A goldfish bowl of faith

I didn’t grow up as a fundamentalist, exactly, but I grew up in a context where a lot of fundamentalist ideas were considered normal.

My parents are charismatic evangelicals, in the special Anglican sense of the word that gave the world the Alpha Course. Most summers of my childhood included at least a week spent at the Royal Bath and West Showground, camping out with church-goers from around the UK who shared this approach to Christianity.

Image credit: Gary Dee via Wikipedia Commons

These days, I struggle to sit through modern worship sessions. They bring back bad memories. Memories of wanting to fit in, of wanting to believe, of desperately pleading with God to please, please, give me some kind of spiritual experience so that I’d know he was out there and that he cared about me. Memories of faking it, almost but not quite able to convince myself that this wave of warmth, this wobble in my legs, this garble coming out of my mouth was the real thing.

It never happened. Over time, trying to work out where I was going wrong, I read widely in the kinds of books that were recommended in our corner of Christian subculture. I read I Kissed Dating Goodbye (though nobody wanted to date me, so that seemed redundant). I read The Purpose-Driven Life, and many similar books on the boundaries of business management and life coaching. I read the life stories of persecuted modern Christians and tissue-thin theology by people like CS Lewis.

I really liked CS Lewis. If I haven’t read every published scrap he wrote, it’s not for lack of trying. Looking back, I think this might have been because Lewis was the least fundamentalist author I encountered. His apologetics might be crude and his vision occasionally distorted by misogyny or privilege in various ways, but he did have an inclusivity, a willingness to admit his own faults, and a general bonhomie that was in scarce supply elsewhere.

All of these ingredients came together to shape an understanding of the world that was starved for substance, brittle as spring ice, and comprehensive. I had found – had had to find – an answer for every question. Some of the answers weren’t very good, but that didn’t matter because there must be better answers out there.

I hoped to learn more. I was terrified to learn more. I was dimly aware that there were whole libraries of books out there that the little intellectual bubble I found myself in couldn’t even admit existed.

One of the dynamics of the Anglican-evangelical-charismatic convergence is that believing the Right Things is terribly important, having the right experiences is a sign that you’re okay, and that everyone is too nice to pry. As a result, a surprising range of views and perspectives gets pushed by a gentle but insistent social pressure into a generally accepted and acceptable format.

Preachers tread around a few favourite verses, or use different verses to express the same ideas again and again. There is a kind of safety in the self-reinforcing bubble. The potentially divisive topics are captured and quietly dispatched. Nobody says anything homophobic, but somehow gay church-goers don’t quite feel they can come out to their friends.

I went up to university longing for a broader world, and desperate to prove myself in the world I already knew. I was already afraid that those two desires were incompatible, and I didn’t know how to deal with the fear.

And, indeed, after about a year my careful faith-construction came tumbling down.

Interlude: painting with babies

Keeping both a toddler and a baby happy at the same time can be tricky.

A three-year-old can walk, use kiddy scissors, draw and paint without trying to eat the pens or the paper.

They understand complicated commands like “don’t you dare get that on the floor, the walls, or Daddy’s suit jacket. Do you hear me? And do you need a wee-wee? Well, go and try anyway and then come back and you can play with it.”

This does not work on a baby whose walking is still at the cruising-along-furniture stage, who has a homing instinct for potential danger, and whose exploration of the world happens mostly via their mouth.

In the chilly wet weather lately I’ve been scratching my head for a while for ways to keep both our boys busy and happy indoors.

Fun with paints, by two small boys. Mixed media: paper, finger paints, post it notes, felt tip pens, water, stickers, and probably drool.

They’ve both had more than their fair share of coughs, fevers, and more serious infections this winter. Turns out that starting nursery magnifies the ‘mummy’s little plague vector’ effect.

So, last weekend, rolled up the rug and sellotaped two big rolls of paper together and stuck them to the most washable part of our floor, making sure that there were no loose corners for the baby to pry up. I covered the chairs with sheets, and set up a little blow heater in one corner for warmth.

A selection of toddler paints in different colours went out on the lids of a lot of tupperware. A big bowl of water and some towels went right in front of the kitchen door – I wanted to be ready to intercept.

Finally, I put on my DIY painting clothes, stripped both boys down to pants / nappy, and let them loose. When they got bored of splashing in the paint, I fetched some stickers and pens and we kept going.

As the toddler’s favourite colour is red, the resulting work of art looks a little bit like the first chapter of an Agatha Christie novel. In a good way, I think.

It may be a little while before we do this again. We’ve only got one wall big enough to display art on this scale, and it’s taken now.

…but what do you mean by fundamentalism? Part Two

In …but what do you mean by fundamentalism? Part One, I argued that the dictionary gives fundamentalist thought too much credit by describing it as strict adherence to the fundamentals. That implies that (for example) a Christian fundamentalist is somehow more Christian than a liberal.

It’s certainly how fundamentalists like to think of themselves, but I don’t think most non-fundamentalists would agree – unless they are looking for a way of writing off a whole religion.

If (for example) Islamic fundamentalists get to define themselves as more-Muslim-than-thou, that feeds a caricature of liberal faith as wishy-washy, and non-committal. An outsider might ask, with all the appearance of reasonableness, why follow the faith at all if you’re not willing to commit fully and become a fundamentalist?

In order to avoid discarding the experiences and understanding of non-fundamentalists, we need a better way of thinking about what fundamentalism is. While I was hunting around for dictionary definitions to write my last post, I came across another definition in a collection of materials about religion published by Neal R. Wagner of the University of Texas.

Beliefs and actions of extreme religious fundamentalism (includes selected groups of Protestants, Muslims, Catholics, Mormans, Jews, and others):

1. Beliefs are based on divine and revealed texts, which are considered perfect and cannot be questioned.
2. Beliefs are elaborate and detailed, constructed by selectively interpreting divine texts.
3. Beliefs are often at variance with common sense, reason, logic, and science.
4. The group includes a single living individual with special privileged relationship to God, unlike anyone else’s relationship or status.
5. Members must adhere strictly to all details of doctrine.
6. Members reject all other religions and belief systems, including ones similar to their own.
7. Members are intolerant of anyone outside the group, with different beliefs.
8. Extreme and hateful actions are justified by the group’s beliefs.
9. Members are smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, and egotistical, about their beliefs and their group.

I like this list of characteristics because it brings forward not only the close devotion to a reading of scripture, but also thing that sits at the core of fundamentalism: the complete devotion to a particular interpretative framework, and the rejection of everything else.

To me, it’s the triumph of a frame of thought that cannot be wrong in any tiny aspect that makes fundamentalism. There is one true way to read scripture, and any disagreement is inherently wrong and quite possibly inherently evil.

This results in a flattening out of the text: there can be no possible variation in meanings, no hidden depths, no alternative interpretations.

It also results in an increasingly complicated system, as every piece of ambiguity has to be hammered into a shape that fits a rigid framework.

For example, many churches use the Nicene creed to identify shared core beliefs. It’s only 226 words long in the Anglican version I’ve linked here. It covers some big topics, but it does so at an intentionally high level so that it can be a point of agreement between people who may have a completely different understanding of what some or all of those things mean.

Fundamentalist thinking is deeply uncomfortable with this kind of ambiguity. Take a look at Answers in Genesis’ (AiG’s) Statement of Faith for a contrast. It’s more than four times the length of the Nicene creed and it uses that space to bullet point out specific beliefs about history, biology, and science.

In practice, though, AiG’s whole website becomes part of their Statement of Faith. It’s full of articles about what can and should be believed, and why. This focus on uniformity is a natural result of starting off with the conclusion that one particular interpretation of scripture is Right and everything else is Wrong. You end up somewhere down the rabbit hole, arguing with the Mad Hatter about the age of the Earth.

Underneath the arguments is fear. If the Earth is really billions of years old, does that invalidate the whole of the rest of your faith? It does if you’re a fundamentalist. So does changing your mind.

Fundamentalism is brittle. Allow it contact with reality, and it will break. If you’re using it as a superstructure for your thoughts and identity, you will do everything you can to reinforce it. You will twist logic, and shout down your opponents, and never ever be able to bear disagreement without finding some reason to reject the other person.

Fundamentalists spent huge amounts of time and energy being right. It’s a trap, and it’s often a tragedy.

…but what do you mean by fundamentalism? Part One

The concept of fundamentalism started with a particular quirk of Protestant Christian popular theology, but it’s become essential to understanding a certain kind of thinking.

From our copy of the Oxford English Dictionary.

A couple of weeks ago I published Gorilla rights and growing up fundamentalist as a starting place for talking about how fundamentalism has affected me over the years. Before going any further, I’d like to take a quick look at what fundamentalism means.

The fundamentalist is a gift to equality-loving speechifiers and non-knuckle-dragging politicians everywhere. They’re a warped member of a tribe who can be criticised without reserve, without that criticism splashing back on others.

I’m not entirely sure that this rhetorical dynamic is healthy. Dividing a religion into the good ones and the fundamentalists avoids implying that the religion in itself should be regarded as the enemy. Given the human tendency to draw a battle line and below threats back and forth over it, however, this kind of division is an invitation to further tribalism, aggression, and fuzzy thinking.

I can think of five different colloquial meanings for ‘fundamentalist’:

1. That funny person from that other group who is a bit weird and is probably going to murder us all in our beds.
2. Anyone who disagrees with me with less than utter deference and politeness.
3. A person whose beliefs cause them to act in a hostile or violent way towards others.
4. A person who believes more thoroughly in their faith (or lack of it) than most.
5. A person who truly understands their faith and is part of the small, beleaguered community of Real True Believers (this could be regarded as the self-identified fundamentalist’s own definition).

The first two are an invitation to xenophobia and arguments in bad faith and the third is too broad to be much use. The last two definitions reflect a general idea that a fundamentalist is the same as anybody else who shares their faith, only more so. A Christian fundamentalist is, in this understanding, more Christian than a liberal.

Fundamentalists are happy to accept this idea, but I don’t think we should be so keen on giving it to them. It’s there in all the official definitions, however. Take a look at the dictionary definition preferred by Google:

1. A form of a religion, especially Islam or Protestant Christianity, that upholds belief in the strict, literal interpretation of scripture.

‘there was religious pluralism there at a time when the rest of Europe was torn by fundamentalism’

1.1 Strict adherence to the basic principles of any subject or discipline.

‘free-market fundamentalism’

Fundamentalists say that they are taking scripture literally, or going back to the basics of their subject. It’s a great line: by definition, I’m more accurate than you. My take on our religion – or our subject, or our profession, or whatever – is the most true, most basic, most reliable one there could be.

Christian and Islamic fundamentalists adhere closely to their idea of purity in their faith, and to their idea of a strict, literal interpretation of Scripture. Liberal Christians and Muslims adhere closely to their idea of what it means to be a good Christian or Muslim, and to their ideas on how to interpret Scripture.

If we concede that the fundamentalists are truly managing to be closer to the basic principles of their religion, subject, or discipline, then we’re letting them define those basic principles. We’re conceding that liberals are inherently less right, less dedicated, or less strong in their faith.

So if we’re not thinking of fundamentalism as being truly closer to the fundamentals than anything else, how should we define it?

I have some ideas, which I’ll get on to in Part Two.