What celebrities could be considered religious fundamentalists? Note-I don’t just mean Christian fundies, although they’d probably be the most numerous. You could add say, Cat Stevens for a fundamentalist Muslim. (If he IS a fundy, I don’t know off hand).
I can think of:
Kirk Cameron and his wife, Chelsea Noble. Also Kirk’s younger sister, Candace Cameron Bure.
I think I read somewhere the Gary Busey used to shill for Jim and Tammy Faye, and Benny Hinn.
Are Kaballah and Scientology considered?
I could probably think of a couple die-hard fundies in these categories.
Mel Gibson
I might be wrong, but I’m sure I heard somewhere that Jim Caviezel is very religious.
i’m not exactly sure if this makes him what one would call a Fundy but Catholicism definately plays an important role in his life.
Also, does Tom Cruise count?
I don’t think I would count Gary Busey. While he did go through a period of outward spirituality, from what I’ve read, his beliefs are actually kinda nebulous.
Jimmy Dodd was quite a devout believer, by all accounts. I think he would qualify. Of course, he’s also quite dead.
Lisa Whelchel is an obvious choice. So is Broadway star and Disney mermaid Jodi Benson. Hammer is supposedly devout as well, although I don’t know if he’d qualify as a fundamentalist. Mister T gives many indications of this as well, although I don’t know enough about him to gauge how sincere his convictions are.
One of the Baldwins (I think it was Stephen…whichever one was in The Usual Supsects) was on the radio show, Lovelines and was just an insufferable, babbling, fundaloony nutcase. He was trying to perform miracles on the air and kept proselytizing all the callers.
Distinguishing liberal Christians (Della Reese, Dolly Parton, etc.), celebrities who’ve discussed their Fundie-ism:
Gary Burghoff (MASH star and quite talented nature artist)
Austin Peck (talentless soap opera pretty-boy [who apparently sees no problem with making lots of money from premarital sex scenes])
Willie Aames (EIGHT IS ENOUGH cutie who signed with Second Coming Talent Agency when his career washed up and became Bible Man )
Chuck Norris
Alan Autry (Heat of the Night, Grace Under Fire)
Charlie Daniels (Devil Went Down to Georgia- I hate that I like that song because he is the quintessential redneck dumbass)
CeCe Winans (who claimed her antigay song “Not Natural” was dictated by God)
Gavin McLeod (who hosts a talk show on religious TV with his wife)
Kathy Lee Gifford (who converted as a child from Judaism to evangelical Xy)
Mickey Rooney (another “Second Coming” clientJ
Clifton Davis (star of That’s My Mama & Amen, a recovering drug addict and “former” homosexual)
I forgot about Lance Kerwin (of the old “James at 16/James at 17” series) and Jack Wild (“H.R. Pufnstuf”).
Orson Scott Card (who lives about a mile from me) is a very devout Mormon.
I believe that the wife of Raymond on Everybody Loves Raymond is a Fundamentalist Christian. Patricia Heaton, i think is her name?
A lot of athletes are pretty harcore Christians. Kurt Warner, Reggie White and Curt Schilling are some noatable ones but the list is a mile long.
And didn’t Jane Fonda get Jesus a few years ago?
I saw him on a talk show talking about some skateboarding evangelists he was working with.
You may need to define your terms a bit. The vast majority of traditional Catholics like Gibson and Heaton do not consider themselves part of the evangelical or “born again” movements, while there are protestant fundamentalists who consider the Catholic church to be a cult.
I have no personal stake in such distinctions, I’m just sayin’…
I think Bob Dylan was a fundentalist (born-again) Chirstian for a time and then he went back to being a Jew.
I wonder if this is post crack-possession arrests or if it was before.
He’s dead now, but Fred Rerun Berry of WHAT’S HAPPENIN’ was a minister in a Baptist sect that’s closer to Pentecostalism than mainstream Baptist. (He was also married four times and the father of several children for whom he did not pay support; he was tricked into an appearance on the Sally Jessie Raphael show that he thought was a “70s nostalgia” theme but was actually a confrontation with one of his sons- the reason there are no quotation marks around Rerun, incidentally, is that he legally changed his name.)
Lulu (the heavy singer from Hee-Haw) is a major league Fundie who appears at extremely conservative churches. Anita Bryant is of course an extremely famous Fundie entertainer (who has basically screwed every business partner and employee she has had in the past 20 years, but God forgives her).
Ralph Waite (the father from The Waltons) is a very conservative Republican who has run unsuccessfully for office and is an ordained minister (he performed the marriage for two of his TV children). He is also multiply divorced.
Andy Griffith (a uniquely unpleasant fellow offstage) is devoutly and very conservatively religious; I’m not sure if he’s a Fundie exactly, but he’s not far off the mark.
Ann B. Davis (Alice from The Brady Bunch) has lived with her pastor and his wife for more than 20 years. Officially Methodist, the minister is really more like a mini-cultleader (many of whose congregation members are celibate gays).
On the non-Christian front, Cat Stevens, Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar are devout Muslim converts.
I believe that Leif Garrett recently became a born-again Christian. I don’t know how sincere or Fundie he is.
One of the most famous incidences of a celebrity becoming devoutly and Fundamentally religious was Larry Flynt, though it didn’t last long and he now ascribes it to an undiagnosed and unmedicated bipolar disorder.
Patrick McGoohan (best known as The Prisoner) is an extremely conservative Catholic who named his production company Everyman after the medeival morality play.
Ben Stein, though Jewish, is extremely conservative in his religious views and a major pro-Life speaker and advocate.
Little Richard has also been born-again and Jewish a few times. I’ve no idea what he is at the moment.
After. He credits his religious faith with recovery from drug abuse.
If you wouldn’t think of using a term like “kike” to discuss Judaism, have you ever stopped to think that “fundie” is likewise offensive?
It’s an abridgement of Fundamentalist (a word that takes a lot longer to type). “Kike” began as a pejorative term against a race (origins unknown, though there are several theories) and continues to be used as such. I see nothing more insulting in “Fundie” than I do in “Homo” which is also used on these boards by both gay and straight Dopers.
Regarding Lance Kerwin: There’s a quick mention of a crack cocaine bust from his IMDb bio:
I don’t know if he’s attending this church anymore, but some years ago, he was going to a Methodist church in Glendale, California. One of my friends is also a member of that church and she saw them there regularly. He might be going there still for all I know.