The Fundamentals

I have really enjoyed the comments that all contributors to this blog have made, thus far.
To be honest, the downside is that I end up just wanting to come home after work and read what you all are saying, rather than write anything myself!
[That's not entirely true, but almost so.]
Last night, there was a comment from "rantandroar" in the Three Pillars thread, and the word “fundamentalists” was used. It got me to thinking about the word itself.
What does it mean, and what do we mean when we use it?
Of course, there exists “fundamentalism” in all religions… but primarily, when we speak of “religious fundamentalism” or “religious fundamentlists” we are usually referring to the big Western religions. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Without question, fundamentalists abound in all of these groupings.
As regards Christianity in particular, where did the term originate, and what does it refer to?

Well, between 1910 and 1915, in response to biblical criticism in general and the emergence of Darwinism in particular, a group of conservative Christians published a series of pamphlets entitled The Fundamentals.*
From these pamphlets the term “fundamentalism” entered our religious vocabulary, and referred to the literal beliefs held by conservative Christians.

The five fundamentals** were [and still are]:

1) The inspiration of Scripture as the literal, revealed word of God.

2) The virgin birth as the miraculous and literal means by which the divine nature of Christ has been guaranteed.

3) The substitutionary view of the atonement that was accomplished in the death of Jesus. The affirmation of the saving power of his blood and the gift of salvation that was accomplished by his death.

4) The certainty of the physical bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. The accuracy of both the empty-tomb and and the appearance stories in the gospel tradition.

5) The truth of the second coming of Jesus, the reality of the Day of Judgment, which would be based on the record of one’s life, and the certainty of heaven and hell as eternal places of reward and punishment.

*Dixon, A.C., and R.H. Torrey, eds. The Fundamentals. Chicago: Testimony Publishing, 1910-1915.
**Meredith, Lawrence. Life Before Death: A Spiritual Journey of Mind and Body. Atlanta: Atlanta Humanics Publishing Group, 2000. p.31.

A Christian fundamentalist is therefore someone who believes rather unequivocably [without question] in all five of these tenets. As a minimum entrance requirement.
As recently as two years ago, I fully believed in all five of them myself.
Today, I can subscribe to none of them, as traditionally understood.
I mention this merely to say to you, and to myself, that this change represents a radical, life-altering, [some would say “after-life altering”] quantum leap for me.
I am still in the infancy stages of learning what it means to not believe in these things after having believed them. [To me, this constitutes a very different scenario than that of never having believed them at all].
I hope that you will continue to journey with me into greater and greater questions and mystery… what I am going to here call “the exhilarating beauty of not knowing stuff.”

I am currently re-reading, for the second [and not last] time, John Shelby Spong’s excellent book (2001) called, A New Christianity For A New World: Why Traditional Faith is Dying and How a New Faith is Being Born.
Of all the heretical authors I’ve encountered in the past two years, I like Spong the best. The things he says resonate deep within my own inner heretic.
I thought I would close with just two simple things he says in the preface of this book:
“To suggest that God and one’s own understanding of God are the same thing is not only to stop growing, it is to die to the quest for truth.” [xviii].
I could not agree more.

“Christianity will always be the pathway to God on which I journey, but I am now convinced that no human system, including Christianity itself, can maintain the exclusive power-claims of its past. The world is far too small today to offer a haven for that kind of tribal religion.” [xxi].
Amen!

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