I didnt think I was reading that post correctly. It sounded to stupid to have come from a literate poster.
Oops, I meant to quote the original post from Bmanion.
I think it was sarcastic.
I hate to continue this hijack, but I feel that I need to put in a word for Evil Captor. I tend to use the word fundy myself, and while I don’t intend it as a personal insult, I DO intend it as a snipe at the beliefs and practices of those that fit the term. It seems as though the parallels being used to decry the use of this word are inaccurate (‘boy’ in this forum, ‘jap’ in the pit), as they refer to immutable characteristics. The choice to embrace fundamentalist interpretation of scripture is just that, a choice, and while I will respect the right to have that belief, the belief itself is wide-open to criticism.
I’ve also heard the term ‘woo-woo’ used to deride those that take urban legends, alien conspiracy, and the flat earth as literal truth…are people wrong to do this? I think that some ideas deserve nothing but contempt. I’m not talking about most ‘mainstream’ faiths that focus on non-falsifiable stuff, but rather those (like most branches of fundamentalism that I am familiar with) that take the bible as literal and inerrant (if you only subscribe to one or the other, I’m not talking about you). That doesn’t mean that you can’t believe whatever you want, but the sword cuts the other way as well- I am free to say that you are out of your damned mind.
Anyway, as I said, ‘fundy’ has always seemed like shorthand to me, not simply as a description of belief, but also of practices and attitudes associated with them.
As for why they have flourished here (as far as Christianity goes…there are plenty of fundamentalists of other faiths out there)…I’d have to say that it’s a function of our founding principles as well as the relative youth of our society compared to Europe (our best yardstick). In general, we have a poor sense of history, and that facilitates the belief that any given generation is the ‘chosen one.’
summerbreeze,
-
If the nonstop barrage of Christian fundamentalism bothers you, why not move somewhere else?
-
Thank you for demonstrating to me why North Carolina is fsck’ed up.
summerbreeze,
Sounds as if you’re living inside a Stephen King novel.
I always thought of ‘fundy’ as being PC for ‘religious nutcase’.
But, hey if you don’t like it we can easily recert back to the latter.
Moderator’s Note: Evil Captor, knock it off with the insults in Great Debates.
You have been warned about this once before. Don’t do it again.
That goes for you as well, YourOldBuddy.
Sorry about that, Moderator. I meant to refer to Shodan’s arguments, but phrased it badly. I did not mean to directly insult Shodan.
Why should I move, rjung? This is my home. My children live here.
I don’t think this is strictly an NC or southern phenom. The old guy who won the $250,000 during the All-Star game thanked Jesus who died on the cross. I hear this stuff here because this is where I am most of the time, but I think it’s widespread in the US.
“Fundamentalism” in the sense we seem to be using the word, has as much to do with political fervor as religious fervor. I know of many people who are very devout, but do not fit the image that many of us seem to hold of ‘fundamentalists’,as they are either apolitical or separate political concerns from their faith. Also, most of this discussion is, by implication, concerning Protestant or Evangelical groups. I almost never hear even a conservative Catholic or Orthodox Christian called a “fundie”. I think Francoist Spain was far more “fundamentalist” in most senses than the United States ever was - but Spain has changed a lot in the last thirty years, and there are perhaps not regimes such as that left in the Christian world.
THis brings me to another point, what exactly is the United States being compared to? If its just Western Europe and the English speaking nations, then it is probably true (though the Rev. Ian Paisley MP shoots a hole in the notion that the UK is politico-fundamentalist free). Yet that’s only a small slice of the Christian world. In Latin America for instance, the Evangelical, Pentecostal, and conservative Catholic vote is very important in many areas. Many of the predominantly Christian nations of Africa have some strident fundamentalists. I am pretty sure the Philippines has fundamentalists too. Eastern Europe expeienced a long period of state-atheism, so it is not so clear how their religious life will emerge yet.
So we can merely say that the United States is probably the most “fundamentalist” country in the developed, western, Christian world…which - the fact that we are a huge part of that world, isn’t no huge surprise.
A lot of this discussion also focuses on supposedly unique aspects of our heritage here. Yet much contemporary ‘fundamentalism’ is rather recent.
As a history student, one thing that strikes me is that Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Dwight Eisenhower made very few - if any - real refernces to religion while they were president. If they did, they were extremly general and non-sectarian in nature. Kennedy, of course a Catholic, had to tread carefully to avoid seeming imbued to heavily in his own religion, and many people saw his presidency as the triumph of secularism in politics. The Civil RIghts movement had a strong religious basis at first, but this faded over time.
Its also interesting that the major right-wing ‘insurgencies’ of that period had little to do with religion. Did Joseph McCarthy, Barry Goldwater, or even Strom Thurmond and George Wallace ever pursue any sort of ‘religious’ agenda?
While Billy Graham did meet all the presidents in the White House since Harry Truman, and presidents swore an oath on a bible to uphold the constitution…but a scene like today’s speech by Bush in the rose garden, evoking the phrase “we are all sinners” and framing a matter of public policy in terms specific to his own religious beliefs, would have been unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago - I imagine.
Hmmm… is it Jimmy Carter’s fault?
Actually fundamentalism usually comes at the heels of rapid social change. In many ways, it is a side effect of the huge shifts in society that occurred in the last 35 or 40 years. Perhaps these shifts in other countires were more gradual. I think the French and the Swedes for instance, embarked on a ‘sexual revolution’ a good 10 years before the United States ever did, whereas we seemed to dive headfirst into it after trying to hold it back for a couple of decades.
Also, since we are a larger country, we tend to have protracted fights over moral and cultural issues, whether it is civil rights, abortion, or the death penalty. In other coutries, it is perhaps easier to gain consensus across the broad majority of the population. There are broad swathes of this country which do not have all that much “fundamentalist” activity of the sort you mention.
George Wallace was more a populist than a conservative, according to (again) Michael Lind. His racist segregationism was motivated by the sense that it was populism (for whites only, of course). When the winds of change shifted, he tacked his tacky sails to change with the times and renounced racism later in life. I guess he may be seen as conservative nowadays in retrospect because racists, to the extent that they find aid and comfort among politicians, find it with conservative Republicans like Trent Lott. As to religion, Wallace was aggressively for the separation of church and state, and actually denied state funds to all church-related activities in Alabama. This was in the 1960s before the current close identification of conservatives, fundies, and the Republican Party was cemented; that happened in the 1970s and 1980s.
Jimmy Carter was the most devoutly Christian president this country has ever had, and the fundies supported the irreligious Reagan to defeat him. That had to be the ugliest, most un-Christian hypocrisy I’ve ever seen. So much for the “Religious” Right.
Given that the term Fundamentalist was coined by an association of conservative (not to say reactionary) Protestants, when one is discussing Fundamentalists, one is generally talking about a specific (and quite American) group of Evangelical Protestant Christians. When Islam first became an issue for the American public with the rise of Ayatollah Khomeini, I frequently encountered Fundamentalist Christians expressing outrage that Khomeini was described as a “fundamentalist” Muslim. (I suspect some Fundamentalist Christian leaders must have continued to oppose that usage with the media, because recently Wahabbist Muslims and similar groups have tended to be identified as Islamists rather than Fundamentalist Muslims.)
It is not technically accurate (although it is fairly common) to refer to any very conservative religious movement as Fundamentalist. On the one hand, I suspect that the Fundamentalist Christians have already lost the battle to keep the word Fundamentalist for themselves, on the other hand using the word without clarifying exactly who one is describing can lead to misunderstandings and ill feelings.
A Fundamentalist Christian site addressing the term and its origins
To me, the thing that is offensive about fundamentalists is their aggressive attempts to spread those beliefs throughout society. Frex, the Amish are arguably more conservative than the Christians generally called “fundamentalists” but I have no problem with the Amish because they do not try to impose their beliefs on all of American society.
If the Pope just said, “Everybody who wants to be a Catholic must live by our rules, which includes no abortion or gay marriage,” I’d still think he was an ass, but I’d consider his viewpoint to be primarily a problem for Catholics. But of course, he doesn’t start there, which is why I READILY group Catholics in with Protestant fundies.
If Protestant fundies weren’t so politically active, I’d consider them whackos, but not dangerous ones. As things stand, I consider them a nascent reactionary group to be watched carefully and fought constantly.
Just to note that there some Protestant fundies, deeply into hardcore fundamentalist beliefs, who nevertheless are not involved with the so-called Religious Right. I have talked with them (once, as a young man desperate for employment, when I went door-to-door hustling donations for a PIRG environmentalist cause).
A gentleman looked me dead in the eye and solemnly told me he believed it was wrong for believers to have anything to do with public policy, because the world was irredeemably corrupt, these are the End Times, and Jesus is coming back any minute now to swoop away the true believers who have not tainted themselves with the world.
This type of fundie is obviously not going to serve as political fodder for the Falwells and Robertsons of this nation. Good for them, I say. I should have quoted James Joyce in support of that gentleman’s position: Non serviam—but he might not have understood.
As for England not having extremist fundies—whew, haven’t you heard of the Plymouth Brethren? That group practically wrote the book on extreme, narrow-minded fundamentalism, even before it had caught on in the United States. Aleister Crowley’s father had been a Plymouth Brethren preacher, and the scars from that religious upbringing permanently soured Aleister on Christianity (I forbear to quote here from the Book of the Law, to spare the delicate sensibilities of our Christian readers…)
Things can flip over during the course of history. Two hundred years ago, America’s leaders were all Deists and Freethinkers, in an era when Lord Byron could be expelled from Oxford merely for holding similar views to Tom Paine and Thomas Jefferson. Circa 1800, Christianity was on the run in America while the clergy still maintained a heavy hand over Britain. Now just look… if history is any indication, someday the situation may reverse once again…