According to recent Gallop polls, 9 out of every 10 Americans believe in God and nearly 3 out of every 10 Americans take the Bible literally. Only the world’s Muslim communities can boast similar figures. And, yet, my interest is in the 1 out of every 10 Americans who either do not believe in God or whose spiritual beliefs are so undefined as to defy any meaningful description. My fear is that it is these Americans who have most thoroughly succumbed to fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism arose in the United States toward the close of the last century in response to what conservative religious leaders saw as the spread of liberal religion. Liberal religion, in their view, referred to (largely) mainstream Protestantism’s acceptance of the academic critical literary, historical, and social apparatus. Thus, for example, mainstream Protestants were likely to take the side of historians, paleontologists, anthropologists, and linguists on matters such as the authorship of the books of the Bible, the age of the earth, and human origins. When sociologists explored the complex social arrangements displayed in biblical texts or when psychologists sought to analyze the prophets, apostles, or church fathers, mainstream Protestants were inclined to listen, learn, and update their personal beliefs to conform with this research.
But, of course, it did not end there. As scholars learned more about the social and historical formation of other faiths, mainstream Protestants (along with their liberal Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu counterparts) were inclined to look for and find similarities as well as differences between their own practices and those of other faith communities. Liberal religion, in general, was coming to occupy its own place in the history of religions. Liberal Protestants may or may not believe in the Trinity. They may or may not believe in the divine inspiration of scripture. They may or may not believe in a literal, bodily resurrection of the dead. And so on, and so forth.
So by what stretch of the imagination were these mainstream Protestants Christians at all?
Fundamentalism stepped into this breach claiming that it would defend the fundamentals of the Christian faith against what they saw as mainstream Protestantism’s complete abandonment of fundamentals.
But, as I said, my fear is that Fundamentalism has won over the 10%. How? Well, by embracing the 90%’s definition of what constitutes “true” or “authentic” religion.
Fundamentalists accuse mainstream, liberal Protestants of embracing an ersatz religion, a made up religion. And, I am afraid that the 10% are inclined to agree. After all, once I have subjected the biblical texts to the apparatus of higher textual criticism; once I have reduced the prophets and apostles, and even Yahweh and Jesus himself, to social actors who lived within their own limited socio-historical horizons; and once I have reinterpreted the leading symbols and practices of my faith in light of broad social-psychological or even narrowly psychoanalytic categories—what else is left of my so-called religion?
But, isn’t this just sour grapes? Was religion ever a body of revealed truth delivered by transcendent beings from outside the socio-historical horizon? Nothing to my knowledge fits this description. Were not the biblical actors and agents always embedded, just as we are embedded, within a complex web of social, psychological, economic, and political forces? Yes. Would this not suggest then that when I embrace this embedded religion (or any other equally embedded religion) I am embracing what is most authentic and historically grounded about that religion?
But, say the 10%, is this how the biblical actors and agents, the prophets and apostles and church fathers—is this how they understood themselves? Should we not be concerned about accurately reflecting their faith and understanding and practice?
This, however, is exactly the same question that the Fundamentalists raised toward the end of the nineteenth century. So you can see my concern. It is as though the 10% will only be satisfied if religion actually does fit the understanding of religion entertained by end of the nineteenth century fundamentalists. And, since religion cannot fit that description, they would just as soon reject religion entirely.
This rejection strikes me as specially odd, however, because late nineteenth century fundamentalists do not accurately reflect the actual fluidity, the internal dynamism, the syncretism, the polytheism, the multi-layered character of actual existing faith over the centuries. Theirs is a caricature, a flat, clownish, comical simulacrum of religion.
Of course, I can well appreciate why non-believers might prefer this flat, clownish, comical portrayal of religion over the rich, complex, multi-layered religions that we actually find in and through history. Religion is by far among the most complex things that human beings do; on whatever scale we wish to view religion, through whatever lens—sociology, psychology, history, anthropology, archaeology, medicine—religion displays a richness and complexity to which other human phenomena do not come close. Far simpler then to set it aside and focus on simpler, more straightforward, things that we do.
However, either in setting religion aside or in ceding the right to define religion to the fundamentalists, do we not risk closing ourselves off to a large swath of what is happening, both in the past and in the present, in our world?
Have the fundamentalists won? I hope not. But I fear that they have.