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VOW
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SOME THOUGHTS ON RELIGIOUS EXTREAMISM
(sic)
There are still many of our Presbyterian brothers and sisters who are unaware of the struggle for the heart and soul of our denomination in which some of us have, for many years, been engaged. And, it is not infrequently that one of these formerly un-bloodied folks will contact me after their first skirmish with the proponent of some strange idea or behavior that they previously thought unimaginable in a Presbyterian church. I received such a phone call just this past week. It was from a woman who had recently sat through what she considered to be an implausible presentation by a Presbyterian Minister who had been invited to speak in her church in affirmation of gay unions. She knew that she would probably disagree with the presenter. But, the quality and tone of the lecture outraged her. And rightly so! Name calling and stereotyping are not worthy of the kinds of serious discussions and debates in which we are engaged. I do not intend in this article to talk about gay unions. But I do want to talk about the kind of childish and trivial argumentation to which my new friend was subjected. As I understand what happened, the lecturer began his talk by scolding his audience for being fundamentalist. He assumed that they were fundamentalist because they have the reputation of being a generally orthodox congregation. Then, he proceeded to hand out a document that is as indicative as anything I've ever seen of the kind of shallow analysis that passes for scholarship and logic these days in too many quarters. Take some time to read the document for yourself. What is printed below is essentially an electronic 'snapshot' of the actual paper done by scanning the original with an optical character recognition program.. The only change that I've made to it is to "XXXX" out the author's identity in order to protect the guilty. I've also printed it in red so that no one will confuse what I've written with what he wrote. THOUGHTS ON RELIGIOUS EXTREAMISM There seems to be some common issues involved with the RELIGIOUS RIGHT. The following are ideas / traits common to the movement which may help in a more informed discussion. TRAITS OF A FUNDAMENTALIST: Common
themes/ Beliefs...
1. Anti - Intellectual: Ignorance is encouraged. To questions God's creation is of the devil. The Bible is literal. Scholars are of the devil therefore scholarship is of the devil. (Unless it is their so called "scholarship' 2. A-Historical: History (of any value) started when they were born.Such thinking is very dangerous... there is no room for questioning on any level - only in understanding scripture and faith in an ever limiting way. Hence an automatic problem arises... how then does one deal with ever increasing knowledge? RXXXXX'S AXIOMS "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda- The Church reformed, yet always reforming" It must be said that the tension existing in the
Christian World is very dangerous
SUGGESTIONS ON HOW TO DEAL WITH RELIGIOUS EXTREAMISM 1. Get informed beyond your own biases. Ignorance is defeated by knowledge. 2. Reclaim the need for tolerance: learn and dialog with others (open types do this) 3. The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are political terms used to elect people - they create marketable separation. Whose purpose does it serve? (we have a bit of both is us) 4. Have courage to enter into our fears - see where the growth could be. 5. In Genesis God created humanity in God's own image and called them good and blessed. Our ancestors in the faith claimed an amazing position! Simply said, when we are most Human, the more we are like the image of God created in us. (Look for that image in others!) 6.Try to look beyond our cultural faith bias, political bias, economic bias, personal bias to see something new - perhaps as God hopes to see us - showing honor, dignity, and integrity to others. 7.To realize that Religious Extremism is ultimately noted in fear/ignorance/selfishness and power... not faith. Thoughts of Rev. Pxxx Rxxxxx - Bxxxxxx Presbyterian Church, Sxxxxxx
The ideas presented in the paper are laughable! But, they're not very funny! To begin with, the author shows absolutely no understanding of the history of the Presbyterian Church during the last century, of the kinds of scholars who first called themselves "fundamentalists," what fundamentalism later deteriorated into, and the overriding and unarguable fact that there are very few, if any, fundamentalists left in the Presbyterian Church — unless he is willing to argue that what someone said in my hearing recently is true, that Karl Barth was a fundamentalist. Second, to accuse the conservatives/evangelicals in the Presbyterian Church of being anti-intellectual is silly. For example, the author of the document may not like what Tom Gillespie stands for, but the President of Princeton Seminary is not anti-intellectual. Neither is the Presbyterian President of Fuller Seminary, Richard Mouw. And how about Jaroslav Pelikan, or Alvin Plantinga, or Nicholas Wolterstorff, or George Marsden? Third, what's this nonsense about our superstitions working themselves out in a gross caricature of the Pelagian heresy? As far as I know, Presbyterians still believe in salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But, of course, we fundamentalists are salvation driven. I could go on and on. But, I'm not going to. I'm merely going to point out three grammatical and syntactical errors that appear in the first few lines of the document, and suggest that anyone as self consciously concerned about things intellectual as our writer declares himself to be might be more convincing if he didn't: - misspell a word in the title line of his paper; the word is properly spelled extremism, not extreamism. - butcher the subject/verb correlation in the first full sentence of his document; the sentence should read, "there seem to be some common issues …," not "there seems to be some common issues …;" and, - carelessly make a mess of the infinitive, "to question," in his first 'trait of a fundamentalist;' There may be more errors in the paper than these, but I refuse to waste my time looking for them. What I want to say in conclusion, however, is that the issues with which we are concerned in the Presbyterian Church deserve better treatment than this. Our discourse must be of the highest quality, and our arguments must be thoughtfully compelling. Our Lord and his church deserve nothing less. One more thing. As my correspondent discovered, none of us can
any longer afford the luxury of thinking that some "Ecclesiastical George"
is going to do the hard work of defending the faith for us. Each
of us must spend the time and invest the energy that will be required for
us to understand the faith; each one of us must become conversant with
the issues that are before the church; and each one of us must always be
ready "to give a reason for the faith that is within us." Anything
less will not do.
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