The smug and self-assured look of the Fundamentalist in
this cartoon is very appropriate; it is indicative of epistemic arrogance. And
yet ironically that arrogance is a reaction to epistemic insecurity promoted by
Western culture. The fundamentalist easily mistakes epistemic humility for the
existential angst expressed in Western postmodernism and relativism and as this post goes on to suggest the fundamentalist false dichotomy that separates out "God's Word" from secular society is a trope that exploits folk misconceptions about the nature of language.
A recent address by a fundamentalist has prompted me
to give urgent attention to the question of what distinguishes fundamentalism
from moderate evangelicalism. I wrote this essay in response to this address,
but in the post below I explore these ideas further.
What is the difference between an evangelical and a fundamentalist? That is a question I have
been pondering recently and this post gives some of my first thoughts on this
subject. The relation is not simple; in fact I think it’s true to say that one
group is a subset of the other: That is, fundamentalist Christians are
evangelicals but not all evangelicals are fundamentalists. Moreover, as is so
often the case with our classification schemes it is likely we are dealing with
fuzzy classes here with no sharp cut-off criteria: There is an imperceptible
gradation from fundamentalism to non-fundamentalism and although the extreme
ends of the spectrum can be distinguished it is often difficult to sharply
separate out evangelical and fundamentalist; no surprise then that one
sometimes comes across the term “fundagelical”. But the fact is there is certainly
a difference between the moderate evangelicals one finds, say, writing in a
Christian magazine like “Christianity” (Now called “Premier Christianity”) and
fundamentalists. The latter are ferociously jealous over their strict &
particular observance of belief and practice. Any departure from these
observances is considered to be a very grave matter indeed. In consequence “fundies”
have uncompromising heresy detectors and particular “heresies” like, say, a
belief in an “old earth” can have the equivalent effect of rendering a
believer “ritually unclean”.
Moderate
evangelicals and fundamentalists often hold similar doctrines, but moderate
evangelicals are more prepared to accept that there are other Christians out
there of different culture to themselves and yet who still classify as
Christians. Fundamentalists, in contrast, are at best very grudging in their
acceptance of other Christian subcultures as genuinely Christian and at worst
they will not even accept moderate evangelicals as authentically Christian.
Both
fundamentalists and moderate evangelicals have taken on board traditional and
literal slanting interpretations of the Bible, but when compared to moderate
evangelicals there are great differences in the collective personality of fundamentalist
communities and this in turn effects fundamentalist attitudes to Christians who
don’t stand in their traditions. For fundamentalists the concept of Divine
Grace is very much bound up with what they believe to be right observance of
belief and practice; their logic is that surely
a true believer would believe and follow the truth, truth which, of course,
they believe is found amongst fundamentalists of like mind. A consequence of
this is that fundamentalists have a tendency to believe that professing
Christians who do not follow the exacting letter of their observance driven
faith fail to do so because of sinful wilfulness and a bad conscience, and are
therefore in danger of placing themselves beyond Divine Grace. It is no
surprise then that fundamentalists have a dim view of humanity beyond the pale
of their culture. In consequence they have a collective susceptibility for the
paranoiac fantasies of conspiracy theory; in particular, if you are a robust
opponent of what they stand for you are likely to be viewed as a scheming
sinner. And yet fundamentalists sects do not form a united front against what
they perceive as an evil persecuting world. Their exacting demand for obedience
to a proprietary collection of observances means that what appears to the
outsider as marginal differences between fundamentalist sects, will actually
register as wide diverges amongst the fundamentalists themselves. Therefore
fundamentalists can fall out very sharply. Ultimately, then, it is not content
that defines fundamentalism but attitude, method and ethos and these are very much bound up with
their literally interpreted “Word of God” epistemic.
It is the “Word
of God” epistemic that is the most distinctive feature of fundamentalism and it
is here that fundamentalism’s defining error lies: As a rule fundamentalists
have a concept of language that takes insufficient account of the strongly connotational character of natural
language whereby meaning is proactively assigned by the reader given his
intellectual, experiential and cultural context. The fundamentalist is inclined
to see meaning as intrinsic to scripture
rather than extrinsic to it: That is,
the fundamentalist model of language interpretation is seen as the reader
extracting meaning from the words just as one might extract metal from ore. Once that extraction is thought to have taken place (which usually means simply following certain traditional interpretations) the fundamentalist believes he has something immutable and absolute which he literally "possesses" and which stands distinct from the surrounding world. The
consequence of this is that fundamentalism sees the Bible in very
literalistic and notational terms rather than connotational terms. The
fundamentalist usually takes little or no epistemic responsibility for what he
thinks he has extracted from scripture and he is very likely to pass the buck
on to God but asking rhetorically “Has God not said……?” as if that is
sufficient to end all dispute.
For the
fundamentalist getting meaning from the Bible is in practice thought to be a
relatively trivial exercise. For example, in response to the enigma of assigning
Biblical meaning I have heard fundamentalists say things like “God can well say what he means”, “No interpretation is needed”, “The historical parts of the Bible, such as
Genesis, should be taken at face value, otherwise it is tantamount to calling
God a liar!”. On two occasions I have put before fundamentalists “Harries formula”, Meaning = Text + Context, and on both occasions received
superficial and flippant answers. In summary: Fundamentalists have trouble
taking Bible interpretation seriously perhaps because they are unwilling to put
their traditional interpretations under review and instead justify them with the
lazy rubric “It’s God’s Word”.
There is
probably such a thing as the fundamentalist
personality. That is, certain types of personality seem to get drawn to a
very literal treatment of the Bible and will subsequently join the embattled heroic tribal-remnant
communities that promulgate these kinds of Biblical readings. But modern culture
probably plays an important role in inadvertently promoting these numerous fundamentalist sects. For a start, large industrial societies can be very
anonymous and they lack a sense of belonging and so a reversion to tribalism beckons as a way of breaking up society into less anonymous groups.
Secondly, the Modern world is a confusing welter of information and contradictory
voices; therefore trying to form a definitive world view from all the evidence is difficult if not
impossible. As William Irwin Thompson has said:
When information is so immense that man cannot keep up
with it and still be purely rational, he has a choice: he can freak out and
become tribal again to attack the old naïve rational values in the guise of a
Luddite-student; or he can effect a quantum leap in consciousness to re-vision
the universe….re-vision the universe in the mystical, mathematical, and
scientific forms of the new Pythagoreanism….
The absence of
ultimate religious values and cosmic purpose can leave a very big void in the
lives of citizens in industrial societies, societies that in effect tell the individual to get on with the work of world view synthesis by themselves;
unlike mediaeval societies modern societies offer little or no guidance on such
matters. As Thompson implies this helps promote a reaction which favours the
cosier and cognitively more tractable worlds of introverted tribal mythologies.
For the personality who finds it burdensome to cope with an epistemically open
ended world the notion of the Bible offering a closed ended epistemic whereby
definitive meaning is somehow trapped inside the covers of a 1000 page book is
very attractive. Fundamentalist communities offer this epistemic because it
acts as a tribal shibboleth for separating out the sheep from the goats and
reducing community sizes to humanly amenable horizons. Detractors can be
written off with “You’re using man’s
ideas; we’re using God’s very words”. But this “man’s ideas vs. God’s word” dichotomy is bogus. That the scriptures don't “contain” meaning but rather generate meaning by harnessing the resources of context makes it impossible to
separate out God’s Word and man’s ideas as per the fundamentalist’s distorted
epistemic represented by the cartoon above (I found this cartoon on a
fundamentalist web site). The Holy Spirit’s sovereign management is everywhere
and anywhere commending truthful meaning to individuals by diverse contextual means
at His omnipotent disposal. This concept of God’s immanence cuts across the
folk philosophy that localizes meaning by believing it to be an intrinsic
property of scripture. Rather, Biblical meaning is an extrinsic property of scripture,
a property assigned by social context, but – and this is important – a context
managed by the immanent and sovereign Holy Spirit. Scripture is God breathed in
the sense that the wind of Holy Spirit choreographs contexts to bring forth the
growth from the seed of His Word (1 Peter 1:23).
It is truism
that all signals, signs, symbols and words which arrive at our doorstep can
only have significance and meaning if they trigger a proactive interpretation process that
embraces cognition, culture and context. It is the failure of fundamentalism to
seriously engage this truism that, I submit, is its main distinguishing feature.
Moderate evangelicals, as a rule, are more humble in their epistemic attitudes.
In contrast the personalities and cultures of fundamentalist communities prefer
to believe that they have a very direct connection to the Divine Mind. In consequence
they may intimidate cooperation using what they claim to be the very commands
of God. For them meaning is a black and white affair that sorts out the sheep
from the goats; shades of grey are not part of their language. The fundamentalist
personality will do his utmost to bring others into line because the
fundamentalist is so convinced he is in very direct contact with absolute truth.
The many
information packets we receive from the Bible and the rest of the cosmos are
like seeds that land in the nutrient bed of a cultural and cognitive
epistemic matrix that responds to these seeds by “growing” meanings from them. This
process of growth is not trivial and should not to be taken for granted: We are
responsible for the upkeep of the seed bed and therefore we have epistemic responsibility
for the assignment of meaning. And yet at the same time we understand that our
responsibilities of maintenance only extend to planting and watering; it is a sovereign
God that gives growth. (1 Cor 3:6ff)
The above is another misconceived fundamentalist
trope: It fails to take into account that the Bible is a set of signals which
we interpret and understand through the lens of our culture and cognition; but
in that lens God is immanent and sovereign,
