At this moment, the rise of fundamentalism is a glaring development in religion but a misleading one. This sector of strict believers may be growing while mainstream church-going declines. The trend is common in every developed country, with dramatic declines in orthodox belief throughout Western Europe and the rise of evangelicals even in South America, long the bastion of unshakeable Catholicism (a country like Ecuador may now be as much as 20-25% Protestant due to missionary incursions from the U.S.) However, the vast majority of people in this country do not believe literally in any scripture, Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Reform movements long ago revised literal belief, and centuries of theology have refined dogma and doctrine, always in the direction of liberalism. So what happened to those reforms? This is such a huge question that I'd like to devote three posts to it. To begin with, we need to face the reality of doubt. The rise of Darwinism demoralized devout Victorians, who were forced to admit on the basis of rational argument that humans were not created by special dispensation from God. An enormous advance in scientific knowledge was fatal for metaphysics. With no privileged link to God, no Adam and Eve who could be claimed as ancestors, believers had two choices. They could discover a deeper personal spirituality or they could compartmentalize reason and faith. Fundamentalism took the second road. What's so compelling about joining a fundamentalist sect is that you instantly regain a personal relationship to God, as if science had never broken that link. In a wink Darwin disappears (only 15% of Americans polled say that they accept evolution as the truth without some input from God). Old dogmas going back to the Middle Ages suddenly become true again (the abortion debate is essentially a medieval one, since believers are asserting facts about when the soul enters the body). In a way it would be better to label fundamentalism as "literal metaphysics." Christ is the son of God, period. He sits in heaven on the right side of his Father's throne, period. But the first road, which seeks to heal religion in light of science and rational thought, was the one taken by the vast majority of thinkers and believers. For God to exist side by side with science has proved enormously difficult, however. Sheer momentum kept people going to church, yet it was obvious that someone can be good, lead a moral life, uphold all the virtues taught by Christ, etc. without the benefit of religion. (I am using the terms Christ and church, but with a change of vocabulary the same schism prevails in Islam and Judaism). Because they walked away from organized religion one person at a time, modern people have had to find their way back to spirituality one person at a time. Grass roots movements have loosely organized around catch phrases like "the New Age," yet even with the existence of reform churches and synagogues that are several generations old, most people feel that they are alone in their spiritual quest. This is both freeing and frightening. We will look at what spiritual freedom means about God in the next post. God may have a future, but it is probably going to be very different from the picture painted by fundamentalists, the mass media, and divinity schools. Each of us now has to decide in private who to worship and pray to, whether the soul is real, what happens after we die, and so forth. Fortunately, new answers are arising and succeeding. You may be surprised to find out that your doubts and restless seeking by no means isolate you. By definition a quiet revolution doesn't attract notice until it has already occurred.
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