How Fundamentalists Read the Bible
by Rev. Colin Bossen, January 10, 2010
Several years ago I led a delegation of Unitarian Universalist ministers and seminarians to Mexico to learn about the relationship between religion and social movements there. As part of the program we traveled to a small indigenous mountain village called Pacayal. The community only had about 500 members but it supported three different churches. There was a Catholic church, a Presbyterian church and a church whose members labeled themselves Christian.
Our delegation was in Pacayal for about three days, including a Sunday. Sunday morning we were invited to split into three groups, with one group to visit each church. My group visited the self-described Christian church. It was the newest church in the community and, I learned later, had been founded a few years before by a group from outside the community.
The church itself, like almost everything else in the village, was a humble affair. The walls were made of rough hand hewn boards. The roof was corrugated tin. The floor was dirt and the pulpit, the altar table and pews--planks on blocks--were built from weathered local pine. There were, in addition to the five members of my delegation, about twenty people present. This was in sharp contrast to the Presbyterian church. It occupied the center of the community and was attended by more than 200 people that Sunday.
What the small congregation lacked in size they made up for in vitriol. The service, led by a young guitar wielding man from Guatemala, focused on the deviant nature of the two other churches in Pacayal. The sermon had two major points. The first was that in order to be assured eternal salvation one had to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The second was that one had to remain doctrinally pure. All other Christian movements were not Christian but something else entirely. They lacked the necessary doctrinal purity. The rest of the citizens of Pacayal did not worship God. They were in the thrall of Satan. If this matter was not corrected soon the entire community would suffer.
The sermon was followed by a series of hymns covering the same material. The one which I remember most clearly was titled "The Majority of the Christians." Its chorus ran something like, "The majority of the Christians / Are not Christian at all." The verses alternated between statements about, what the singer viewed as, proper Christian belief and the beliefs of other Christians. The message was very clear. The Christian community was limited to only the members of whatever sect that church belonged to or was founded by. In order to save the village everyone else had to join the church.
When I think of fundamentalists I tend to think of that congregation. Now, I do not know if they would actually have identified as Christian fundamentalists. It did not occur to me at the time to ask. However, the congregation fits the profile of how I imagine fundamentalists--doctrinaire and intolerant. Usually when I imagine the fundamentalist political or social agenda I think of it as revolving around these two poles and having little, if any, room or sympathy for those who hold opposing views or differing religious beliefs.
I am not alone in my viewpoint. Journalist Chris Hedges penned the 2006 book "American Fascists; The Christian Right and the War on America" to argue that many right-wing Christians hold a political ideology that "bears within it the tenets of a Christian fascism." Such a movement is, in Hedges's words, the "sworn and potent enemy of the open society."
One can find similar views to Hedges widely held by leftists and political and religious liberals. For example, towards the end of his life James Luther Adams, one of the great Unitarian Universalist theologians of the 20th century, saw the germs of a fascist movement similar to Nazism within the American Christian Right. Adams was well positioned to know of which he spoke. During the mid-1930s he lived in Germany and took part in the struggle against Nazism.
Such reactions make talking about Christian fundamentalism a heated and emotional issue in liberal religious communities. We are well aware of the agenda of fundamentalism's most vocal proponents. They would outlaw homosexuality or any other form of sexual or gender queerness. They would criminalize abortion. They would bar women from the realms of higher education and the workplace. They would force their religious dogma upon all of the citizens of the world. They would create a theocratic state.
The aggressive nature of this agenda can make it difficult to want to engage with fundamentalists. Yet if the political agenda of fundamentalists is to be neutralized then the motivations behind it must be understood. Christian fundamentalists claim to be motivated by the teachings of the Bible. And so, in order to truly understand the fundamentalist worldview, one needs to understand how they read the Bible.
The Christian fundamentalist approach to the Bible is radically different than the liberal approach. In fact, it evolved as a response to liberalism. Unitarian Universalist theologian Paul Rasor describes liberal theology as "characterized by the belief that human religiousness should be understood from the perspective of modern knowledge and experience." Fundamentalist theology could be characterized as liberal theology's polar opposite, a rejection of modern knowledge and experience.
Fundamentalism emerged as a distinctive movement during the early years of the last century. It developed largely as a response to the growing strength of liberal theology within mainline Protestant denominations and to, what some perceived as, an incompatibility between the Darwinian theory of evolution and the narrative of creation in Genesis.
In many ways liberal religion and fundamentalism can be understood as interrelated. One of is a product of other. Without the changes that liberal theology and modern science brought to Christianity in the late 19th and early 20th century Christian fundamentalism would not exist. Likewise, as scholar Gary Dorrien argues, much of religious liberalism can be understood as as an effort "to create a modernist...third way between...orthodoxy" and secularism. Here fundamentalists can be understood as a variant of orthodoxy and conservativism. In places like Europe where conservative religious movements are weak liberal religious movements tend to be weak as well. The two forces are caught in a sort of dialectic relationship. Fundamentalism needs liberal religion and modernity to react against. Without fundamentalism, I suspect, far fewer people would seek out liberal religious communities.
Taken from this view, understanding fundamentalism allows us to better understand ourselves. It helps us to understand what we are often reacting against. In this spirit of understanding, I interviewed David Nicholes, the minister of Community Baptist Church in Suffolk, Virginia and the son of Society member Walt Nicholes. I figured I could offer a better portrait of fundamentalism if I drew upon the words and personal experiences of another clergy person. After all, we Unitarian Universalists understand personal experience as the starting point of theological reflection.
While David was reluctant to label himself a fundamentalist because of the, in his words, "divisive" nature of the term he accepted the label for the purposes of our interview. As he put it "I am probably a fundamentalist that you are preaching about." To him, that meant that he believes "that the 66 books [of the Bible] are the inerrant word of God." And that the Bible "is an announcement that God has made to rescue man from a fallen condition."
Furthermore, David believes that "there is an irreducible minimum of what...[someone] can believe and still be considered a Christian." For most fundamentalists this irreducible minimum is derived from a five point platform adopted in 1910 by the Presbyterian General Assembly (it has since been rejected by that same body). The five points are, as summarized by scholar George Marsden, "(1) the inerrancy of the Scripture, (2) the Virgin Birth of Christ, (3) his substitutionary atonement, (4) his bodily resurrection, and (5) the authenticity of the miracles."
David and I spent most of our time discussing the first point, the inerrancy of the Scripture. It is a point over which religious liberals and Christian fundamentalists have historically disagreed. Liberals like myself maintain that in order understand the Bible one needs to understand the cultural context within which it was written. The world of the authors of texts is very different than our own. If we are to understand what the texts mean then we must understand the world of the texts's authors. Otherwise we risk superimposing our own meanings onto the texts.
As, or perhaps more, importantly the text should be studied like any other work of literature. The full weight of literary theory should be applied.
A large portion of biblical literary theory was developed in Germany in the 19th century and first imported to the United States by early Unitarian scholars like Andrew Norton. This method for studying the Bible highlights the discontinuities of language and theology that appear throughout the text. Its conclusion is that the Bible is a collection of texts written by human beings over a period of several hundred years. These texts may contain the divine word of God but they have been redacted through the hands of man. They are as prone to reflect the truths of a particular time and culture as they are to contain eternal truth.
For a fundamentalist like David such a conclusion is simply unacceptable. As David put it, rather than placing our faith in the Bible the "liberals have their faith in...German criticism." He believes that undermines the whole of Christianity and "changes the character" of the Bible itself. It becomes not the divine word of God but, in David's words, "a forgery." The prospect that the texts are forgeries seems unlikely to David and other fundamentalists. Largely, for David at least, this is because there is "no recorded suspicion...[that the Bible is forgery]...until the German criticism."
This statement summarizes much of the fundamentalist viewpoint, the idea that truth and human knowledge are somehow immutable. George Marsden, in his text "Fundamentalism and American Culture," argues that fundamentalism is essential a rejection of the second scientific revolution. The first scientific revolution was organized, Marsden writes, around "the principles of the seventeenth-century philosopher Francis Bacon: careful observation and classification of facts." It discovered rational laws like Newton's laws of physics and envisioned a well-ordered and essentially static universe. The second scientific revolution challenged the idea of a static universe. Charles Darwin posited the theory of evolution. Charles Lyell theorized, based on his observations of geologic layers, that the Earth was millions of years old. The universe and the Earth were understood as dynamic bodies, ever changing over time.
This challenge was unacceptable to those who thought that the book of Genesis contained a precise account of the creation of the universe and origin of humanity. They wanted certainty and modern science gave them ambiguity. The findings of modern science suggest, as David describes it, a universe with "no specific meaning." "I cannot accept that," he says, echoing, I am sure, the sentiments of many other fundamentalists.
When speaking with David I found that he rejected the findings of Darwin as unscientific. He stated, "science is observing the facts" and argued that the theory of evolution was counter-factual. He claimed at one point that evolution "would have left a prolific record of fossils [and] it has not." David's first statement fits well with the Baconian understanding of science. I must admit that I am not sure what to make of his second statement. It strikes me as incoherent. I feel bad in saying that since I promised David I would try to give him a fair representation. But such an analysis of the fossil record seems like an act of willful blindness.
This gets to the core of the difference between David and myself--and I suspect any liberal religionist and fundamentalist. We essentially inhabit different realities. David describes himself has having had a personal experience of being "born-again, saved." That experience caused him to believe that "the scriptures [were to be] taken at face value." And that his reading, and the reading of his tradition, of the Bible was the only correct one. For him, this understanding is the starting point from which the entire world is to be deciphered. For him, I imagine, my refusal to accept this reality is also a form of willful blindness.
On the other hand, I have not had an experience of being saved. I look at the Bible, like any other text, as having multiple possible readings--each reading being as much a reflection of an individual's own experience and culture as the text itself. More importantly, the Bible is not the starting point for my analysis of the world around me. Generally, the odd mystic experience aside, I am quite happy to rely upon science in my own quest to understand the universe. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I am comfortable living with ambiguity and recognizing that there may be no meta-narrative, no over-arching story, behind human existence. With the poet Alfred Tennyson, I think that "there lives more faith in honest doubt...than in half the creeds."
All of this makes any sort of debate between religious liberals and fundamentalists almost impossible. An honest debate assumes some sort of common ground and from, a theological perspective at least, there really is not any. We look at the same object--the Bible--and each see something radically different. I see a human text and someone like David sees a divine plan for salvation with only one proper interpretation.
The challenge for us religious liberals is, then, how to live with people who view reality so radically different than we do. While David describes himself as trying "as best…[I] can to live peaceably with all men--liberals and conservatives" the same, as should be evident from the Rob Parsley sermon I read from earlier, is not true for all fundamentalists. Indeed, Hedges describes many as being part of the dominionist movement which "calls on the radical [fundamentalist] church to take political power." If representatives of this movement like Pat Robertson are any indication, seizure of state power by this segment of the fundamentalist movement would mean disaster for many in our society.
Hedges believes, as do I, that to the extent that some fundamentalists have a political agenda that is at odds with democratic and open society it is our duty to expose that agenda for what it is. Historically fascist movements have been able to gain strength because too few people spoke out against them. Such movements can be neutralized in a free society by naming them for what they and seeking to address their root causes.
In our society, however, the root causes are difficult to address. I suspect that many turn to fundamentalism because they want certainty in an uncertain world. The existence of a meta-narrative can provide a sense of meaning when the world seems bleak, difficult to face and unfair. Instead of having to find purpose in a complex and ever changing world a purpose is given.
If religious liberalism is to offer an alternative to fundamentalism then it must help people find meaning in their lives. We certainly have that resource within our tradition. It is a meaning that comes from not running from the ambiguity in life but embracing it and finding joy in the human. It is a meaning that says salvation is not to be found in the hereafter but in the here-and-now when we struggle to other to make a better world. It is a meaning that does not divide the world into the majority of the Christians and the true Christians; the liberals and the fundamentalists; the queers and the straight folk; or along any other lines but instead recognizes the common humanity within each of us and the common fate we share as children of this Earth. A meaning that challenges us to live together in love and understand all human beings as brothers and sisters.
Much as I would like to end with such a moment of rhetorical flourish I feel compelled to offer a brief coda to my sermon. Recently theologian Harvey Cox wrote in the Boston Globe that "for all its apparent strength, the fundamentalist sun is setting on all horizons." He continues, "The fundamentalist world view is unbending and monochrome, but today’s world is variable and multi-hued, and the plurality is more and more visible."
The future of Christian evangelism--the belief that a personal relationship with Jesus is necessary for salvation and a desire spread that message of salvation--lies, Cox thinks, not with the fundamentalists but with the Pentecostals. The amount that pentecostals share with their fundamentalists cousins is limited. They do not necessarily hold to a belief that the Bible is inerrant or can only interpreted one way. More importantly, through their often ecstatic worship services, they offer an "experience of God...who does not remain aloof but reaches down through the power of the Spirit to touch human hearts in the midst of life's turmoil."
In our changing world Cox notes that, "The most rapidly growing spiritual groups today focus not on someone else’s authority, but on a direct encounter with the divine." This is something that Unitarian Universalism as well as Pentecostalism can offer. It suggests to me that while for much of the twentieth century we found ourselves in a dialectic relationship with fundamentalism for much of the 21st century we will find ourselves in such a relationship with Pentecostalism. Unitarian Universalism is to grow and thrive we must begin to focus not so much on doctrinal concerns but upon experiential ones. How and where do find the spirit--be it the spirit of human solidarity, of oneness with nature or God? What does the light, that some call the spark of the divine, within each of us feel like when it moves? Where is spiritual ecstasy to be found? Let us rise to meet these challenges together and hear these words from the poet Rumi:
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing,
there is a field. I will meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about
language, ideas, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense.
Amen.