Let's Get Away from Fundamentalism!

The Christian right has been moving further to the right, politically and theologically, for a number of years, and it is getting quite distressing. I previously made fun of their leaders, who had no power and came across as buffoons to me. I never imagined that they would take control of virtually all aspects of government, exert huge influence on the news media, and influence a generation of Christians to believe our religion is all about marginalizing those who don’t agree with their version of morality.

In my evangelical seminary in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we were required to read both conservative and liberal scholars, and our classes in practical theology were heavily influenced by Presbyterian practices, which tend to be rather moderate. Conservative views were generally favored by the professors, but students were encouraged to think for themselves. Our local Christian bookstore stocked titles by liberal writers such as Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan. Evangelicals were too busy experiencing revival to worry about censoring their bookstores.

In the mid 1990s, I realize now, things began to change. I didn’t notice it at the time, as revival continued in many ways, but evangelicals were beginning to harden their right-wing stances. I noticed that parachurch organizations began seeing the need to publish a “statement of faith” to prove their worthiness, doctrinal purity, or whatever. These statements inevitably included ideas such as plenary inspiration (God dictated the Bible word by word), inerrancy (historical details are 100% accurate from a modern historiographical perspective), and infallibility (all instructions in the Bible are required and applicable for today).

Problem was, I was an evangelical preacher and I didn’t believe any of those things.

Around the same time, I went to a Bay Area Christian bookstore to buy a copy of Crossan’s Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, which was a national best seller as I recall. The clerk told me that they do not stock anti-Christian titles. I was a bit flabbergasted but left and found the book at a secular bookstore. I had long known that these stores did not stock the more scholarly titles that I often needed, but this experience marked my first experience of censorship of popular-level Christian books that is almost universal among evangelical bookstores today.

When George W. Bush was elected president, the Christian right hardened its stance further. The evangelical spiritual revival stopped for all practical purposes, and the new aim was to consolidate political power and further marginalize those involved in abortion, gays and lesbians, supporters of science, and advocates of a sane judiciary. The 9/11 attacks gave them a platform to declare other religions “evil,” as evangelist Franklin Graham said at the time.

I only hope that the recent elections have brought a dose of humility to the religious right. They are a part of the problem of violence in this world. You see, the problems that we see in our world today are largely fueled not by religion but by fundamentalism.

My definition of fundamentalism involves the use of rhetoric that says that other religions are evil and wicked. It’s one thing to believe that Christianity is the only way to God, but it’s quite another to declare that other faiths are evil, or that no truth can come from them. I have long observed that 90% of the ethical teachings of the great world religions overlap. I have preached from evangelical pulpits that Islam, Hinduism, Buddism, and the like have discovered much of the same truth about how life is to be lived that Christians have.

I don’t believe that Christianity is the only way to God. My church’s mission statement says that “Jesus’ teaching is the clearest revelation of God in our experience,” and that reflects my current thinking pretty well. Jesus is the best way but not the only way.

But even if you do believe that Christianity is the only way, you can be respectful of other faith traditions and cognizant that most of their teachings are consistent with Christianity. You can have the attitude of Billy Graham, who has stated that he respects the Islamic tradition and is willing to leave it up to God whether to save them. His attitude reflects a maturity of many years of ministry. Sadly, his son Franklin is not so mature, and to my knowledge continues to characterize Islam as evil.

Our church has a relationship with a local mosque. We go to their Friday prayers, and they come to our services, about once a quarter. As I have gotten to know some of the Muslims in our community, I have come to see the compassion, the service, and the devotion of that community—which in many ways puts the Christian community to shame.

You might ask, “What about the terrorists?” A friend of mine who has a writing ministry states that their motivation comes from their Islamic theology. By extension, he implies that Islam is a violent and evil religion. It’s true that their motivation is based on theology, but it’s bad theology. The Ku Klux Klan used Christian theology to justify its actions, but it was a perversion of true Christianity. Similarly, terrorism is a perversion of true Islam. But it’s a predictable outcome in people who have been oppressed.

The Islamic fundamentalists from Al Queda have killed some 4,000 people in their various attacks—3,000 of them on 9/11. But the Christian fundamentalists in the White House have facilitated the deaths of somewhere between 52,000 and 600,000 mostly Muslim civilians. So the Christian fundamentalists have beaten the Muslim fundamentalists, I suppose, but what is the real benefit?

The Iraq war has cost about $250 million per day since it began, totaling almost $354 billion at this writing. Back when the cost was only $87 billion, John Perkins wrote, after listing a myriad of U.S. corporate and government abuses of third-world countries,

“The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995. The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.”

“And we wonder why terrorists attack us?” (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, xiv)

The problem is not Islam, it’s senseless poverty. The problem is not Islam, it’s fundamentalism.

I pray that the fundamentalist tendencies of the religious right will be softened, and that a more compassionate policy will come from our country in the future. It’s possible to bring an end to extreme poverty, and doing this will do more to reduce terrorism than a million soldiers. Now we just need someone with the political will to act.