# Isn't
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [August 12, 2001, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914 "2001-08-12T16:47:06Z")
**Posts on this page:** 18
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@middleman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/middleman)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2001, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/1 "2001-08-12T16:47:06Z")
I am a christian, but I feel the faith is bogged down by the fundamentalists. My dismay led me to the question: how did they control the terminolgy to allow themselves to be called “fundamentalists?” Fundamental means the most basic and important stuff. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that these people go beyond the fundamentals. It seems to me that they are way too tied up in the minute details. Wouldn’t the “fundamentals” of christianity be the resurrection, Christ as the savior and faith leading to salvation? How is the prevention of beer a fundamental? Or how to properly baptise a person? What happened to calling a zealot a zealot?
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### Author:  [@WEW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WEW)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2001, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/2 "2001-08-12T17:40:46Z")
I agree whole heartedly, but if you were to ask them, they would probably say that they are only dealing with the fundamentals. I don’t think it’s so much their content as the way they go about it. Syle vs Message.
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### Author:  [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2001, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/3 "2001-08-12T19:18:01Z")
They are allowed to use the term because they coined the term.
From the Encyclopædia Britannica:
> [@](#):
>
> Origins.
> The roots of fundamentalism are found in the history of the American millenarian movement. In the 1830s and '40s, much excitement was generated in the United States by expectations of the Second Advent of Christ and an ensuing thousand years of peace (“the millennium”). The initially scattered interest in the subject was concentrated and built into a movement largely through the Niagara Bible Conference. Initiated by James Inglis, a New York City Baptist minister, shortly before his death in 1872, the conference continued under James H. Brookes (1830–97), a St. Louis Presbyterian minister and editor of the influential millenarian periodical The Truth. Other early millenarian leaders included George C. Needham, a Baptist evangelist (1840–1902); William J. Erdman (1834–1923), a Presbyterian minister noted for his skill as a biblical expositor; and William R. Nicholson (1822–1901), who left the Episcopal church in 1873 and became a bishop in the Reformed Episcopal denomination.
>
> Toward the close of the century, the movement attracted leaders such as the prominent Boston Baptist minister Adoniram J. Gordon (1836–95) and Maurice Baldwin (1836–1904), bishop of Huron in the Church of Canada. The group held annual summer conferences, which generally met at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, until 1899. The millenarians associated with the Niagara Conference also sponsored public conferences in major cities beginning in 1878, such as the Bible and Prophetic Conference in New York City.
> Development of fundamentalist views.
> The millenarian movement began to grow within America when confidence in America’s destiny first began to wane among some Protestant leaders, faced as they were with labour unrest, social discontent, and the rising tide of Roman Catholic immigration. During the late 1880s and '90s the challenges posed by the rise of liberal Biblical criticism also won many converts to the millenarian movement.
>
> As the century drew to a close, the Protestant evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1837–99) provided in his Northfield conferences an influential platform for millenarian expression. Millenarians supported foreign-missions work and influenced the surge of missionary zeal that was eventually institutionalized as the Student Volunteer Movement. Also, they found within the Princeton Theological Seminary at Princeton, N.J., a group of scholars interested in defending the authority and inspiration of the Bible.
>
> Millenarians invited the Princeton professors to their conferences and adopted their arguments in defense of the Bible. Virtually none of the Princeton faculty adopted millenarianism, and some opposed it strongly, but both parties appreciated each other’s support on the issue of biblical authority.
>
> The high point of millenarian influence upon the conservative tradition within evangelical Protestantism occurred when millenarians cooperated with other defenders of the inerrancy of the Bible in founding the American Bible League in 1902 and in writing a series of 12 pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals. The pamphlets attacked the current theories of biblical criticism and reasserted the authority of the Bible, using the arguments developed at the Princeton Theological Seminary. The series was a summary of the previous generation’s attempt to oppose biblical criticism and modernism through argument.
Compton’s Encyclopedia:
> [@](#):
>
> Belief in progress, science and technology, and human potential continued to undermine traditional Protestantism during most of the 19th century. Then slowly the tide began to turn. The publication of Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution caused alarm among many Christian denominations. Some theologians rejected evolution outright and attacked Darwin in the name of Biblical Christianity. The American Bible League was formed in 1902 in the United States by a group of defenders of the Bible who also published a series of 12 pamphlets, collectively entitled ‘The Fundamentals’. These pamphlets launched an attack on liberal Christianity and the compromises it had made with modern thought. From that time the battle was between conservative and liberal Protestants.
Cheer up. Their complaint is that so many people refer to the Taliban and similar groups as “fundamentalists” when they want it to indicate only a specific variety of Christianity.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2001, 7:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/4 "2001-08-12T19:53:06Z")
Of course, “fundamentalist” is a perfect name for them, considering the definition of the word “fundament.”
😃
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### Author:  [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/5 "2001-08-13T04:03:56Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by watsonwil \*
> \*\*I am a christian, but I feel the faith is bogged down by the fundamentalists. My dismay led me to the question: how did they control the terminolgy to allow themselves to be called “fundamentalists?” Fundamental means the most basic and important stuff. Isn’t it reasonable to assume that these people go beyond the fundamentals. It seems to me that they are way too tied up in the minute details. Wouldn’t the “fundamentals” of christianity be the resurrection, Christ as the savior and faith leading to salvation? How is the prevention of beer a fundamental? Or how to properly baptise a person? What happened to calling a zealot a zealot? \*\*
WW, the pretext to your question is more thought provoking than your question.
I would have thought the fundamentals where the 10 Commandments. But then, isn’t there an argument to suggest that the 10 Commandments are fundamental to all religions?
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### Author:  [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/6 "2001-08-13T04:09:22Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Dave Stewart \*
> \*\*
> I would have thought the fundamentals where the 10 Commandments.
> \*\*
I would have thought that the fundamentals of Christianity would by necessity include the rules and principles that distinguish Christianity from other faiths, such as, say, Judaism.
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*
> But then, isn’t there an argument to suggest that the 10 Commandments are fundamental to all religions? \*\*
I’m sure there is such an argument, but it isn’t a _good_ one.
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### Author:  [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/7 "2001-08-13T04:44:47Z")
I would have thought that all Christians need to decide on their own which parts of the Christian message constitute the “fundamentals”, and that nobody has an exclusive monopoly on it. However, I doubt that most “fundamentalists” would agree with me on that one.
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### Author:  [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/8 "2001-08-13T04:52:00Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Lamia \*
> \*\*
>
> I would have thought that the fundamentals of Christianity would by necessity include the rules and principles that distinguish Christianity from other faiths, such as, say, Judaism.
>
> \*\*
Really? Don’t you think that Christianity and Judaism have points of overlap, and that some of those points of overlap are defining?
> [@](#):
>
> \*\*
>
> I’m sure there is such an argument, but it isn’t a _good_ one. \*\*
I would have thought that most of the 10 Commandments are necessary rules for the effective and peaceful function of societies, irrespective of religious make-up.
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### Author:  [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 5:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/9 "2001-08-13T05:44:13Z")
**Dave:**
Christianity and Judaism have points of overlap simply because Christianity is simply the Jesus sect of Judaism (according to Orthodox Jews). They are both based on the tenets of the Old Testament. Jesus was a learned rabbi. Christians accept Jesus’s Father as the Mosaic God, etc.
Jews don’t expect that non-Jews should follow the Ten Commandments. For non-Jews, the Jews ask that they follow the seven Noachide Laws:
1. No idolatry.
2. No blasphemy.
3. No murder.
4. No sexual perversions.
5. No robbery.
6. No eating a limb of an animal while it is still alive.
7. Establish courts of justice.
Even these seem to be mostly rather extraneous. I do believe that there are some universal laws with which we should operate – namely “Do unto others.” Rabbi Hillel stated that the core of Torah is “do not do unto others as you would wish on yourself, and the rest is commentary.” If you think about it, most of the other prescriptions of the Judeochristian belief system are extensions of this – don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, don’t rob, respect your parents, etc. I would add a few more, namely respect the environment and animals.
The 10 Commandments, with all of its God gobbledegook (namely the first 4 commandments) is discomforting to moral people who do not accept the Old Testament God who brought you out of Egypt.
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### Author:  [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/10 "2001-08-13T06:32:51Z")
Thanks Edwino - yeah I knew that Christianity is basically a Jewish sect: but I (think I) was theorising that most major modern religions share the same concepts for human inter-relationship. I wasn’t aware of the seven Noachide laws, though, but don’t seem most of those as being too far afield either from the basic “do unto others” paradigm or the underlying message in the commandments.
I might go away and do some reading on this.
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### Author:  [@grimpixie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grimpixie)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2001, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/11 "2001-08-13T08:24:44Z")
One of my most depressing experiences as a Christian was as a student. I was involved with the leadership of one of the Christian societies on our campus, with the portfolio of liason with the other Christian societies (of which there were several). I thought it would be a good idea to get all the societies to do some things together to show that we worshiped the same God after all.
The first project was a calender that would have the logos of all the societies on it and would be given (free) to first-years during Freshers Week. 90% of the societies were fine with this except two who said “Not if xxxxxxx is going to be on it” about each other…
But the absolute clincher was when a certain sect that passes itself off as Christian but is most certainly not (in the eyes of mainstream Christian thought) wanted to register as a “Christian” society on our campus. ALL the societies wanted to oppose this application, so the leaders got together to discuss what to do. It was decided that if we considered this group not to be Christian, we had better sort out what we considered a Christian to be. After two hours of debate, we decided to oppose the application on the grounds that this group used rather aggressive techniques of witnessing rather than any religious reasoning.
Gp
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### Author:  [@Danimal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Danimal)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2001, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/12 "2001-08-14T19:22:20Z")
I think most fundamentalists consider the Bible to be the “fundamental” part of Christianity, especially Paul’s epistles. Their motto is, first, know the Bible and believe everything in it. The social functions of the church are secondary, the pronouncements of the hierarchy are secondary, and reconciling biblical stories and doctrines with science or observation is secondary (or tertiary). That’s why you hardly ever hear Catholics called fundamentalists, even though the Catholic church is not noted for its laxity or liberal attitudes; Catholicism involves many customs and doctrines not found in the Bible. If you’re Catholic, and the Pope says one thing and the Bible (in your own interpretation) says another, you’re supposed to follow the Pope. Not so the fundamentalists.
I like the Durants’ epigram: “Protestantism was the triumph of Paul over Peter, fundamentalism is the triumph of Paul over Christ.”
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### Author:  [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2001, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/13 "2001-08-14T21:37:15Z")
The fundimentalist movement in Christianity gets its name from “The Fundimentals”, which was a series of pamphlets written between 1910-1915 by a number of preachers concerned with evolution and higher criticism. They then went on to found the “World’s Christian Fundamentals Organization”. The most famous of the founders were revivalist preacher Billy Sunday and creationist and pastor of the First Baptist Church of Minneapolis, William Bell Riley. The organization was a premillenialist dispensationalist group that fought against religious liberalism. The first use of the term “fundamentalist” seems to be in 1920 by Curtis Lee Laws, of the “Baptist Watchman-Examiner”, a conservative Baptist newspaper, defining fundamentalists as those who are willing “to do battle royal for the Fundamentals.”
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### Author:  [@MeCorva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeCorva)
#### Post date: [August 14, 2001, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/14 "2001-08-14T21:38:03Z")
Watsonwil:
I notice you added “faith leading to salvation” into your criteria for fundamentals of christianity. This is not necessarily a fundamental principle, held by all septs of christianity. So, even if we did redefine fundamentalism into what you suggested, someone would come out and complain that it wasn’t fundamental enough.
However, with all that being said, they can call themselves “Most Honoured By God, Ruler of All the World” – I still don’t have to listen to them.
Me’Corva
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### Author:  [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)
#### Post date: [August 15, 2001, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/15 "2001-08-15T02:43:44Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by MeCorva \*
> \*\*Watsonwil:
>
> I notice you added “faith leading to salvation” into your criteria for fundamentals of christianity. This is not necessarily a fundamental principle, held by all septs of christianity. So, even if we did redefine fundamentalism into what you suggested, someone would come out and complain that it wasn’t fundamental enough.
>
> However, with all that being said, they can call themselves “Most Honoured By God, Ruler of All the World” – I still don’t have to listen to them.
>
> Me’Corva \*\*
**MeCorva**
Purely out of curiosity, which septs of Christianity don’t follow that?
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### Author:  [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2001, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/16 "2001-08-16T06:46:41Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Dave Stewart \*
> \*\*
> Purely out of curiosity, which septs of Christianity don’t follow that? \*\*
Categorically, Gnostics, who hold that faith on its own is without value and that salvation comes only through a _revelation_ of esoteric knowledge.
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### Author:  [@Dave\_Stewart](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dave_Stewart)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2001, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/17 "2001-08-16T09:50:35Z")
…
I’m going to have to think about that one.
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### Author:  [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2001, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/isnt/75914/18 "2001-08-16T18:07:48Z")
When I look at the thread title right now, all I see is “Isn’t”. That’s the whole title that appears for this thread. Just “Isn’t”.
I’m guessing the OP created this thread with part of the title in double-quotes, which the vB software can’t handle properly. The original, intended title may have been something like _Isn’t “fundamentalist” a misleading name?_ … or, for all I know, it could have been _Isn’t “my” title just dandy?_.
So … **watsonwil** , what was the intended title of this thread?