democracy and theology is not up for democratic debate. For the church to practice control over its own teachings may be, actually, anti-democratic. There are times when that is a good thing. God is, after, the ultimate theocrat. But for some the paranoia of an impending social theocracy seems a way of life, a way to make a living. (There are half-truth hucksters everywhere.)
March 5th, 2010 | 11:54 am | #1
I think the whale should be killed as well, though I haven’t yet read the AFA article. Should I go into the corner with the rest of the Baptist knuckle-draggers?
March 5th, 2010 | 1:05 pm | #2
The point being made was that this provides a definition for “fundamentalism”. We can differ with that definition and still kill the whale.
March 5th, 2010 | 1:44 pm | #3
Certainly fundamentalism began simply as a doctrinal position, but it didn’t remain so for long. As historian George Marsden argues in his excellent book Fundamentalism and American Culture, Fundamentalism had a complex relationship with culture, being as much influenced as influencing. The Fundamentalism of the theologians and the Fundamentalism of the average person in the pew became widely divergent movements in some ways.
(Marsden’s Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism is also excellent, as is Sandeen’s The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, 1800-1930, with which Marsden both agrees and argues).
March 5th, 2010 | 1:52 pm | #4
Nice work, Colin. As you may know, the habit of linking all religious extremism to “fundamentalism” comes from the work of Martin Marty in the mid-80s who published a series of books called “Fundamentalisms.” By doing this, Marty, whether he intended it or not, served the ends of those who sought to sequester his fellow Christians from engaging the public square. So, in the minds of people like Boston any religious crazy is a “fundamentalist.”
Imagine the outcry if all acts of fasting, including eating disorders, were labeled Rhamadamisms. Muslims would, rightfully, be offended and upset over the bastardization of language to serve the purpose of defaming their traditions. That is precisely what Marty and Boston do to large segment of Protestant Christians, though I suspect that each is somewhat proud of what their linguistic mischief has accomplished.
March 5th, 2010 | 1:54 pm | #5
As for the whale, it should be killed, but only if it is an unplanned whale whose existence was not the result of the consensual wills of its progenitors.
March 5th, 2010 | 1:58 pm | #6
Whether we like it or not, cultural Christian fundamentalism in America has become intimately intertwined with right-wing politics over the past few decades, e.g. The Moral Majority. I recently wrote about an experience I had with such fundamentalism on my blog.
March 5th, 2010 | 1:59 pm | #7
Kenneth,
I think you will still find the old fundamentalism in the current “fundamental” movement. They added double separation to the mix, along with KJV-only. But otherwise they are the same. So while there have been turns in the movement, as there are with any movement, it is still discernible today.
Thank you, Francis. I find this false categorization a common behavior among the “secularists” like Boston and Fred Clarkson. When terms are used too loosely they tend to lose substance and end up as pejoratives.
March 5th, 2010 | 6:28 pm | #8
The Catholic view of Fundamentalism:
Pope Benedict XVI warned last week [September 2008] against fundamentalists’ literal interpretations of the Bible. The pontiff told a gathering of intellectuals and academics in Paris that the structure of the Bible “excludes by its nature everything that today is known as fundamentalism. In effect, the word of God can never simply be equated with the letter of the text.”
…and from the Synod of Bishops (2008):
The use of the Bible, the conception of the Church and pastoral practice are all correlated. When the Holy Spirit creates harmony between the Scriptures and the community, this correlation is properly achieved. Consequently, respecting the interior need which moves the community to encounter the Word of God is very important. At the same time, certain tendencies must be held in check, e.g., an exaggerated spontaneity, overly subjective experiences and superstitious practices. Attention also needs to focus on what the scriptural text is saying, reflecting on it so as to understand its literal sense before applying it to life.
This is not always easy, because of the risk of fundamentalism. This phenomenon affects anthropology, sociology and psychology, but, it is applied in a particular way to the reading of the Bible and its subsequent interpretation of the world. In Bible reading, fundamentalism takes refuge in literalism and refuses to take into consideration the historical dimension of biblical revelation. It is thus unable to fully accept the Incarnation itself. This kind of interpretation is winning more and more adherents…even among Catholics. It demands an unshakable adherence to rigid doctrinal points of view and imposes, as the only source of teaching for Christian life and salvation, a reading of the Bible which rejects all questioning and any kind of critical research”.
The extreme form of this type of tendency exists in the sects, where Scripture is isolated from the dynamic and life-giving action of the Spirit. As a result, the community atrophies and is no longer a living body, but becomes a closed group which does not admit inner differences and plurality and displays an aggressive attitude towards ways of thinking differing from its own.
March 5th, 2010 | 7:30 pm | #9
“Pope Benedict XVI warned last week [September 2008] against fundamentalists’ literal interpretations of the Bible.”
You mean like a fundamentalists’ literal interpretation of the following passage in John 6?
53Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.
March 5th, 2010 | 8:47 pm | #10
Truth Unites… and Divides,
Fundamentalism’s Literalist impulse; as in God speaks only through the Bible, which can be interpreted in no other way but by literalism:
From Pope John Paul II’s letter, Fides et Ratio, concerning the relationship between Faith and Reason:
This truth, which God reveals to us in Jesus Christ, is not opposed to the truths which philosophy perceives. On the contrary, the two modes of knowledge lead to truth in all its fullness. The unity of truth is a fundamental premise of human reasoning, as the principle of non-contradiction makes clear. Revelation renders this unity certain, showing that the God of creation is also the God of salvation history. It is the one and the same God who establishes and guarantees the intelligibility and reasonableness of the natural order of things upon which scientists confidently depend, and who reveals himself as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This unity of truth, natural and revealed, is embodied in a living and personal way in Christ, as the Apostle reminds us: “Truth is in Jesus”. He is the eternal Word in whom all things were created, and he is the incarnate Word who in his entire person reveals the Father. What human reason seeks “without knowing it” can be found only through Christ: what is revealed in him is “the full truth” of everything which was created in him and through him and which therefore in him finds its fulfillment.
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