On Sunday, Oct. 6, 1963, I was a skinny, 13-year-old white kid with glasses. My dad pastored a fundamentalist Baptist church just north of Memphis, and my granddad, John R. Rice, was the dean of fundamentalists in the 20th century. He not only founded The Sword of the Lord newspaper in Texas in 1935, he also personally mentored and influenced many well-known fundamentalist preachers such as Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell, and he laid the ideological basis for the modern Religious Right.
As on every other Sunday morning, I sat in the sanctuary of our church. Sunlight streamed through the side windows and glanced off the simple wooden pews. Our congregation of just over 100 settled in by singing the opening verse to "Amazing Grace."
Just three weeks earlier a bomber had killed four little girls at a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala., and earlier that summer civil rights leader Medgar Evers had been slain. Yet, I was oblivious to the civil rights movement sweeping the South. No one in my family or church had even mentioned those tragedies. This Sunday morning, however, reality would intrude. A black sailor from the Memphis Naval Air Station walked in the front door of the church with his three white friends. All four wore their dress blue uniforms.
My dad's conducting of the music began to falter as some stopped singing. The sailors ignored the shocked stares and urgent whispers of the congregation, and sat down in our midst. Within minutes, most folks walked out of the church building, led by every member of the board of deacons and all their family members. The next day, my dad met with the black sailor and asked him not to disturb us again.
That day marked the beginning of my slide toward rage and apostasy. By high school, I concluded that there was no God and I hated everything my family and Christianity stood for. Christianity was for hypocrites, racists and warmongers.
I believed my family's brand of religion had little in common with Jesus' teachings about loving your neighbor, serving the poor and seeking peace. While still in high school, I began marching in civil rights demonstrations and protesting the war in Vietnam. Within a few more years I slid all the way to another extreme and called myself an atheist and communist, little realizing I had simply taken a small ideological step to adopt an equal and opposite fundamentalism, intolerant of dissent and similarly polarizing in its philosophy.
John R. Rice preached around the world and published more than 60 books and pamphlets in more than 200 million copies. As his oldest grandson, I was expected to follow in the footsteps of my dad and inherit the mantle of my famous grandfather. Instead, I spent my 20s doing my utmost to overthrow the imperialist bourgeoisie. Now in my 60s, I'm consoled by George Bernard Shaw, who famously paraphrased François Guizot: "Not to be a communist at 20 is proof you have no heart; to be one at 30 is proof you have no brain."
In 1980, my grandfather died. That same year Jerry Falwell led the Moral Majority to help elect Ronald Reagan. At my grandfather's funeral, three weeks before Reagan's inauguration, Falwell preached the sermon. Afterwards, at the family dinner, an anonymous and well-intentioned schemer -- probably one of my aunts -- thoughtfully placed my name tag next to Jerry Falwell's in a vain hope that Jerry might influence my return to the fold. I listened to Jerry explain how God had helped him to bring about Reagan's election, but Jerry failed to convert me.
That same year, I quit my factory job, left the proletarian revolution behind and began a decades-long journey to recover my life -- and to uncover my fundamentalist roots. I wanted to understand the forces that had shaped me and conditioned my family's religion. My book The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family is the result of that long and strange journey -- a work of both history and memoir.
The story of Southern fundamentalism -- and my family -- begins with a mass migration from Europe. Hundreds of thousands of Scots-Irish came to America in the 18th century, bringing with them an individualistic spirit, a stern form of Calvinism, a fierce love of freedom, and a hatred of oppression. They settled along the Southern coast and in Appalachia, provided the backbone of the Revolutionary Army, and then moved on to settle the South. They generally defended slavery, yet also gave the nation its most ardent abolitionists.
They suffered the terrible defeat and trauma of the Civil War, but then clung to a rigid, literalist religion that justified the continued exploitation and oppression of blacks. My great-great-grandfather was a slave-owning Presbyterian and Confederate cavalry officer. My great-grandfather was a Baptist preacher, a Ku Klux Klansman, and a one-term Texas State Senator. My grandfather was the fundamentalist leader who provided a bridge from that past to the modern world.
By the end of his life, my granddad turned his focus to what Jesus said were the true fundamentals of faith: loving God and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus viewed his own ministry on earth as a call to radical compassion: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," said Jesus, "because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Now I find I am once again willing to describe myself as a fundamentalist, for the first time in almost 50 years. As I try to follow the example and most fundamental teachings of Jesus, I come to better understand my grandfather's motivations, his own all too human attempts to follow Jesus. I find myself having more compassion for my neighbor, and slower to condemn those who don't understand the world exactly as I do.
Following Jesus requires more than right belief. It requires right practice: placing Christ's incarnation of love and justice at the center of your life and practice. Fundamentalism that recalls the unearned grace proclaimed by Jesus will be open-hearted, generous, kind, and hopeful, and will seek the Kindom (my intentional spelling) of God on earth.
Andrew Himes is the author of the new book, 'The Sword of the Lord: The Roots of Fundamentalism in an American Family'.
Follow Andrew Himes on Twitter: www.twitter.com/andrewhimes1
Andrew Himes: Taking My Grandmother into My Heart
It is confusing to use the same term for mutually exclusive concepts.
A century ago an arm of conservative Christianity in the USA issued the series of pamphlets called "The Fundamentals". The word "fundamentalist" originally meant people who took their guidance in Christianity from these pamphlets.
"The Fundamentals" have been collected and reprinted and can be found in many libraries. I have read them but i wonder how many other people had. I feel sure they would be embarrassing to a lot of conservative Christians and laughable to many others.
So the word no longer means what it once meant. If you try to redefine "fundamentalist" in terms of real "fundamentals" you had better be a skilled theologian because you are going to have trouble finding the those fundamentals. There is nothing remotely resembling a consensus and likely never will be.
Those of us who do not enjoy theological dispute might do well to just limit ourselves to describing what we, personally, believe and ignore the institutional dogmas of the established churches and the actions of these churches.
After all, it is the individual person who seeks (or fails to seek) salvation - not the church. Somebody once said - Jesus expected the Kingdom of God but what came was the Church.
Christian Fundamentalism doesn't follow the example of Jesus. It follows the example of the Pharisees -- building a wall of dos and donts around its legalistic interpretation of the Bible. You "get saved" this way and this way only. You must do this, you must not do this, and above all you must be a conservative and a Republican. The church I went to had an article in its constitution banning all uses of alcohol, when the Scripture only forbids drunkenness. The rationale for it was, "you have to draw a line somewhere."
Fundamentalism generally looks down on expenditures for public education, expenditures for the poor and needy, arguing that the "church" should look out for its own (which it never does anyway) and that no one else has a right to assistance. It opposes health care reform despite the need and Jesus being the Healer.
Fundamentalism doesn't follow Jesus' teachings either. "Love your enemy?" Fundamentalists support torture more than any other defined group. They fight anyone not them, then they splinter into factions and fight each other, defining "True Christianity" by their own measures.
I remain a Christian, but not a fundamentalist.
The so called "golden rule" exisited millenia prior to Jesus' supposed existence so we didn't need him to explain that.
BTW with all the copius note taken and passed down by the Romans of that era, not one mention of a "Jesus".
Where exactly did Jesus say that these things are the "true fundamentals of the faith?" he said they were the formost commandments, but I'm sure that Jesus would say that EVERYTHING he taught was "fundamental" and necessary. This includes things you might associate with the "other fundamentalism," like evangelism (Matt 28: 16-20), hell (Lk 16: 19-31), and the Second Coming (Mat 24). You're not going to get away from the "other fundamentalism" by going towards the teachings of Jesus.
"He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned."
Mark 16:16
The Jesus who said love one another as I have loved you also said:
"And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:"
Mark 9:43
Jesus loves us so much that he died to pay our sin debt. When we believe in him we acknowledge our sins, we repent by turning away from them and accepting God's gift of forgiveness for our sin and confess our faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on Earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s enemies will be the members of his household."
So, as usual, take your pick of who Jesus is.
Pure silliness.
Re-defining the word only confuses the issue.
Fundamentalism: a movement in 20th century Protestantism emphasizing the literally interpreted Bible as fundamental to Christian life and teaching. (Webster's definition, not mine).
God said the earth is my footstool. What temple can you build to contain ME? We are not going up, God is coming down here, God said when You see me COMING with a new Heaven (world) and a New Jerusalem. Why would God say that I am coming (look up) must not pleased with anyone or religion if God is coming here to us, for why would God say with a NEW Heaven (world) and a New Jerusalem? Interesting. I love all. The Spirit of Truth is coming. God said I will place it in your hearts to know ME, and there will be no doubt, you will need NO ONE to teach you then. I will teach, I will place it in your heart to do ME. Yes the Spirit of Truth is coming to us here, we are not going up.
The true fundamentals of Christianity are about universal love, peace, freedom, forgiveness, compassion, empathy, and pacifism. Those fundamentals are ideals we should strive for and work toward.
Those fundamentals are in stark contrast to the "fundamentals" preached by the Reaganite right-wing partisan political ideologues who masquerade as Christians. And even though our dilemma is deciding how we deal with them, deal with them we must, because when good, humble, peaceful people remain silent, the proud and militant gain and abuse power.
Fortunately, we have been given the way to deal with them. The promised message from the Spirit of truth has been delivered, and a portal to it is at http://cjcmp.org