{"id":18823,"date":"2013-11-05T07:48:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-05T12:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=18823"},"modified":"2013-11-05T07:48:11","modified_gmt":"2013-11-05T12:48:11","slug":"what-is-fundamentalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/what-is-fundamentalism.html","title":{"rendered":"What is Fundamentalism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>The <a href=\"http:\/\/bcseweb.blogspot.com\/2013\/11\/history-of-fundamentalism.html\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">term<\/a> \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/leavingfundamentalism.wordpress.com\/2013\/11\/04\/whaddaya-mean-fundamentalist\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">fundamentalist<\/a>\u201d is a controversial one, mainly because few want to be labeled with it on the one hand, and its overuse on the other makes it vague and meaningless.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/11\/fundamentalism.jpeg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright  wp-image-18839\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/exploringourmatrix\/files\/2013\/11\/fundamentalism.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"123\" height=\"200\"><\/a>One recent suggestion offered on Facebook (as something someone else had once said) is that fundamentalism is \u201cthe belief that the Bible is easy to read, and that it consists primarily of prohibitions.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The term originally comes from <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.org\/stream\/fundamentalstest17chic#page\/n9\/mode\/2up\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>The Fundamentals<\/em><\/a>, a series of tracts published a little more than a century ago. But things that were not considered fundamentals then \u2013 such as denial of mainstream science \u2013 have come to characterize it, and those first \u201cfundamentalists\u201d were far more intellectually rigorous and serious than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2013\/11\/02\/how_the_religious_right_won_birth_of_the_fundamentalists_in_our_modern_times\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">most who are so labeled today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>This is worth highlighting, because fundamentalists often characterize themselves as defenders of unchanging truth. But what they are in fact is defenders of the\u00a0<em>idea<\/em> of unchanging truth against the onslaught of not only change but also the evidence that their supposedly unchanging truths have changed in the past and continue to change even as a result of their defensive efforts.<\/p>\n<p>So perhaps I should offer that as my own definition of \u201cfundamentalism.\u201d Fundamentalism is the defense of the idea of unchanging truth against the evidence from the history of their own belief system that what they label as unchanging truth is something that has evolved in the past and continues to evolve in the present.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s your definition of fundamentalism, assuming you consider the word worth using?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The term \u201cfundamentalist\u201d is a controversial one, mainly because few want to be labeled with it on the one hand, and its overuse on the other makes it vague and meaningless. One recent suggestion offered on Facebook (as something someone else had once said) is that fundamentalism is \u201cthe belief that the Bible is easy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":18839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[3675,3678],"class_list":["post-18823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fundamentalism-religion","tag-fundamentalism-religion","tag-fundamentalists"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Fundamentalism?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The term &quot;fundamentalist&quot; is a controversial one, mainly because few want to be labeled with it on the one hand, and its overuse on the other makes it\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/what-is-fundamentalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is Fundamentalism?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The term &quot;fundamentalist&quot; is a controversial one, mainly because few want to be labeled with it on the one hand, and its overuse on the other makes it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2013\/11\/what-is-fundamentalism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion Prof: The Blog of James F. 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