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Fundamentalism is a Dirty Word

 There, I’ve said it.  Mention “fundamentalism” these days and people go into the censorious mode.  The other day I came across someone who is a professor of “fundamental theology” and I got to thinking about the word.  Fundamental theology is a serious intellectual discipline, quite necessary, absolutely necessary – well, fundamental! – to the proper study of theology.  It establishes the ground rules for theology (the scientific study of God and God’s relationship with this world).  Using the tools of philosophy, linguistics, and historical–critical method, its attempts to establish the reliability of an event or the truth of a Church doctrine.

The word “fundamental” itself finds its etymological root in the Latin fundare, to base firmly.  From it we get the words found (as in establish), foundation, founder (to go to the bottom), fundament (what you sit on – but not a chair!), and profound.

We encounter the word in “fundamental moral theology” which deals with moral questions concerning human acts, the law of Christ, the vocation of the Christian, the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity, moral norms.  The Vatican II documents recommend that moral theology be no longer oriented to the confessional, dominated by canon law and centred on a concept of sin, but that it should be “thoroughly nourished by Scripture and should show the nobility of the Christian vocation of the faithful and their obligation to bring forth fruit in charity for the life of the world”.  (Catholic Encyclopaedia p549)

We find it, too, in the concept of the “fundamental option”.  I think I am right in saying that the phrase came into prominence in the middle of the Twentieth Century.  It refers to the basic or fundamental choice the human being makes between love and selfishness, between self and God.  It represents our basic disposition in life.  We cannot not choose for or against God in our lives: we are either for God or against God.  It is not like the choice we make between political parties or goods on the supermarket shelves – Labor this election, Nationals next election, Moccona in winter, Nescafé in summer – it underlies all other choices .  Acting according to our pro-God choice deepens it; acting contrary to it weakens it.  Among other implications, an understanding of our “fundamental option” makes clearer the concept of mortal sin.  If one’s fundamental option is for God, mortal sin is less likely in one’s life.

So it’s not such a bad old word after all, is it!  So, wherein lies the problem with “Fundamentalism”?  The word can apply to any religion: there are fundamental Catholics as well as fundamental Protestants and fundamental Muslims.  A “fundamentalist” approach to the Scriptures involves believing in a literal interpretation of them, for example that the world was created in six twenty-four hour days, or that Jonah was literally in a whale’s belly, or in believing that the Bible provides all the answers for daily living in our present world.  For Catholics, the same attitude applies to the teaching of the Church.  It claims to know the mind of God, it places its belief in the miraculous, it focuses on authority, believing that a selected few have access to the Holy Spirit and that the rest are wrong.  It replaces the discussion of issues with shallow piety.  It chooses to keep the Catholic Church within the church walls and refuses to let the Church into the market place.  It often holds an apocalyptic view of the world – the final days are just around the corner, this has been revealed in private revelations to a select few, and only a limited number will be saved.

Fundamentalism can be a very dangerous stance, as we know.  We are only too sell aware of the horror of the September 11 terrorist action; and the Vatican Missionary Agency reminds us that at least 33 Catholic missionaries were killed world wide in 20001, the majority being victims of religious or ethnic fundamentalism.  Pope John Paul II says loudly and clearly: “No one, no matter what the reason, can kill in the name of the one and merciful God”.

Keep your foundations strong.  Keep your fundamental option as your fundamental option.  But for God’s sake avoid fundamentalism at all costs. 

The Dangers of Fundamentalism

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about fundamentalism, with reference to the “fundamental option”.  Today I want to talk more about the dangers of “fundamentalism”.  In my earlier article I wrote: “The word can apply to any religion: there are fundamental Catholics as well as fundamental Protestants and fundamental Muslims.  A fundamentalist approach to the Scriptures involves believing in a literal interpretation of them, for example that the world was created in six twenty-four days, or that Jonah was literally in a whale’s belly, or in believing that the Bible provides all the answers for daily living in our present world.  For Catholics the same attitude applies to the teaching of the Church.  It claims to know the mind of God, it places its belief in the miraculous, it focuses on authority, believing that a selected few have access to the Holy Spirit and that the rest are wrong.  It replaces the discussion of issues with shallow piety.  It chooses to keep the Catholic Church within church walls and refuses to allow the Church into the market place.  It often holds an apocalyptic view of the world – the final days are just around the corner, this has been revealed in private revelations to a select few, and only a limited number will be saved.”

A recent article in The Sydney Morning Herald (7 May 2002) indicated that, according to the National Church Life Survey of 435,000 Australians from 19 big Christian denominations “the stronghold of fundamentalism, and specifically creationism, is youth.”  It says that because the tendency for younger people not to go to church, only those with conservative approaches to Christianity are staying in the churches.  Hence the predominance of fundamentalism in certain groups.

Let me illustrate the fundamentalist approach with a couple of examples from the Scriptures.  Taking the creation story literally leads to all sorts of irrelevant questions and often silly answers.  If Adam and Eve were the original two human beings created, whom did Cain marry – his mother?  To get around the problem that raises we must invoke some explanation that raises even more questions.  Unless we understand the creation story as primarily a way of trying to explain how the human race came into being and why it is deeply flawed but at the same time made in the image of God, we miss the point: apples, serpents, gardens, angels with flaming swords, the immediate development of shepherds (Abel) and farmers (Cain), all raise more questions than need to be answered within the meaning of the story.

The Infancy Narratives of Matthew and Luke’s Gospels are another happy hunting ground for literalists.  Raymond Brown, the renowned Catholic Scripture scholar, says that Luke needed no special source or personal reminiscence of Mary to be able to have her say at the Annunciation “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; let it happen to me according to your word”.  He need only to make the Infancy Narrative portrait of Mary consistent with what he knew of her sole appearance in the common Synoptic tradition of Jesus’s public ministry – Mark 3, Matthew 12, Luke 8 (“Whoever does the will of my Father is my brother, my sister and my mother.”)  That tradition, plus the presence of Mary within the early Church gatherings (Acts 1), was sufficient to allow Luke (and Matthew) to construct the stories of Jesus’s conception and birth and Mary’s role in them.  Whether Caesar Augustus called a census of the whole world when Quirinius was governor of Syria, whether Jesus was born in Bethlehem or Nazareth, whether there was a star and three gifts, is, in terms of the Gospel message, less important than the origin, nature and message of Jesus and the commitment of his men and women disciples, prominent amongst whom was his mother.  Mary’s preeminence amongst Jesus’s disciples is indicated in her hymn of praise, the Magnificat, which was more likely to have been put into her mouth by the writer of Luke’s gospel than to have been a spontaneous outpouring when she arrived on her cousin Elizabeth’s doorstep at Ein Karim.

We have only to look at some of the psalms to see the dangers of a literal interpretation of the Scriptures.  Phrases like “Happy shall he be who takes your little ones and dash their heads against a stone” (Psalm 137 and please note that this quoted out of context) surely have to be seen among what Salmon Rushdie describes as “satanic verses”.  Any literal interpretation of “O that you would slay the wicked, O God, and that men of blood would depart from me, men who maliciously defy thee, who lift themselves up against thee for evil.  Do I not hate them that hate thee, O Lord?” (Psalm 139) leads to September 11 and all other manner of suicide bombings.  Seen as a rejection of personal evil in my own life, these verses make far more sense.

Please do not think that I am rejecting any hard options in the Scriptures: living the Christian message is about hard options and none of us can avoid them.  But it is far more important to understand the essence of the call rather than to be caught up in literal interpretations – most of which seem to me to be aimed at confounding those who don’t agree with us, and that’s a bit “holier than thou” for my liking!

The real power of the Catholic Church

 It was reported from Vatican City, May 6, 2002  that the number of Catholics in the world has grown by 38% in the years of John Paul II's pontificate.  According to the Statistical Yearbook of the Church the number of people baptized in the Catholic Church worldwide from 1978 to 2000 increased to 1.045 billion from 757 million.  The numbers in Africa soared up by almost 140%. Europe is the last in this category, with 5.8% growth.  In Asia, Catholics comprise only 2.9% of the population, in Europe it is 40%, in the Americas 63%.  [Australia does not rate a mention!]  Over the 22 year period, the number of bishops has grown to 4,541 from 3,714, while priests total just over 405,000, down 3.75% from 1978.  Diocesan clergy are growing everywhere, with some exceptions, whereas religious clergy are shrinking, except in Asia.  Candidates for the priesthood, meanwhile, have soared, from 64,000 in 1978 to 111,000 in 2000. Growth is notable in Asia and Africa, less so in Oceania, Europe and America.

Now, apart from boring you with those statistics, I would like to say that I find that information rather irrelevant – especially in the Australian Church.  I’ve noted it before, but I want to say again, that Christianity is pretty much under siege in our part of the world today, and it seems to be the case in America and England as well – probably it is the case in most of the so-called “first world”.  There are some good reasons why this is so, and some unfortunate reasons.  This article is not an attempt at a full explanation of the reasons – that would take much research and a whole book – but I think one of the good reasons for the poor press is that the Church deserves criticism in certain areas where it has failed to live up to the demands and commands of Jesus Christ.  I don’t have to list them.  One of the unfortunate reasons, I believe, is that as a society we have become so affluent and so dedicated to the pursuit of material goods that we simply are not prepared to put aside the time that God requires.

Recently, the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, bemoaned the loss of the Church’s influence in society, suggesting that we had lost confidence in the truth for which the Christian Church stands and that in the search for “relevance” we have given to too many of society’s expectations.

The reverend Tim Costello, president of the Baptist Union of Australia and pastor of the Collins Street Baptist Church in Melbourne (a church that once had a pew set aside for the press, and where the views expressed were often part of the Monday morning news), suggests that Archbishop Jensen is merely describing “the slow shift from Christendom to a post-Christian, pluralistic culture” (SMH 15.5.02).  For the best part of fifteen hundred years, the Christian Church dominated society (and that of course is only Western Society we are talking about), and there were profound and good results that shaped the society we live in now.  But – and this goes without saying – there were also grave problems caused: we only have to think of the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Christian attitude to the Jewish people and the failure of Rome to listen to the cries of those who wanted reform in the Sixteenth Century (and found itself faced with the Protestant Reformation).

We are not going to return to those days of power and now in some ways we Christians have to take our chance along with everyone else.  Our message has to speak from its own authenticity, we have to be genuine bearers and livers of the word of Jesus if we are going to expect anyone to take Christianity seriously – the trappings of power won’t work any more.  I believe Tim Costello is right when he says “simply, even naively, we need to re-find the way of Jesus.  The truth is relational and personal as embodied in him.  His way was on the back streets with those who were powerless.  He gave no ready answers to complex human dilemmas.  Jesus reminds us that we are at our most dangerous when we think we have the answers.  Instead his extreme teaching raises a new moral sensitivity that leads us to listen to others and to God.”  [My emphasis]  He goes on: “Rather than mourn the ‘tragic absence of truth in public discourse’ [Jensen], the church may do better to rediscover its Lord and Saviour.  By following him, truth and relevance will look after themselves.  But like him, we must expect no privileged access to power nor automatic respect because of our institutional and cultural role.”  I couldn’t agree more!