Like conservative, fundamentalist (or fundamentalism) is a label you can find frequently in many of my more political posts. Generally, when I write about fundamentalists, I am referring to those of the Christian persuasion. There is an obvious reason for this -- Christian fundamentalists are more prevalent in the US than Buddhist or Muslim fundamentalists!
If I happened to live in another country or, maybe, a distinct enclave in this country, I might be writing about a different brand of fundamentalism. But the Christian brand is the one that tries to shove itself down my throat and so this is the kind I speak out against.
The root word for fundamentalist is, naturally, fundamental. In the form of a noun, it is defined as "Something that is an essential or necessary part of a system or object." Therefore, the fundamentalist sees it as their mission to defend those essential and necessary parts of their belief system.
But here is the part of the equation that I often find is lost on most self-defined fundamentalists: What they understand to be a baseline belief in their faith was, at one time, a non-fundamentalist idea! In other words, what they take as a time-honored orthodoxy was, in an earlier time, a revolutionary concept.
Whatever one believes about the Christian religion, I think that most people agree that Jesus was a transformative figure. A good deal of the Jews of his day were expecting a messiah who would lead them in war against their oppressors. What they got was a traveling rabbi who ate with prostitutes, cursed the religious authorities and spoke about peace and love.
Current day evangelicals have taken this revolutionary figure and have built upon his life story the edifice of today's fundamentalist beliefs. In the process, they have come to demonize anyone who follows in Jesus' footsteps -- whether "religious" or not -- who advocate ideas that today might be considered revolutionary.
It seems completely lost on today's fundamentalists that they have taken the place of the orthodox religious authorities of antiquity (i.e., the Sadducees and Pharisees) that Jesus himself spoke out against.
If I happened to live in another country or, maybe, a distinct enclave in this country, I might be writing about a different brand of fundamentalism. But the Christian brand is the one that tries to shove itself down my throat and so this is the kind I speak out against.
The root word for fundamentalist is, naturally, fundamental. In the form of a noun, it is defined as "Something that is an essential or necessary part of a system or object." Therefore, the fundamentalist sees it as their mission to defend those essential and necessary parts of their belief system.
But here is the part of the equation that I often find is lost on most self-defined fundamentalists: What they understand to be a baseline belief in their faith was, at one time, a non-fundamentalist idea! In other words, what they take as a time-honored orthodoxy was, in an earlier time, a revolutionary concept.
Whatever one believes about the Christian religion, I think that most people agree that Jesus was a transformative figure. A good deal of the Jews of his day were expecting a messiah who would lead them in war against their oppressors. What they got was a traveling rabbi who ate with prostitutes, cursed the religious authorities and spoke about peace and love.
Current day evangelicals have taken this revolutionary figure and have built upon his life story the edifice of today's fundamentalist beliefs. In the process, they have come to demonize anyone who follows in Jesus' footsteps -- whether "religious" or not -- who advocate ideas that today might be considered revolutionary.
It seems completely lost on today's fundamentalists that they have taken the place of the orthodox religious authorities of antiquity (i.e., the Sadducees and Pharisees) that Jesus himself spoke out against.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments are unmoderated, so you can write whatever you want.