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You don’t have to be “religious” to be a fundamentalist. I grew up in a very fundamentalistic church. It was not the doctrine that was the problem; I believe strongly in the fundamentals of The Faith such as God creating out of nothing, Jesus’ virgin birth and His resurrection from the dead. The problem was, and is, the rules added to Christian belief. For instance, when I was young, watching movies was forbidden. Well, I wrote a book on movies some years ago; I guess I kind of outgrew that human-centered rule. But you see the problem – people make rules that tend to please or benefit them. Control by some government, group, or institution can become “fundamentalism,” where someone else says they know what is best for you; and then makes you do it.
You don’t have to be “religious” to be a fundamentalist; your fundamentals will determine your sexual, political, racial, national, or historical viewpoint. The university can have its own fundamentalism replete with evangelists, apostles, dogmas, and liturgies. Not abiding by human-determined codes of diversity, equity, and inclusion can get you in trouble. Not affirming someone’s self-identification by their preferred pronouns can get you in trouble. Not agreeing with professors who tell you what to think can get you in trouble. You see the problem. When people determine what the fundamentals of their faith are, then they can tell you to “Be kind” or “Be respectful” – until the fundamentalist determines that your views are wrong. The result could be grade reduction, cancellation, or viewpoint suppression.
No, you don’t have to be “religious” to be a fundamentalist. All you need to be a fundamentalist is to control how others think or speak or act. Fundamentalism is simply a desire to control others. For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, president of the Comenius Institute, encouraging everyone to think and speak freely, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found. [First published at MarkEckel.com, picture credit <Snappy Goat> Yale University]
AFTERWORD
There is a difference between fundamentalism and fundamentals.
Fundamentals are beliefs that set the formation of my thinking. My fundamentals begin with a supernatural view of the world. Here are a few markers of those fundamentals: (1) the historicity of the Bible coming from God to man, (2) the personal God who is there and is not silent, (3) Jesus’ virgin birth, perfect life, physical death, historic resurrection and anticipated return.
A friend of mine repeated a point he had made many times before in our conversation. He began to recount the same idea again, the point he had just made. We happened to be in a room with a piano. I stood over the keys and hit middle C over and over. “What are you doing?” he said. “I’m playing your song, your point of view. Only your music has only one note.” In our discussion, my friend had subscribed to a fundamentalism of sorts; he only wanted one point of view to be aired, which he repeated again and again. He believed that by pounding one idea, by itself, without critique, he would sustain his argument.
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Discussion (13)
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This is excellent, thanks Mark.
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Dear Diary,
Herein, an Expression of a private thought, or, Some litter from the cutting room floor, or, Output of a writing process that would have increased the entropy of the system of writer and reader(s) so much that a hypothetically successful attempt by the (any) reader to reverse the process in order to extract useful work would violate the Laws of Thermodynamics:
More importantly, this teacher knows how to teach using a thermodynamically efficient reversal of the reading process his students will actually use to try to understand what he means. That requires humility and discipline for a any wise man (i.e. “person”, male or female) who would teach, instead of cloistering himself in the company of other wise men. A greater concern for our well-being than for his own self-esteem.
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We need "mere Christianity", as C.S. Lewis wrote, to be our way of life. I have thought it strange that the things which were supposed to unite us Christians seem to be the things that divide us - baptism, communion, temperance, modesty, doctrines of the Holy Spirit, and other things. Years ago I heard a speaker say that as the end times began to play out that the big divisions among Christians would not be Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Pentecostal and other camps in which Christians identify. The big division was to be between those who meant business with God and those who did not.
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This is the first time I have read praise of an article from the Laws of Thermodynamics. You are such an Engineer, Camper. I mean that in a good way.
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We need to make every institution--including pre-K to PhD--explicitly anti-communist. We need to replace 50 years of indoctrination with new indoctrination. Further, each government sponsored institution must have explicit anti-communist offices. This would replace all the DEI offices. Also included is all government employees. Each year they must under 3 days of hard-core anti-communist/anti-Marxist training.
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Most religions carry a Hadith that is cultural rather than textual and conflates folk wisdom (or 'folk' 'wisdom') with The Word. Aspects of Fundamentalism fit this neatly.
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