The Appeal of Fundamentalism

I’ve never personally found fundamentalism appealing. I grew up surrounded by by various forms of fundamentalism. My home was pretty free of it, but its head popped up at church, at school, in the larger community, and within extended family. As I have matured, I have been able to note some of why it appeals to so many people. While there is plenty of fundamentalism in Jewish, Muslim, and other faith traditions, my concern and experience lies mainly with Evangelical Christian fundamentalism.

Back in high school, my classmates abhorred the rules and regulations fundamentalism handed down to everyone on the school campus. It seemed the most conservative voices called most of the shots. My classmates belonged in large part to families with fundamentalist mindsets. Meanwhile, they were in active rebellion against how that burdened their lives. On questions of religion, theology, and faith, however, I often found myself a lone voice countering many of the underpinnings of fundamentalist positions. My peers may not have liked the rules and regulations forced upon us, but did not balk at the underlying theological perspectives upholding them.

We were aware that in some circles, fundamentalism went further than what we experienced. We heard that benches at Bob Jones University were color coded pink and blue to enforce physical separation between the sexes. We heard of a student who did not graduate, as they were found to have gone to a movie theater a week before their last semester’s end. There was general angst lobbied against school policies over public display of affection. An ensemble that went out to sing in churches monthly was not allowed to rehearse with a drum set on campus, as it reminded someone on the faculty of their pre-conversion days.

This legalism did not appeal to my peers. The theological underpinnings, however, were never questioned. They provided a sense of security, a firm, unmovable foundation for understanding the Bible, God, and one’s eternal destiny. They accepted the notion that a literal interpretation of the Bible was the only faithful way to interpret and accept it as God’s Word. They accepted that God was most interested in implementing rules, condemning those who broke them, and all too willing to eternally punish anyone who stepped out of line. There was talk of God’s love and grace, but it was always given a secondary role to God as the great Judge, just waiting to send the unrepentant into Dante’s Inferno.

The Bible had to be taken literally, especially when any conflict with theories of evolution arose. When it came to things like ancient cosmology, that could be glossed over as a modern misunderstanding of the ancient text. The Bible could not be questioned. If one were to entertain doubts as to what the Bible said or how it presented things, that would rip out the entire foundation on which this fundamentalist understanding of faith was erected. Without a literally interpreted Bible, all would come crashing down like a house of cards, a house built upon a foundation of sand.

The appeal of this approach to all things concerning faith was that it was a simple approach in which notion changed or wavered. There was no need to accept changes from a growing understanding. One could focus almost completely on memorizing the details of the Biblical narratives while dispensing with a need to dialogue with them to discern what lessons they conveyed and how those lessons impacted life in the modernized world. As long as one followed all the appropriate regulations, one did not need to embrace love to a degree that made it uncomfortable. One could accept the status quo of inequality and injustice without reflecting on how Christianity might be calling us to address these issues.

Reflecting deeply on the implications of the flood narrative, one might read Genesis 9 with doubt as to whether God would truly destroy the world of humanity as a response to sin. After all, the first words uttered by Noah come after the flood, and they are a curse upon a son and his descendants for Ham’s sinful disrespect. If the point was to eradicate sin, it did not work. God had then failed. No serpent was needed to tempt Noah and his family back into sin. Though Noah had found grace prior to the flood, though the earth had supposedly been expunged from sin and its results, we are right back to where we were before the flood had come by the end of Genesis 9.

Would Yahweh not have known this would be the result? Would Yahweh not have recognized that condemnation and punishment is ineffective to resolve sin and deter humanity from falling away from the established path? If we consider such questions, the notion that Yahweh is compelled to punish and condemn begins to unravel. We would have to return to the beginning of the narrative and reconsider at it with new eyes, perhaps as a polemic retelling of the Babylonian flood myths calling us to a much deeper theological reflection.

For many of my peers and former students, that sounds like too much work. For the literalist interpreter, it sounds like an enormous threat. What do we do with our received theology while we watch its foundation shrivel up and be carried away? Time and again, I have seen people simply throw it all away and abandon any sense that there might still be something of worth in these Scriptures, as all along they were supposed to be either taken literally or completely ignored.

All or nothing thinking that can only deal with absolute extremes makes for a much simpler world. It reduces complexity to what a child can grasp. It requires little depth of thought, little mental effort, and completely avoids uncertainty. Such a world is divided clearly along lines of good and evil, friends and enemies, faithful and unfaithful, just and unjust. In such a world, it is easy to find where we stand. There is less pressure to see that growth and maturity call us to deeper reflection in an unending process. How can we be good and worthy if we never fulfill all that might be expected of us?

Enter grace. Grace is God looking upon us without this lens of human worthiness. Grace speaks of a God who is not intent on condemnation or punishment. Grace recognizes that while none of us are all that we could be, we are already loved. Grace looks upon us as so many grandparents look upon the newest addition to their family. This child might be born with 12 toes, three eyes, and four fingers, but it is still the most beautiful child in the entire world. It may scream, cry, and wail at all hours of the night, but it could never be a nuisance. It might wet through one diaper after another, refuse to nap, and demand all kinds of attention to the point that no one in the household gets any rest. None of that matters. What matters is how this new life can be helped to grow within this family in whose midst it has come.

The stork did not make a mistake. Even if it did, this little one is now ours. It already has a place in our hearts. You can’t take it away. It is loved despite all its inadequacies, disruptions, and hope for who this child might yet become. If the child becomes a mass-murderer, we will still love them, even while being gravely disappointed in the child’s actions. How could a God who is love not be even more accepting of any one of us?

Suddenly, our concept of God must change as we recognize that we are the ones so intent upon punishment, revenge, and condemnation. We must take a harder look at ourselves. While our fundamentalist ideas may allow us to belong in the camp of the redeemed and beloved, setting them aside requires we understand a greater complexity to life, faith, and God. It is never enough to be in the right camp. We must also allow God to continue directing our growth and maturity. We cannot brush aside those we have deemed unrighteous, unworthy, and unrepentant. We all belong to that same camp.

Life looks very different. It is more complex. We are made more responsible. We have fewer answers. We have many more questions. Now we must rely on things we can’t see clearly, ideas we are unable to pin down, and trust God with all of those unknowns. For some, that is a scary place to be. It is much simpler and perhaps more comforting to stick with fundamentalism. I have found that grace not only calls us to greater complexity, but also to a more valuable trust in God who remains far greater than any literalist interpretation can ever conceive.

— ©Copyright 2023, Christopher B. Harbin 

http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

My latest books  can be found here on Amazon