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(H\/T cobs, Flickr Creative Commons<\/em><\/a>) On the seventh day God rested.<\/p>\n And on the eighth day man created fundamentalism<\/p>\n Ok, technically there were no Christians in the Garden that day and Christian fundamentalism as we know it today didn\u2019t appear in all its glory until the 19th century. But the seeds were sown that day \u2013 or on a day thereabouts \u00a0\u2013 when a man and a woman ate from a tree of knowledge in hopes of becoming gods.<\/p>\n Of course, no respectable fundamentalist would admit to desiring\u00a0to be God-like, but at its core, fundamentalism shares the same goal that Adam and Eve had: knowledge, power, and personal security.<\/p>\n At its most fundamental level, fundamentalism is about knowledge that gives power and control while offering its adherents a sense of eternal security. You see, the great allure of fundamentalism for its followers is that by simply believing the right things, they\u00a0get to go to heaven. But\u00a0the allure for its leaders is even greater. For, if \u00a0you know all the answers and thereby possess the keys to heaven, you have the power to control others, to bend them to your will and your way of looking at the world.<\/p>\n It\u2019s an intoxicating fruit to be sure.<\/p>\n Which is why\u00a0despite its intellectual shortcomings, it should really come as no surprise that so many continue to embrace fundamentalism despite its plummeting reputation.<\/p>\n In fact, though the onslaught of criticism swells every day, fundamentalists increasingly embrace what has essentially become a slur as their distinguishing mark of faith. For those that embrace its ideology, being called a fundamentalist\u00a0has become a badge of honor that marked them as\u00a0more true to the heart of the faith than non-fundamentalists.<\/p>\n For non-fundamentalists, this position of pseudo-piety is incredibly frustrating and obviously\u00a0off-putting, but for church history folks like myself, the angst is double.<\/p>\n Nay triple.<\/p>\n Because, you see, the ironic thing about fundamentalism is that many of the beliefs they hold up to be fundamental\u00a0tenets of Christianity are actual rather recent additions to the faith<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, this fact is often and easily disguised both by fundamentalists themselves as well as unintentionally by\u00a0some of their detractors. Fundamentalists themselves adhere to just enough genuinely orthodox beliefs to give their culturally conditioned extremism the veneer of orthodoxy. While their secular opponents portray them as truly adhering to core tenants of faith and\/or central teachings of scripture that other, implicitly less faithful Christians not longer cling to.<\/p>\n But fundamentalists are not more faithful to scripture and Christian orthodoxy than the rest of us.<\/p>\n The ironic truth of the matter is\u00a0they\u2019re adding, not adhering<\/em> to an ancient faith.<\/p>\n Take for example, the rapture.<\/p>\n It\u2019s part of a broader theological framework called dispensationalism<\/a> that is a core tenant of Christian fundamentalism. When I argued last week that the rapture will never, ever happen<\/a>\u00a0because it\u2019s not a biblical idea, the fundamentalists came out in droves to accuse me of rejecting scripture and \u201cabandoning a simple truth of the faith.\u201d<\/p>\n While neither accusation is remotely true, the cries of my fundamentalist critics reveal one of their most fundamental problems: they\u2019re ignorant of their own history.<\/p>\n In the mind of the Christian fundamentalist, the way they practice Christianity is the same way Christianity has always been practiced \u2013 because that\u2019s the way their grand-parents and great-great-grandparents practiced the faith and how dare you tarnish the good name of those holy saints!!<\/p>\n Holy though those saints may have been,\u00a0Christianity wasn\u2019t invented 200 years ago\u00a0when fundamentalism made it\u2019s grand entrance onto the ecclesiastical stage to challenge the great evils of Darwinism, biblical criticism, and happiness.<\/p>\n Which is why if\u00a0we\u2019re going to talk about the fundamentals of the faith, then the best chance we have of doing that is by turning the calendar back several centuries to the days of ecumenical councils and creeds, the days when orthodoxy was laid down in black and white.<\/p>\n Or whatever color ink and papyrus they were using.<\/p>\n I honestly have no idea.<\/p>\n Anyway, when we do go back and look at the earliest creeds \u2013 the formulations of faith that defined the true fundamentals of faith \u2013 we find that several\u00a0supposedly fundamental tenants of faith are missing.<\/p>\n Like the rapture.<\/p>\n Six-day creationism.<\/p>\n A literal reading of scripture.<\/p>\n And, yes, even biblical inerrancy.<\/p>\n None of those hallmarks of today\u2019s fundamentalism are to be found anywhere in the foundational confessions of the faith. And that\u2019s to say nothing of the trove of social mandates\u00a0fundamentalism has enshrined as fundamentally Christian, like no alcohol, no rock music, no dancing, no playing cards, and you better be careful what you wear or Satan will drag you by your short skirt straight down to hell.<\/p>\n You see, the fundamental problem with fundamentalism is that it fundamentally undermines the gospel<\/em>.<\/p>\n With its literal reading of scripture and legalistic approach to discipleship, fundamentalism turns the Bible into the very sort of thing Jesus rejected in the Pharisees \u2013 a weapon to control, manipulate, and exclude. Bound by the particular cultural context of its fundamentalist readers, in the hands of fundamentalism the Bible not only becomes a lifeless book; it becomes the very thing fundamentalists claim to despise: a prooftext for justifying cultural relativism.<\/p>\n That is to say, in the hands of fundamentalism, the Bible does little more than divinely sanction the particular tastes, sensibilities, and ideology of the culture that\u2019s reading it.<\/p>\n This, of course, happens to a certain extent in any expression of Christianity, but it is the dogmatic extreme to\u00a0which it occurs in fundamentalism that defines this cancer in the body of Christ.<\/p>\n Now, let me be clear.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t call it a cancer lightly.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cancer because it seeks to destroy healthy parts of the body simply because they follow\u00a0Jesus differently.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cancer because it despises\u00a0our God-given gifts of intellect and curiosity.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a cancer because the gospel of fundamentalism is a gospel of drawing lines in the sand to oppress and exclude while keeping as many people shackled to the chains of legalism as possible.<\/p>\n Therefore, most importantly, it\u2019s a cancer because the gospel of fundamentalism is fundamentally opposed to the gospel of Jesus.<\/p>\n The gospel of Jesus isn\u2019t about power and control.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about humility and grace.<\/em><\/p>\n The gospel of Jesus isn\u2019t about having all the right answers.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about having love for all.<\/em><\/p>\n And at its core, at perhaps it\u2019s most fundamental level, the gospel of Jesus isn\u2019t about drawing lines in the sand to exclude all who don\u2019t conform to a very narrowly defined sense of acceptability.<\/p>\n It\u2019s about embracing those rejects and calling them blessed.<\/em><\/p>\n Which is why\u00a0at the end day, between its new additions to the faith and opposition to the gospel, there\u2019s actually very little about fundamentalism that\u2019s fundamentally Christian.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (H\/T cobs, Flickr Creative Commons) \u00a0 On the sixth day God created man. On the seventh day God rested. And on the eighth day man created fundamentalism Ok, technically there were no Christians in the Garden that day and Christian fundamentalism as we know it today didn\u2019t appear in all its glory until the 19th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3437,"featured_media":12969,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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\nOn the sixth day God created man.<\/p>\n