Why so many fundamentalist christians in the U.S?

[Dogface]

*Originally posted by WILLASS *I had heard a theory (not mine) that the reason for the much higher amount of extreme religous views stems from the fact that a lot of the people who left Europe for the U.S did so because they were persecuted for their extreme beliefs.

Yeah, extreme beliefs like pacifism (Quakers and Mennonites). Those EEEEEEEEEVIL PACIFISTS! We MUST drive these EXTREMISTS OUT of Europe!!! It was not “extreme” beliefs but the fact that many people from all over were driven out by tyrants who set themselves up as the sole arbiters of the “Will of God” in Europe. Whoever didn’t agree with the European tyrannies had to leave or get imprisoned or killed.

all the stories I seem to hear of David Koresh style compounds and extremist religous cults mainly seem to come from the U.S.

And people say the US press is narrow and biased.

Ever hear of the “Temple of the Sun”? French cultists who ended up in a mass murder conflagration in their compound in Africa.

I cant ever imagine a Church of England member kicking some ass to protect the good name of the lord!

Then you’ve never heard of your own history. CoE was involved in the Wars of Religion.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

Another aspect: Fundamentalism tends to be more common in the areas where it has always been, namely small towns and rural areas. Here’s the catch. A rural, strongly religious state like Utah gets to send 2 senators to Washington D.C., even though it has a tiny population compared to urban states like Illinois, New York, and California. So, in a way, Fundamentalist sentiments are overrepresented at the national level, if not avowedly, as by Attorney General John Ashcroft, then at least in the sense that the Senators feel they have to answer to Fundamentalist constituencies even though they may not share those beliefs personally.

If I could view the U.S. through foreign eyes, my first impression would be one of great religious fervor, but it wouldn’t necessarily be correct.

[blowero]

WILLASS, I never thought I’d be defending fundmentalists, but I think your OP and your subsequent posts are conflating fundamentalism with cultism. I have encountered many fundamentalists, i.e., those who believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. My guess is that there are so many of these people because they tend to aggressively recruit, which other religions don’t do as much. I don’t agree with their beliefs, but I certainly wouldn’t lump them together with the likes of Jim Jones and David Koresh.

[DrDeth]

*Originally posted by WILLASS *
**. Yet in the U.S there seems IMHO to be no shortage of religous fanatics, i’m talking creationist and people who believe that the bible is the exact word of god type fundamentalists. I have yet to meet anyone in the U.K who’s belief in God is as extreme as that. They may well exist but they must be thin on the ground. Are there really that many religous fanatics in the U.S or is it a baseless stereotype that i’ve picked up from the media? **

I say “B” =" Baseless stereotype". I have never met one of those kind of religous fanatics, either. I will also point out that Northern Ireland is AFAIK still part of the UK, and they have more “fanatical” fanantics than I have ever even heard of in the USA- we have very few religous based killings & bombings. Sure, we got religous loonies, but they aren’t killing each other in any significant numbers. We hear a lot about bombings in NI- however, have YOU met personally any of those who are doing it? (and yes, I know the “troubles” are also socio-political in nature, not just religous, but…)

Of course, we here in the USA have something like 500 TV/cable channels, so there is a channel for just about any minority. We also have 5 times more people, spread out over 40 times more area.

[Evil_Captor]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
You’re going to have to make up your mind, Evil Captor. If you don’t have any rancor, why are you being even mildly belittling?

I dislike fundamentalism, I said so in my post. I just don’t think of fundie as a particularly nasty name. That’s my perception, YMMV.

**I assume you would accept the same line of reasoning from someone who called black men “boy”. Only mildly belittling, much shorter and easier to use than “African American”, and there are lots of other terms you could use if you really wanted to be insulting. **

Oh, puh-leeze. You’re really reaching here, Shodan. There’s a certain history behind the use of terms like “boy” for black people – Jim Crow, slavery, that sort of thing – that makes such locutions offensive. Without the history, the term wouldn’t have the power.

Nah, “fundie” is more like other shortened locutions, Pubbie-me-boy.

[keeper0]

I just finished reading Karen Armstrong’s “The Battle for God” which discusses the rise of modern fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Her theory about why the revivals and such were so popular in the US had to do with a modern growth of anti-establishment feelings in the Western world. In Europe, religion was seen more as part of the establishment, so secularism was a way of being anti-establishment. In the US, the Constitution was deliberately secular, and so religious fervor was seen as an anti-establishment action.

It being her book, and not mine, I have probably not captured her argument fully. If you are interested in the history of such movements, I would recommend it.

[BMalion]

To answer the OP:

Because many Americans can read. They can read the Bible, for instance, and are free to believe in God and go to church. This is because the U.S. constitution protects many of us from persecution and prosecution.
Are there any Christian Fundamentalists in other countries? You bet! But, they don’t have the acess to the media that’s available over here, addressed earlier.

[kniz]

Originally posted by WILLASS *
** Yet in the U.S there seems IMHO to be no shortage of religous fanatics, i’m talking creationist and people who believe that the bible is the exact word of god type fundamentalists.*

Here in the heart of the Bible Belt, these people are not fanatics or nuts for that matter. They are every day people that have been raised in an environment where nobody openly questions the religious establishment. There are charlatans, fanatics and nuts that feed off this blind belief, but most of the people are as decent as any in the world. My neighbors know that I’m not a church goer. There is no problem as long as I don’t start making a big deal out of my differences with Christianity. A few years back, I participated in a Bible study. I thought this would be a catastrophe, but they listened to my views and I listened to theirs. Neither of us changed our beliefs, but we all learned a lot from the experience. If you don’t act like Judith Hayes, they will not come on like Jerry Falwell.

[blowero]

*Originally posted by keeper0 *
Her theory about why the revivals and such were so popular in the US had to do with a modern growth of anti-establishment feelings in the Western world. In Europe, religion was seen more as part of the establishment, so secularism was a way of being anti-establishment. In the US, the Constitution was deliberately secular, and so religious fervor was seen as an anti-establishment action.

I don’t know if I can get behind that theory. These days, the U.S. government is pretty pro-Christian. The constitution may still be secular, but the government is anything but. Yet there is little backlash - Christianity seems stronger than ever.

[Shodan]

*Originally posted by Evil Captor *
**I dislike fundamentalism, I said so in my post. I just don’t think of fundie as a particularly nasty name. That’s my perception, YMMV.
**

Yes, we are all quite clear on your motivations. You are, of course, back tracking by trying to claim that you don’t think this is deliberately insulting, when you posted earlier that you knew that it was.

I imagine you would accept this same kind of disclaimer from someone who assured you that they didn’t think the term “spear chucker” was all that offensive.

*Originally posted by Evil Captor *
**
**I assume you would accept the same line of reasoning from someone who called black men “boy”. Only mildly belittling, much shorter and easier to use than “African American”, and there are lots of other terms you could use if you really wanted to be insulting. **

Oh, puh-leeze. You’re really reaching here, Shodan. There’s a certain history behind the use of terms like “boy” for black people – Jim Crow, slavery, that sort of thing – that makes such locutions offensive. Without the history, the term wouldn’t have the power.

Nah, “fundie” is more like other shortened locutions, Pubbie-me-boy. **

Right - a diminutive form, used to belittle those with whom you feel no kinship. Just like calling a black man, “boy”.

And a shortened form as well. Like “hebe”, which is short for Hebrew.

And the “history” to which you refer is a history of doing exactly what you are doing - calling people names in order to demean them.

Regards,
Shodan

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

*Originally posted by BMalion *
**To answer the OP:

Because many Americans can read. They can read the Bible, for instance, and are free to believe in God and go to church. This is because the U.S. constitution protects many of us from persecution and prosecution.**

True, many Americans can read, but how many fundies can?

I’ve always thought the reason why we have so many fundies here is because their god is punishing us.

[WILLASS]

*Originally posted by Dogface *

Ever hear of the “Temple of the Sun”? French cultists who ended up in a mass murder conflagration in their compound in Africa.

Yes I have heard of it as I have heard of cults from all around the world including Britain, I just point out that most of the ones I have heard of seem to come from the U.S.

Then you’ve never heard of your own history. CoE was involved in the Wars of Religion. **

I am talking about the present not the past, I would be the first to agree that in the past the church and church goers were involved in wars but that is basically because the church was the government.

[WILLASS]

sorry messed that up a bit, my responses are the second and fourth sentences.

[Celyn]

*Originally posted by BMalion *
**To answer the OP:

Because many Americans can read. …**

Well, that explains things then. I really must learn to read some time.

** http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/edu_lit_tot_pop **:smack:

[BrainGlutton]

One of the most important and least discussed sociological facts about America today is that it is no longer a “Christian” nation as it was within living memory. That is, a majority of the people still identify themselves as Christians, believe in God, and (sometimes) attend church – but only a minority of that majority still believe in Christianity as the one and only true faith and the one and only path to salvation.

The following comes from The Next American Nation, by Michael Lind (New York: Free Press Paperbacks, 1996), pp. 278-279:

Conservatives do not recognize how much the nation has changed since the fifties in its religious attitudes. It may be that the religion of nominal Christians in the United States can no longer be described as traditional trinitarian Christian. The scholarly term for their belief is henotheism, the belief that all ethnic groups and cultures have, and should have, their own gods and rites. In Christian theology, this is the heresy of indifferentism. Robert Linder and Richard Pierard have described the evolution of American civil religion: “Its umbrella has changed from evangelical consensus to Protestantism-in-general, to Christianity-in-general, to the Judeo-Christian tradition in general, to deism-in-general.” The decline in belief in Christianity as the only true religion has been extraordinarily rapid in the United States. In a poll taken in 1924 in Muncie, Indiana, 94 percent of high school students agreed that “Christianity is the one true religion and all peoples should be converted to it.” By the late 1970s, merely 38 percent of respondents in a later poll in Muncie agreed that Christianity was the only true faith. Two-thirds of the respondents in a 1991 poll agreed that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists “pray to the same God.”

This sentiment no doubt appals Christian and Jewish theologians. From the point of view of those concerned with national unity, however, it is an encouraging development. It lessens the chance that religious discord will produce civil strife. Of the policy of ancient Rome, Edward Gibbon wrote: “The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosophers as equally false; and by the magistrates as equally useful.” In the United States, “Potomac piety” has been promulgated by statesmen taking the side of the magistrates, from George Washington, who thought that Christianity was useful in protecting “property,” that is, the rich minority, from attacks by populists, to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who declared: “Our government has no sense unless it is founded on a deeply religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.” Tocqueville noted: “An American sees in religion the surest guarantee of the stability of the state and the safety of individuals . . . much the same may be said of the British.” Will Herberg noted that in the United States Christian and Jewish “denominations” are less religious institutions than instruments of social integration.

The new, semi-official American religion of indifferentist theism (there is one God and many equally true religions) does not solve the problem of a common ethic. On the contrary, it makes it all the more pressing. Indifferentism necessarily leads to a divorce between religion and ethics, for the simple reason that there is no single, authoritative generic-theist table of commandments. Fortunately, moral consensus does not require theological consensus. As the neoconservative scholar James Q. Wilson has pointed out, “Religion is for many a source of solace and for a few a means of redemption, but if everyday morality had depended on religious conviction, the human race would have destroyed itself eons ago.” Somehow Japanese classrooms manage to be orderly without a copy of the Ten Commandments on every classroom wall (a goal of American fundamentalists). Indeed, outside of North America, the most prosperous, least crime-ridden and most educated countries are the post-Protestant societies of Northern Europe, in which traditional Christianity is in serious long-term decline, and the highly secular Confucian societies of East Asia. Conversely, the parts of Europe and the Americas in which institutional Christianity has been strongest in recent centuries, the Catholic and Orthodox countries, have been characterized by poverty, tyranny, and political instability, which exist to an even greater degree in the Muslim world. The most religious part of the United States, the South, has long been the poorest, most violent, and most illiterate section of the country."

However, and getting back to the OP: There is still a very large minority here that is still “Christian” in the older, traditional sense, believing that all who do not accept salvation through Christ are eternally damned to suffer in Hell. We might call this minority “fundamentalists” but that’s really a subcategory of evangelical Protestants; I think a better term for them is “traditional Christians,” which does not exclude conservative Catholics who share the view that non-Christians are damned. Really conservative Catholics believe Protestants are damned, too, and vice-versa, but that attitude is (I think) slowly fading. The real religious divide in America today is not between Catholics and Protestants, but between those who are deeply and traditionally religious and those who are not.

The traditional Christians, although a minority, are as noted a very large minority; and a very well-organized minority, with numerous standing permanent organization centers known as “churches,” not to mention the TV stations, etc.; and they are a very vocal minority; and a very politically interested minority with a powerful presence in Washington, especially under the current administration. And the traditional Christians’ consciousness that they are now a minority merely adds to their determination to fight a rising tide of secularism and religious indifference; and in the more extreme variants, it even reinforces their expectation to see the Rapture and the Apocalypse within their lifetimes; and this sometimes, very rarely, leads them into extreme and violent actions. Therefore, the traditional Christians get a lot of attention in the press, even more than their substantial numbers would warrant.

[NaSultainne]

*Originally posted by Evil Captor *
I dislike fundamentalism, I said so in my post. I just don’t think of fundie as a particularly nasty name. That’s my perception, YMMV.

Nah, “fundie” is more like other shortened locutions

I am a fundamentalist. I am offended by usage of bastardized forms of the word, fully recognizing them as derogatory in nature.

Now, you’ve been informed. As this board does not tolerate bigoted insults, perhaps you’ll stick to the more cumbersome, but accurate term “fundamentalist” in future.

[Evil_Captor]

*Originally posted by NaSultainne *
**I am a fundamentalist. I am offended by usage of bastardized forms of the word, fully recognizing them as derogatory in nature.

Now, you’ve been informed. As this board does not tolerate bigoted insults, perhaps you’ll stick to the more cumbersome, but accurate term “fundamentalist” in future. **

You do not like being called a “fundie”, fine, I won’t call you one, though I don’t at all agree with your point, I just think you’re being PC here. I’m doing it out of civility, not out of any agreement with your viewpoint.

Anyway, “Fundamentalist” is plenty insulting enough in my book.

[Evil_Captor]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
Yes, we are all quite clear on your motivations. You are, of course, back tracking by trying to claim that you don’t think this is deliberately insulting, when you posted earlier that you knew that it was.

Nah, I was just explaining my honest viewpoint on the topic. I don’t care enough for fundies’ good opinions of me (which they would never have anyway) to worry about whether they think I’m insulting them, whether they be Christian fundies or Muslim fundies.

I imagine you would accept this same kind of disclaimer from someone who assured you that they didn’t think the term “spear chucker” was all that offensive.
Right - a diminutive form, used to belittle those with whom you feel no kinship. Just like calling a black man, “boy”.

As you have simply repeated YOUR argument, I will repeat mine. You keep saying there’s no difference between “fundie” and “boy” but you’re completely full of shit, Shodan. If you call a liberal a “pinko” is that the same as calling a black man “boy”? Tell me another one!

And a shortened form as well. Like “hebe”, which is short for Hebrew.

And the repitition continues. So I will repeat mine. Like “Dem” means Democrat" and “Pubbie” means “Republican,” or more to the point, like “Lute” might mean “Lutheran” or “Prot” might mean “Prostestant.” C’mon, Shodan, you’re smarter than this. Get a clue.

[BMalion]

*Originally posted by I Love Me, Vol. I *
**I’ve always thought the reason why we have so many fundies here is because their god is punishing us. **

Not yet… you still have time to repent.

[summerbreeze]

Here in North Carolina, it’s impossible to escape the steady bombardment of Christian, usually fundamentalist, expression. The sign at the barbeque joint up the street says “Homemade peach cobbler. Praise Jesus.” When I check out at the Winn-Dixie, the cashier says “Have a blessed day.” When I greet a customer in my store with “How are you?”, the response is often, “I’m blessed,” or “I’m saved, thank Jesus.”

My favorite bakery has a sign on the counter on Fridays: “TGIF: Thank God I’m Forgiven.” The hardware store’s sign says “We love Jesus, Pres. Bush and our Troops.”

Every other car has the fish symbol. People wear T shirts with Christ on the cross. WWJD jewelry is everywhere. A neighbor tells me I “can’t know the real news” unless I listen to Pat Robertson’s program. I overhear a customer say it’s his birthday. I wish him a happy one and he says “Thank you and thank Jesus who died on the cross for my sins.”

A mother shopping with three small children says, smiling,“I’m not sure I’ll survive this!” and the stranger behind her in line rebukes her, “God doesn’t send you more than you can bear!”

At the post office, I’m sending a package to my nephew in the Marines. Chatting with the clerk, I say I’m sending power bars, and the stranger behind me says, “You’d better be sending him the power of prayer!”

My friend, who had a Gore for President bumper sticker, tells me she was getting her baby into his stroller at the mall and a middled-aged woman passing by spoke to the baby, “You should be glad your liberal mother didn’t abort you!” My friend says, “Don’t you dare speak to my child,” and receives the surprising information that “Democrats can’t be Christians.”

A co-worker steps outside to smoke a cigarette and a stranger says “There aren’t any cigarettes in Hell!” My co-worker calmly replies, “I guess you’d know,” and is subjected to a Jesus tirade.

This just pours out of people the way pleasant, social comments used to. I’ve lived here all my life, and this extreme and constant expression is new. It’s unsettling to those who are believing non-Christians, like my friend, the rabbi’s wife. It’s unsettling to me, a church-going Presbyterian.

Asked about this phenomenon, fundamentalists tell you it’s a sign of the “end times,” that God is separating the wheat from the chaff in preparation for the “rapture.”

I think it’s a sign of bad taste. And I agree with the OP. I’ve travelled in Europe a lot, and it’s a relief not to be bombarded with this stuff the way I am here.