Fundie Friday -- The Bible

Sorry I've been away for a couple of weeks, as I've been busy at work latey and thus have had little time to think. I've also been battling a bit of depression (hopefully seasonal) and just a general ill-feeling (which I'm hoping is a simply viral or bacteriological infection that my immune system can dispose of soon). I missed last week's Fundie Friday, and this one will be a day late, but I haven't forgotten them, and as my way of doing penance (ha!) I'm going to be tackling a big topic today.

The Bible.

(Almost makes me want to stick a "booklog" tag on this thing... hey, a booklog entry for the Bible might be really interesting...)

So anyway, my goal for today is to talk a bit about what the Bible is and how it has been viewed historically, and then to contrast this with how modern-day American fundamentalists see it.

The Bible is composed of 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament which were originally the Jewish scriptures (slightly edited and shuffled for the Christian Bible) and 27 in the New Testament focusing on the life and meaning of Jesus. It was assembled sometime in the third or fourth century AD in its current form, and around 1500 was translated into English. (The King James Version was originally published in 1611.)

Throughout most of the history of the text, most of those who would call themselves Christians were illiterate, and therefore the Catholic church relied on the education of priests to get the message out about the nature of Christian doctrine and belief. Catholic theology emphasized the Bible as a source of information about the faith, but also considered authoritative were (and are still today) the traditional understanding of Christian belief from the earlier Church fathers, and the interpretaion of the Pope, considered Christ's ultimate representative on Earth.

Then came the Reformation. Luther rejected the teachings of the Church and placed his emphasis on the Bible itself. This got passed on to the entire Protestant movement, especially to the Americas, where being an entire ocean away from Rome made depending on traditional Church heiarchy a bit of an impossibility. When modern-day Fundamentalism was born, this was made explicit -- the only authoritative work in this sense was the Bible.

Add to this a certain amount of anti-intellectualism and lack of respect for learning in general, and you end up with the idea that any person, no matter what their education and understanding, should be able to approach and gain moral and spiritual instruction from the Bible without any kind of contextual framework. Modern-day fundies believe that the Holy Spirit guides each of us in our understanding of the Bible, and that simply reading it will give us all the understanding we're trying to get.

This is important, so let me belabor it a bit more. Parts of the Bible approach five millennia in age -- the earliest parts of the Bible were written by nomadic goat-herders trying to communicate their understanding of the rules of society to each other. Despite their antiquity, they had a very complex society with a highly complex set of social rules and mores. Even the newest parts of the Bible were written some nineteen-hundred years ago, by persecuted followers of a Jewish rabbi in the Roman era. These are books written to and for a specific audience, in a very different context for today's people, even today's Christians, and expecting the same rules for living and stories to speak directly to modern people without any sort of context is to remove the entire meaning of the stories.

For instance, how many people today have any idea what a "Samaritan" is? It's something that even many educated Christians don't know, yet it is essential for understanding the meaning of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

So modern-day Fundies read the Bible with a total lack of context, with the view that any person can read it and gain knowledge of the divine. This is bad enough, but they also believe that the Bible is inerrant, i.e. completely free of defect of any kind. This is different from the primary historical view, which indicated that the Bible was merely infallible in matters of faith and practice, while details of geography, science, history might be distorted by those who wrote the texts. No, modern-day fundies believe that is the Bible claims the universe was created in six days, then that's exactly how long the universe took to be created. And if it says that forty thousand people wandered the desert for forty years, then there's no way that 39,999 wandered for thirty-nine years and 364 days.

This leads to the curious phenomenon of "proof-texting" whereby in order to prove that something is true, it's only necessary to find some place in the Bible where a sequence of words lends some credence to your position, without consideration of context or overall meaning. In honesty, proof-texting is one of those things that even fundies tend to look down on, acknowledging at least some respect for context, but it's also the sort of thing that they call accuse the other guys of doing -- i.e. if you don't agree with me it's because you're clearly just "proof-texting" instead of really understanding.

This has gotten a bit long, but all of this is just a preamble to the weirdest element of the way fundies treat the Bible. Despite their reliance on the Good Book as a sort of infallible instruction manual for the universe, despite their belief that this is a text that simply cannot be wrong, that the Bible is quite literally God explaining Himself to the universe...

...most fundies haven't read it. Many of them haven't even read a whole book of the Bible, or even a whole chapter. Instead they read it in quotations, or take the tack that the ignorant peasants of Europe in the Middle Ages did, and simply accept what their spiritual leaders tell them about the contents of scripture.

This view of the universe through the contents of a book that is not understood and in most cases not even read influences the very fabric of the way that fundamentalists view the world, and will obviously be a focus of future entries in this series. Which I hope will be a bit more timely than this one.

Fundie Friday -- A Wee Bit Circular?

I'm tired so I'm keeping it quick today. One of the most fascinating aspects of the modern fundamentalist movements is illustrated in this cartoon over at Answers in Genesis. (I promise I'll start doing creationism pieces soon -- it's a big topic and I could do a year or two just detailing the idiocy there, so be patient.)



Hm. So God exists and Christianity is true because... the Bible says so? You often see this argumentation among fundamentalists, but rarely this blatantly. It's tempting (and sometimes accurate) to think that this comes about from simple weakmindedness, that the fundies simply don't see how circular this belief structure is. But there are other factors at play -- let me briefly discuss a couple of them.

1. Social pressures Fundies often live in a self-contained intellectual world (this is, again, another topic we can go into in detail) and are raised in an environment in which everyone around them is another fundie. Since every person they speak to believes in the self-evident truth of the Bible, it's easy for them to simply accept those cultural values unthinkingly. Unless one is very circumspect about understanding cultural assumptions, this happens to the best of us -- could most of the people reading this argue for the value of, say, artistic integrity from first principles? While these arguments exist, most of us just absorb our matrix of values from the culture at large. (This is one reason why multicultural understanding and integration is so important, but that's a whole other slew of topics not even really related to this.)

2. Conversion experience One of the interesting aspects of the Christian faith is that it emphasizes not so much an ideology as a personal religious experience -- Christians often insist that they personally have spoken with or in some cases even touched God Himself. Indeed, when I myself was converted to Christianity I believed that God was speaking to me, although I believed that he was speaking through the circumstances in my life and through my own understanding of the world rather than through some hallucinatory experience. This emphasis on the personal faith in a Living Christ leads to a certain will to believe in the words that are said to be the words of this "person" whom they now believe to be the Son of God.

To put this another way, when one becomes a Christian it is generally put in terms of a personal experience. Rightly or wrongly, most people who convert to Christianity believe that they have had some sort of personal relationship to Christ. From there, it's easy to see that for a Christian, belief in the Bible is not just a question of vague ideology or abstract theology, but a living, breathing, daily experience. In this context, believing in the Bible is not so much trusting that "well, the Bible says it's true" so much as it is believing that their own experiences in this regard are faulty. Or, to put it another way, they really do believe that they're simply trusting their eyes and their experiences, and that believing that God spoke to them makes more sense than believing in those hard-to-understand equations, measurements, and observations that go into understanding modern science.

This makes fundamentalist thought difficult to combat, as it's based on an explicit belief in a delusional reality. To argue that their beliefs are delusional is insulting and misguided, I think -- better is to point out that the plural of "anecdote" is not "data," and that scientific inquiry is much more intersubjective than their own religious experiences.

Fundie Friday -- Fundamentalist Vs. Evangelical

I realize that last week I used the term "evangelical" a lot, and have named this feature "Fundie Friday," but I think there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding regarding those two terms, and I'd like to take a bit of time today to briefly (briefly) define the two terms, and discuss the differences. Many people use the terms interchangeably (even those who describe themselves by them), but each term has a specific historical genesis, and it's worthwhile to examine that.

First, since it's the easy one, let's do evangelical. The word comes from two Greek words that put together mean "good message" or "good news" -- this, then, is a sort of Greek translation for "Gospel." Put more broadly, the term refers to the Christian concept of the Great Commission, i.e. to spread the faith to all people, giving God's word to all.

It's important to note in today's religious environment that this is actually a pretty strange trait for a religion to have. Not all religions evangelize; Judaism, for instance, specifically teaches that its members are not to spread the faith unless they are specifically sought out by individuals who actually want to join, and has certain discouraging tactics. And there are plenty of religions from the era in which Christianity got its start that were "mystery religions," i.e. religions in which knowledge of the inner sancta was only granted upon successive feats of loyalty and devotion to the faith. Arguably, Scientology is such a belief today.

"Evangelical," then, is a term that applies to all Christians today, absent a few minor splinter groups that follow a more restrictive path to knowledge. There is a certain stigma to the term nowadays, given that conservative elements of the faith muddy it with their own agenda, but even very liberal denominations like the United Church of Christ or the Episcopals would consider themselves evangelical about their faith.

What, then, is Fundamentalism? While "evangelical" has a historical basis in the very earliest days of Christianity, "fudamentalism" is much more recent. In fact, it's not quite a hundred years old. The term refers originally to a series of articles published in volumes called The Fundamentals in which the authors, Lyman Stewart of Biola University and his brother Milton, attempted to summarize the root beliefs of Christian doctrine. (The link above links to an online copy of the original texts.)

You see, around this time a new academic field of textual criticism was coming into vogue. Textual criticism is a method allowing historians and students of literature to analyze literary works (such as, say, The Odyssey as historical works, that is, by attempting to analyze which parts of these stories were true and which were not-true through analyzing earlier works, historical evidence, etc. Applying this method to the Bible (in particular, the Pentateuch, i.e. the first five books of the Old Testament) yielded the Documentary Hypothesis, in which it became clear that the Pentateuch was not written by Moses himself as was taken as sacrosanct, but had four authors who contradicted each other and whose works were then redacted by a fifth. (When applied to biblical studies this technique is known as "higher criticism.")

Another target of The Fundamentals was the theory of evolution, which was around that time coming back into vogue as the Modern Synthesis reconciling Darwin and Mendel was being established. William Jennings Bryan himself preached from these books, and the idea of "biblical literalism" as we speak of it today is derived largely from them.

Over time, followers of these books became known as "Fundamentalists," as opposed to the "mainline" churches like the Episcopals that (for the most part) did not reject the teachings of modern science about the history of their faith. Fundamentalism grew out of fertile soil in the United States for a variety of reasons, but the most prominent was a long history of rejection of religious authority from afar (most religions in America preferred their religious authorities close by, not in, say, Rome) and of rejection of education and modern teaching. (This is a whole other topic which I'll deal with another time.)

So we can see that while "evangelical" is a term that refers to a simple spreading of faith, whatever the method or ideals, "fundamentalist" refers to a specific rejection of modern science and philosophy, and has a specifically anti-intellectual bent. This is why the term is used to denigrate other highly authoritarian/hidebound movements with terms like "fundamentalist Islam." Personally, I find myself gritting my teeth whenever I hear such terms, as making the explicit connection between a specific historical movement between conservative elements of the two faiths assumes a kind of one-to-one analogy that is simply not the case. Conservative Islamic groups don't behave culturally or ideologically like conservative Christian groups, and tarring both with the same brush is just asking for misunderstandings.

(For that matter, many of those who are most vituperative of "fundamentalist Islam" come from the most reactionary of Christians. Again, there are lots of historical reasons for this, and again, it's not something I'm going to get into right now.)

Now, in practice I'm basically using the two terms interchangeably, as many modern-day fundamentalists avoid the term and call themselves evangelicals. But it's important to keep the difference in mind when understanding what it is that this feature is about -- I don't have the goal of necessarily criticizing all religion, or even all of Christianity (although I am an atheist), but rather in criticizing specifcally those reactionary movements that exist only to reject modern scientific and social advance. That a person believes in God and wants to share that belief with others is perfectly fine, assuming that they are reasonable in how they act on that, but a rejection of reality that forms the basis of fundamentalism is a much different and more dangerous thing. And much more entertaining, as we'll see as I keep putting up these posts.

Fundie Friday -- Gays and the Gospel

I have Ray Comfort's blog on my RSS reader. If you pay any attention to religious television programming at all, you've probably seen Comfort, as he's usually standing or sitting next to former Growing Pains star Kirk Cameron on the program The Way of the Master. Or you might have seen this video on Youtube, a segment from that program called The Atheist's Nightmare.



Yeah, so clearly this guy isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. (For those who don't know, bananas in the wild are small, bitter, and tough -- it is through selective breeding, not the will of God, that bananas now have such wonderfully convenient characteristics. A can of soda has many of the same characteristics Comfort gives for the banana, for pretty much the exact same reasons.) But today I'm not going to kick the man while he's down (although his blog is full of the kinds of strange non-sequitors you see above), but rather discuss some of the reasoning behind this passage in the blog post linked above.

People often ask how to respond to those who are homosexuals, and yet consider themselves to be Christians. While a fornicator, a homosexual, an adulterer, a thief, and liar can become a Christian, it is important to understand that they cannot remain in their sins. If someone does, he is simply a pretender (a hypocrite). To be a Christian, you must stop your sinful lifestyle, commonly called "repentance."

Right now I'm not going to go into the extremely thin scriptural support for hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality, but instead want to look at the implications of what's said here. In Comfort's worldview, homosexuality is a behavior, something that is done by someone, no different in principle than fornication, adultery, thievery, etc. (That Comfort so readily lumps vastly different items together as "sins" is another issue that we won't get into today.) A truly repentant person, in this view, will stop "choosing" to perform homosexual acts and will either become heterosexual, or become celibate.

The truth, of course, is that homosexuality is not a question of choice, but of ontology -- a person's sexual preferences are generally programmed in either during fetal development, or in the early years of life, long before any issues of adult "choice" come into play. This is the primary reason LGBT activists have to fight so hard against fundamentalists for their rights on a "nature/nuture" question, i.e. it is much easier for people to accept behavior and attitudes which are repugnant to them if they believe that those doing those acts are performing them because of their natures, rather than because they choose that activity.

(Of course, it's also self-evident to pretty much any rational non-fundie person that even if homosexual behavior were a choice, that so long as it is performed by consenting adults behind closed doors there should be no reason to be alarmed. In other words, that homosexual sex should be treated the exact same way as heterosexual sex. But we're talking fundies here, whose views often have little to do with reality, as we see every time we take a detailed look at their viewpoints on pretty much any issue.)

To continue Comfort's post:

So, how do you tell someone that, without causing undue offense? I would witness to him using God’s Law (the Ten Commandments). I wouldn't mention the homosexual issue until he is humbled, and sin is seen in its true light. There's a very good reason for this. No proud person can see the nature of his own sins. He is blinded by pride. If you have done marriage counselling, you will know this to be true. If there is no humility, there won't be an open ear to reason. So the Law should be used to humble the human heart, show sin in its true light, and hopefully show the person his error, and his great danger.

It's a bit difficult to parse this unless you're on the inside track of fundie thinking, but here Comfort is basically giving a standard "sales pitch" for Christianity. The modern version of this comes primarily from C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, and rests on the idea that the salvation of Christ is misguided until the recipient realizes that salvation is necessary. Lewis encouraged evangelists to discuss with the potential convert the sins of that convert, probing to develop the sense of Moral Law (i.e. feelings of guilt, to those of us not on the ball with early 20th century Christian lingo) in the convert, and then convincing them that only through Jesus Christ can salvation from this guilt be found.

It's an impressively effective method when done well, and it forms the entire basis of Comfort and cameron's Way of the Master ministry. Indeed, large sections of the television program involve Comfort approaching people on the street and using this method, asking, "Have you ever lied? Or stolen? Or coveted?" etc., then using the cultural respect that even vaguely unbelieving people seem to have for the Bible and Christianity to "wedge" into the belief system and attempt to convert the unbeliever.

So, for an evangelist like Comfort, homosexuals provide a wonderful opportunity for conversion. Since they are living a "sinful lifestyle" by default, one must only provoke guilt (that, of course, must be buried somewhere in even the most unrepentant heart), stoking the flames to the surface of the persona, then delivering the "Good News" to the person and counting one more saved soul for Christ. While gay ministries get the most press, this is also the purpose of church-run alcohol-abuse programs, gambling addiction programs, et cetera. They are all too happy to bring in sinners, to help them, for they know that in those sinful sinful hearts there exist a great desire for hope for the future, for a release from the pain that these "sins" cause, and thus a hunger for the Word of the Lord.

Which is also why so many of these social-work programs run by churches are so ineffective. It's because they don't really exist to help the people who go to them, but as thinly veiled evangelism programs preying on people who are in many cases at the lowest point of their lives. This isn't to say that all of these programs are like this -- many religiously-run charities and social programs are excellent, and run for the good of those who need them the most. But the kind of simpleminded approach to evangelism by fundamentalists is despicable, and instead of working to help the people around them, they're literally fleecing their flocks.

Fundie Friday: Religious and Political Conservatives

I've been a bit flummoxed as to what to write about on today's entry of Fundie Friday. I was tempted to write a fairly in-depth analysis of the history of the Fundamentalist movement, but that's a fairly big project (actually, doing it properly would probably earn me a PhD) and a bit more effort than I wanted to go through today.

And then I stumbled across this article, by Brannon Howse of the Christian Worldview Network.

On my live radio program, Thursday afternoon, I asked my audience to grade the Presidency of George W. Bush as an A, B, C, D, or F. Not one caller gave him an A. In fact, he averaged the grade of a C.

[...]

The bottom line is this; true conservatives are extremely disappointed in President Bush. Without Reagan conservatives, he would not have been elected and re-elected and they feel like their worldview was not strongly and consistently represented.


Two of the greatest failures of President Bush was squandering two historic opportunities. After eight long years of putting up with the antics of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and their big government, the American people were hungry to follow a leader that was moral, convicted and conservative. After 9-11, he again was given a great opportunity to lead like no other president in modern time. On both accounts, President Bush squandered his opportunities.

Which made me think about the ways that modern political conservatism is intertwined with religious conservatism, in ways that don't have an immediate cause. If you keep reading, this becomes more apparent, as Howse gives a whole litany of reasons why Bush deserves a no greater grade than "C". (Actually, I agree that Bush is an awful president, but of course for wildly different reasons.) The list, with my commentary, below:

Under his “compassionate conservatism”, which means massive, liberal social spending programs, we have seen the government grow beyond the growth rates of Bill Clinton, even when you take out military spending.

Under the Bush Administration, the Department of Education grew. This happened with such legislation as “No Child Left Behind” that President Bush passed by partnering with Senator Ted Kennedy.

These are both "small government" conservatism, which so far as I know is not a biblical principle. Jesus never told us to help the poor, so long as we don't create a government entitlement program, after all.

Bush pushed for the amnesty of 20 million illegal aliens when he knew that it was not what the American people desired.

Yeah, Christ would've been all about kicking out the darkies, wouldn't he?

The Solicitor General of President Bush has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court against the 2nd Amendment and in favor of depriving the citizens of D.C. the right to bear arms. If the Court agrees with the Solicitor General, this could be chilling for the 2nd Amendment.

Another Jesus quote: "Always go armed."

In January 2008, President Bush traveled to Israel to urge Israel to give up their land to terrorists. President Bush turned on Israel by telling them to stop occupying the land.

This one is legitimately religious, so long as one equates "the government of Israel" with "the Israeli people and religious traditions which are important to the Christian faith." Then again, Israel has a big role to play in the fundie versions of the apocalypse (which I will not go into here!), so that plays into a large part of the reasoning here.

Bush pushed through his big government prescription drug program.

Again with the big government rhetoric. And of course our Savior would let his magic powers cure all disease, rather than try to give the old and needy medicine that would help them live longer, more productive, and happier lives. Then again, maybe Howse just endorses the Gospel of Suffering like Mother Theresa.

The Bush administration has been teeming with radical homosexuals like Mark Dybul at the State Department.

Okay, admittedly, God does hate the gays...

His administration has introduced and promoted the North American Union.

..and apparently also hates supranational organizations. This is part of that whole odious "End Times" theology thing.

An executive order by President Bush allowed for an estimated 100 Mexican trucking companies to travel over our borders. This is not only dangerous but drives down the wages of American truckers and makes the trafficking of drugs more likely.

President Bush refused to fund and build a wall to keep out illegal aliens. President Bush signed a bill to fund and build the wall before the last election and then his administration put so much red tape in the way that its construction was halted.

More with the hatred of brown people. Geez, Howse, couldn't you keep your bigotry all together so I can comment on it all at one time?

President Bush has celebrated the Muslim holiday Ramadan inside the White House.

For the leader of a secular nation to pay homage to the faith of a large minority of the residents of that country is perfectly fine. Of course, when the leader of our Christian Nation (tm) does it, hell's (literally) to pay!

President Bush has refused to pardon two border patrol agents that shot a convicted drug dealer in the side of the butt. These two men now sit in prison and one was assaulted while in prison.

Because when cops shoot people, they shouldn't have to pay for that crime. And of course President Bush is responsible for the misdeeds of the criminals in the prison where they are housed...

The administration of President Bush has built a U.S. Embassy in Bagdad that cost nearly one billion dollars.

It's okay, Brannon, just think of it as a big church....

President Bush was slow on defending traditional marriage once in office. Months of meetings and arm twisting by the Arlington Group was required to finally get the President to give a speech in defense of a Constitutional Amendment to defend marriage.

Wow, they're criticacl of him for being "slow on defending" their version of "traditional marriage." But this is, in their eyes, a legitimate "faith issue", so I'll let it pass.

There are reports from former White House insiders that major players inside the White House would regularly mock evangelical conservatives.

Because it's totally Bush's fault if some of the employees of the administration exercised their rights to free speech. Totally affects Bush's overall job performance, too.

President Bush could have quickly signed legislation to make the cross in San Diego a national memorial and shut-up the liberal ACLU that wanted the cross removed. President Bush waited months before responding.

Ooh, the first dig against the ACLU. Again, note that Bush eventually did something about their concerns, but not fast enough to suit them.

President Bush has failed to defend his policies and administration in a well crafted and executed public relations campaign. He failed to use the “bully pulpit” to sell his agenda to the American people. For instance, why did he not introduce former, top Iraqi air force general Georges Sada to the American people in a major press conference? General Sada spent months in the US speaking and promoting his book, Saddam’s Secrets. General Sada said that Saddam Hussein smuggled biological and chemical weapons into Syria, using civilian airliners acting under cover of a humanitarian mission.

Actually, failure to communicate with the American people is one of the things that I'm most upset with Bush about. But as a uniquely religious thing? And their example is just ludicrous, how about, "lied and got us into a war with no end?" A bit like blaming Charles Manson for jaywalking.

President Bush has allowed the globalist at the State Department to set his foreign policy agenda.

Again with the whole End Times-infused hatred of mulitlateral policy and the UN. God damn it, I'm going to have to talk about it one of these days....

Now, I'm not making any comments about the correctness or incorrectness of the claims above. But note how many of them are not really biblical or even religious in nature, but are based in a particular type of movement conservatism. It's possible, for instance, to be a hard-core conservative fundamentalist who belives in a literal Adam and Eve and still think that something like a prescription drug benefit is a good thing. The reasons for this kind of intertwining is complex, as I said, but largely comes from the rise of the Religious Right movements of the 1970s and 1980s.

It's this immediate connection with religion and Republican politics (right-wing Republican politics, at that!) that makes the fundies most dangerous. That a large number of people believe that evolution isn't true is one thing, that that same number of people have an organized movement to force their opinions on science educators is quite another.

I'll be dealing with these issues throughout the life of this blog, but this is just one example of this strange connection, and to my mind it's a signifier of why understanding the nature of the fundie mindset (and hence why I started this feature) is so important. By understanding what fundies believe and why they believe it, we can begin to understand how to combat the misconceptions present in their view of the world.

Fundie Friday -- a view from I-65

I'm starting a new feature here at Endosymbiosis. Since I live here in the Heart of Dixie, Bible Country, whatever, and have a great deal of experience with certain forms of fundamentalist Christianity, every Friday I plan on posting a little something relating to that. It may be a review of a Christian movie or book, it may be some political commentary about the way the religious right votes, or even a bit of philosophy or theology that I find interesting.

Or, like today, it might just be a link to a silly picture.

I see this sign every time I go see my family in Millbrook. It's been there for at least a decade, and I have no idea who owns it or maintains it. Alabamians lacking any sense of perspective when it comes to religious faith, I'm pretty certain it's not meant ironically, but is it really meant to be taken entirely seriously? This bucolic, almost Edenic scene, which is then ruined with a placard referring people to church else this cartoony devil will eat your soul? It's astonishing, and it's just one more persnickety detail about living in a state of fundies.