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Books Reviewed: Born Again and Again: Surprising Gifts of a Fundamentalist Childhood. By Jon Sweeney. Paraclete, 160 pp. Leaving the Saints: How I Lost the Mormons and Found My Faith. By Martha Beck. Three Rivers, 320 pp., paperback. My Fundamentalist Education: A Memoir of a Divine Girlhood. By Christine Rosen. Public Affairs, 240 pp. …
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The chief features of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism asserts that humans must submit to the authority of the Divine Being, whose divinely revealed truths and absolute commands they believe to have been permanently revealed.
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Fundamentalism is religiously dangerous. Christian fundamentalism, by capturing the mainline churches as it has been doing, is preventing Christianity from playing a positive and creative role in shaping the modern global society.
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All fundamentalisms — including Jewish, Christian and Muslim — endanger world peace and security.
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Fundamentalism has some valid points to make in its reaction to the secular world. The author discusses these points, and then suggests some ways to counter specific forms of fundamentalism that pose dangers for all. A number of helpful references are listed.
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Fundamentalists are often justly lampooned for being uncritical about matters of history and science. I have heard young-earth creationists haplessly respond to questions about dinosaur bones by suggesting that they were planted by the devil to test believers’ faith or fabricated by scientists with an axe to grind against God. Sooner or later creationists’ kids …
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The Book of Jerry Falwell: Fundamentalist Language and Politics By Susan Friend Harding. Princeton University Press, 352 pp., also in paperback. Many of us expect perfection from America’s religious leaders and then quickly pounce on them when they are inevitably revealed as no better than human. The discovery of Jesse Jackson’s adultery provided the most …
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One can, however, find fundamentalist-like movements in almost every period of the church’s history, and today the evangelistic zeal of American fundamentalism has taken the movement to every continent where some indigenous Christian groups have welcomed it. Fundamentalism essentially applies to those who have split off from modern Christianity’s mainline developments; these dissenters hold to …
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BOOK REVIEW: Fundamentalisms Observed, ed. by Martin E. Martyand R. Scott Appleby (University of Chicago Press, 872 pp., $40.00. In addition to enhancing our understanding of fundamentalism in the U.S., Fundamentalisms Observed, edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (University of Chicago Press, 872 pp., $40.00), demonstrates the extent to which fundamentalism is …
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(ENTIRE BOOK) An excellent brief analysis of fundamentalism in three major faiths — Christianity, Islam and Judiasm.
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As the message of Pentecost spread, it adapted to fit existing cultures. Korean Pentecostals, for instance, frequently climb “prayer mountains” for pre-sunrise prayer services, a reflection of a pre-Christian past. At Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, reputedly the world’s largest church, parishioners recite the Apostles’ Creed, pray or sing the Lord’s Prayer, and pray …
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Colleagues, friends, hopeful Democrats and apprehensive Republicans often ask me if the Religious Right has run out of steam. I tell them that for nearly two decades I have been reading books and articles that purport to describe and explain the “rise and fall” or the “failed crusade” of the Christian Right. Religious conservatives have …
Continue reading “How the Fundamentalists Learned to Thrive”
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A new book, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence of Conservative Christianity (Doubleday-Galilee, 269 pp., $13.95), reveals the intensity of the power struggle in reactionary Protestantism and the dilemmas of leadership within that faction. Authors Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, professors at Liberty Baptist College in Virginia, base their reasonably balanced effort to define and locate …
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I was raised in a tiny Pentecostal denomination, the Open Bible Standard Churches, founded in part by disillusioned followers of 1930s revivalist Aimee Semple McPherson. My parents were Open Bible pastors, many of my uncles and aunts were missionaries, and one uncle served as the denomination’s president. During my late teens and early 20s I …
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Two decades ago, when Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals were regarded as religious “crazies” in many parts of Catholic Latin America, converts tended to keep their religion to themselves. ‘People didn’t admit to being evangelical,” recalled an evangelical pastor in Bogotá, “because they feared they would be rejected by their neighbors and employers.” Today when, in …
Continue reading “The Fundamentalist Surge in Latin America”
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It has been virtually axiomatic in Western society that an organic link exists between religion and ethics. In fact, those who find the tenets of religion intellectually unconvincing often defend it on the grounds that it is essential in order to preserve the moral fabric of society. This is basically the position of Immanuel Kant …
Continue reading “The Revival of Religion and the Decay of Ethics”
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A great deal is being written these days about the increasing role of religion in American life, and in particular, its political life. A recent book by best selling author Kevin Phillips, entitled American Theocracy (Penguin Books, Viking Group, 2006) details the central role religion now plays in America. Many writers — sociologists, historians, cultural …
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Hang around mainline churches for a while and sooner or later you’ll hear worried remarks about fundamentalists. Stories of their tactics and foibles frequent the newspapers. Some of their leaders broadcast regularly on radio and television. But what exactly is fundamentalism? Do journalists have it straight? Or have we been receiving misleading information? Thanks to …
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I heard that when the tribulation comes, China will be one of the few countries with a big enough army to take over the United States." My parishioner looked at me earnestly, awaiting confirmation of her theological and political observation. This woman, the spiritual rock of the church, doesn’t fit the media profile of …
