He asks them to stop violence and finds ways to help them in their unhappy lives. He now believes that his crimes came from Satan. Some people think he will say this as a defence in a future trial. He has been asking Liberia to start a war crimes court to try people like himself. At the moment he is still completely free. He is a complicated man who thinks he is in the hands of the supernatural.
He has exchanged one extreme position for another. First there was the darkness of Satan, and then a bright light. Very simple and very strong ideas are part of different fundamentalisms. In , religious Californian brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart used their money from oil to pay for the printing of texts called The Fundamentals to save Protestant Christianity.
These early fundamentalists were worried and replied in a very traditional way and not much has changed. Opposition is the important part of fundamentalist ideas. It might be holding on to a limited and literal understanding of scripture.
It might be saying that only they know the truth. It might be saying that only they are the pure and the chosen. Or it might be looking back to the past. Fundamentalists hate different opinions, discussion, and open minds. They think that religion is not a private matter between a person and their god. They think that they must always force religion on people and that no one can disagree with them. Violence is often the result. Young people are often unsure about their place in society and they like the certainty of fundamentalist movements.
Others also like this certainty. Now that the world is suffering from the bad effects of capitalism, uncertainty is a way of life. There is austerity and the end of materialism.
Communities are breaking down. Many people feel isolated and are looking for some kind of connection. The s was the time when the market became more important than human life. Yet the British evangelicals had always been adamant that they were not fundamentalists, and that they held none of the tenets of fundamentalism as it was found in the USA: they were not creation scientists, they were not pre-millennialist, they were not sectarian, they were not prone to the worst excesses of the holiness movement, and so on.
For Barr, these things were beside the point. The specifics of dogma were irrelevant. What counted was the defensive mindset. I would accept that "fundamentalism" is descriptive of a kind of religious mentality which is in evidence most egregiously in a kind of epistemological double standard.
That is, it is a mentality that confidently asserts the objectivity and interest-free status of its own reasoning while at the same time decrying the prejudice and interest-laden nature of the reasoning of its opponents. This is the kind of "rationalism" that Harriet Harris decries in her book Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism , and which she claims to find evident in much of conservative evangelicalism.
Why is it bad? It is chiefly bad for spiritual rather than intellectual reasons. That is, it fails to be a posture of humble confidence rather than belligerence. It claims to know what it cannot. It is pastorally irresponsible, because it relies on intellectual short-cuts which people may accept for a time and then begin to doubt, to their spiritual detriment.
I would also argue that it is bad because the fundamentalist mindset is actually not faithful to Scripture. As I noted above, fundamentalism in the strict sense had its origins in a reaction to the modernism of the mainline churches and the academy in the s. It exists because orthodox Protestant Christianity was being attacked at the very root. That is, the biblical criticism of the nineteenth century had led to a wholesale questioning of the normative Christian doctrines of the Trinity, the incarnation, the atonement and so on.
The attacks of liberal Christianity on these fundamentals were themselves a type of rationalism - that is what John Henry Newman called them in the s. They were made in full confidence that the methods of academic theology could be sufficiently objective as to establish verifiable truths - that we might be able to see through the supernaturalist accounts of the gospels to the real Jesus, and so on.
For someone like the German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, this rationalist approach had a rather more negative function in that it demolished the notion, held dearly in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, of orthodox Christianity as a faith established on rational grounds. The thought of Hume and then Kant had proven that route to be a dead end. But Schleiermacher did not despair. All this meant was that an account of Christian faith had to move into the more subjective and experiential realm.
Christianity could not be primarily a set of truths to which one gives assent. Rather - and here Schleiermacher drew on his roots in German Pietism, from which the evangelical John Wesley also drew - the Christian faith schooled the believer in the "feeling of absolute dependence. Schleiermacher gave a very sophisticated and highly original account of the Christian faith in these terms in his The Christian Faith - perhaps the most remarkable piece of Christian theology of its era.
Christianity could self-describe as a spirituality, but it was not a coherent or plausible rational system. Therefore, it is recommended not to confront large groups of people directly with what you know, or feel to be, their prejudices. There may well be emotional and hostile reactions, thus further reinforcing their prejudices.
Work instead in small groups, where people feel less threatened and more open to listening and dialogue. The advice Pope Francis offers is highly relevant in relating to any religion and culture, fundamentalist or not. He writes: "In order to sustain dialogue with Islam, suitable training is essential for all involved, not only so that they can be solidly and joyfully grounded in their own identity, but so that they also can acknowledge the values of others, appreciate the concerns underlying their demands and shed light on shared beliefs.
Axiom 7: Remember, violence in all its forms — for example, terrorism and bullying — is contrary to the Gospel. The universal guideline in relating to others is: "Do to others whatever you would have them do to you" Matthew Love must be the motivating force: "But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you … For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Matthew , Love for one's persecutors, not the "eye for an eye" directive of some terrorists, is to be the principle of action: "You have heard that it was said: 'An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.
Axiom 9: Critically assess the biases against Islam projected by politicians and the mass media. The fact is that Muslim terrorists represent only a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the world's 1. Axiom Be mindful of the complex causes of Islamic terrorism.
Two theories commonly given for the radicalization of young Muslims provide governments with foundations for policies in their "war on terror. The second theory focuses not on Islamic cultures, but on the fact that dangerous people such as Osama bin Laden have distorted the tenets of Islam. Poverty of Muslim migrants in Western countries is another important factor, as is the prejudice of Islamophobia that creates a dangerous mix, especially for young Muslims. Axiom Understand that the vast majority of Muslims in the West are model citizens, often in the face of racism.
Millions of Muslims live in the West — close to 2 million in Britain, 4 million in Germany, 5 million in France. And Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. The great majority of Muslims live peacefully beside their neighbors and do not threaten democratic values. Governments must be proactive in assisting immigrants to integrate, but do so in ways that respect, as far as possible, the immigrants' cultures.
Axiom Remember: A simple greeting to a stranger can change hearts. For example, it is the personal views and behavior of non-Muslim citizens, in countless small, everyday interactions, that will decide whether or not their Muslim fellow citizens begin to feel at home in the United States, Europe or elsewhere.
Of course individual preferences of individual Muslims and the leadership they receive from their spiritual and political leaders is equally important. The story of Bartimaeus, a blind man who "sat by the roadside begging" Mark , is a wonderful example of the power of a simple greeting.
The description connotes that, because of his blindness and economic condition, Bartimaeus has become a social outcast. Hearing Jesus approaching, Bartimaeus cries out, "Jesus, son of David, have pity on me," but many in the crowd rebuke the blind beggar. The crowd has followed Jesus and listened to his words on compassion and justice, but they remain blinded by their prejudice against people like Bartimaeus.
Jesus will have none of this fundamentalist nonsense. He calls Bartimaeus to his side. Bartimaeus detaches himself from his past identity as a beggar by throwing off his cloak and running to Jesus, an act that signifies the risk Bartimaeus took.
The cloak is his only symbol of official identity; it is the equivalent of a license to beg. Without it, he is bereft of any identity that could give him some minimum of protection: "He threw aside his cloak, sprang up and came to Jesus. They believed they had been betrayed by American statesmen who led the nation into an irresolved war with Germany, the cradle of destructive biblical criticism.
They deplored the teaching of evolution in public schools, which they paid for with their taxes, and resented the elitism of professional educators who seemed often to scorn the values of traditional Christian families.
Fundamentalists fought these changes on several fronts. Intellectually they mounted a strenuous defense of the fundamentals as they defined them of historic Christian teachings. Thus they insisted upon the necessity of a conversion experience through faith in Jesus Christ alone, the accuracy of the Bible in matters of science and history as well as theology, and the imminent physical return of Christ to the earth where he would establish a millennial reign of peace and righteousness.
Fundamentalists conveyed their convictions in numerous ways, but most prominently through the wide dissemination of twelve booklets called The Fundamentals Fundamentalists also pursued the battle through legislatures, courts, and denominational machinery. In the s they tried to monitor public school curricula by presenting anti-evolution bills in the legislatures of eleven states mostly in the South.
Undoubtedly the best-known instance, the so-called "Monkey Trial," pitted the Fundamentalist politician William Jennings Bryan against the agnostic lawyer Clarence Darrow in a steamy courtroom in Dayton, Tennessee in the summer of Bryan won in the court but lost in the press.
Partisans also fought their opponents, commonly known as Modernists, in the general conventions of several mainline denominations, including the Northern Baptists and Northern Presbyterians. Here too their record proved mixed at best.
Nonetheless, Fundamentalism continued to grow and eventually to flourish.
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