I had a discussion some months back regarding atheism and its potential for violence. This discussion arose out of the Intelligence Squared debate “Atheism the New Fundalementalism.” The original debate can be found here. Below is a summary of my point of view on whether or not atheism can lead to violence. Admittedly, this is more geared towards an atheist audience as a theist would most likely disagree with many of my premises. The post also uses terminology drawn from the Intelligence Squared debate, resonating from the points that Dawkins makes. Continue reading…
Archived entries for fundamentalism
I have intended to create a blog post on this topic for a while now because I think we atheists tend to use these terms interchangeably, and they are not quite interchangeable. Many fundamentalists would not want to be called an evangelical, and vice versa. But the reality is that the terms fundamentalist, evangelical and mainline Christianity rest on a continuum, with many people and churches on blurry lines between these terms. My parents were self-identified fundamentalists throughout my childhood, and then switched to a more evangelical church when I was a teenager. This post is only my first-person observations of these groups. I am not familiar with “every jot and tittle” of every point of every denomination’s doctrine. Feel free to post angry comments about how I am wrong about what some sect believes. <sarcasm>
The big issues in this debate are the inerrancy of the bible and cultural conservatism. If you were to set the broad spectrum of Christianity on a right-to-left scale, “fundamentalists” would be on the far right and “mainline” churches (United Methodists, Evangelical Lutherans, Presbyterian USA, etc.) would be on the far left. Evangelicals sit on the middle ground between these two extremes. Continue reading…
Last evening fellow blogger Samuel Won and I were talking about the distinction between evangelicals and fundamentalists, which we were a bit unclear about. After looking through some articles and recalling my own understanding, the basic - but by no means complete - understanding I have come to is this:
Evangelicals, while usually believing in the inerrancy of the Bible, are more likely to be willing to interpret that “truth” metaphorically. Even if they do have a literal interpretation of the Bible, they focus less on the importance of believing it literately and more on one’s personal relationship with Jesus. It is from evangelicalism that we get the concept of being “born again.” Spreading the gospel is also of great importance. Evangelicalism as we usually use the word today dates from the early eighteenth century, getting its first huge boost from the First Great Awakening and yet another shot in the arm in the Second Great Awakening. While evangelicals are usually conservative in their politics, there are plenty of liberal evangelicals out there.
Fundamentalism arose out of evangelicalism in the early twentieth century, and was a reaction against the more liberalizing trends of theology - in and out of evangelicalism. The most notable example of early fundamentalism in action is the Scopes Trial of 1925. Fundamentalists always believe in the literal inerrancy of the Bible, and while they also focus on the importance of having a personal relationship with Jesus, they also tend to focus a lot on the enemies of fundamentalism. The fundamentalist viewpoint focuses less on the compassion of Jesus and more on the very real presence of evil in the world. Unlike evangelicals, fundamentalists are nearly always conservative politically.
That is my summary - how would you add to or modify it?
