Tag Archives: Fundamentalist Christianity

The End of Time & “The Blood Red Moon”

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A blood-red moon is coming up shortly and the hyper conservative Christians are again being whipped into a frenzy by the likes of televangelist John Hagee who feverishly proclaim that this is a sure sign that the Second Coming of Christ is imminent.  Now growing up in a fundamentalist Baptist church, I’ve lived through six decades of this fear-mongering and remember so clearly how effective it was with me.  But what I haven’t admitted before is that I had mixed emotions—I was supposed to be excited that Jesus was finally coming back but I secretly wanted to live longer…and to get to have sex!  I got the impression there would not be any of those shenanigans in heaven!  (See John Hagee in a 10 minute spiel:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvLo57f0Do8)

Part of me wants to snicker at this lunacy but mostly I’m just so sad, knowing that worldwide thousands of young people are being bludgeoned into Christianity…or other conservative faiths…because of fear-mongering of this sorts.  A good dose of fear every now and then will always “rally the troops” and intensify the loyalty to the church or group. However, I remember clearly that Jesus taught that “perfect love casteth out fear” so that convinces me He would not feel he needs to rely on fear mongering to coerce people…especially little children…into the fold.

The real issue is the fear of death which I have used my Christian faith to avoid most of my life.  My faith was only a denial system, designed to stem the tide from the steady torrent of fear, shame, and humiliation that lurked beneath the surface of my life.  But now my faith is getting me beyond my immaturity and allowing me to be more accepting of things like “death.”  Certainly, there are remnants of fear remaining; for my love has yet to find “perfection.”!  But the focus of my spiritual energy is on the remaining 5-6 decades of my life and living authentically in each one of these days, no longer haunted by the past or escaping into a fantasy future.  (Actually, I’m only kidding!  I do not expect, nor do I desire, to live that old!)

Life and death are inextricably intermingled.  Those who fear death inevitably are also fearful of life and its uncertainty.  I think Jesus knew that and offered us to invest in another dimension of life…the Spiritual…but we immediately took this notion and made it concrete so that we could worship the idea and escape the experience.

Ideologues: Persecuted for “His” Sake

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Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky has lost her battle with the U. S. Supreme Court in her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples.  But Ms. Davis claims that she bows only to a higher authority, God, and will not obey this ruling.  She declared, “To issue a marriage license which conflicts with God’s definition of marriage, with my name affixed to the certificate, would violate my conscience. It is not a light issue for me. It is a Heaven or Hell decision,” she said through her lawyers.

Ms. Davis will ultimately lose this battle before the Supreme Court but she will have the consolation of basking in the biblical trope, “Persecuted for His sake.”  For an essential part of fundamentalist Christian culture is the notion that the world is “alien” to them and their task is to convert the world to their “right way” of seeing the world.  When their efforts encounter resistance, they can immediately bask in the delight of knowing that they are being misunderstood and mistreated because of their fervent commitment to their Christian faith; they are being “persecuted for His sake.”   And, speaking from experience in my younger days, I can report of the great pleasure that can be found in knowing that one is being mistreated because of his faith.  What I now realize is that my faith took me in directions that could only lead to this “mistreatment” and feeling of being misunderstood and that the anguish of alienation was meeting some unconscious need.

Fundamentalist Christianity thrives on feelings of “dispossession” and alienation, feelings which were institutionalized in the 19th century when the fury of Revivalism that swept the South and the West, giving rise to what religious historians call our “denominational society.”  Bible verses which emphasized separation were emphasized to the exclusion of those which emphasis on unity.  For example, “Come ye out from them and be ye separate” was a favorite selection from the Apostle Paul.  The Old Testament admonishment to “stand in the gap” was used to teach fundamentalist Christians that it was their job to stand in the breach and stop in the onslaught of “modernism.”  This gave the socio-economically dispossessed the comfort of knowing they were performing an heroic biblically mandated action.  And, once again from personal experience, how wonderful it is to know that one has personally and collectively been divinely chosen for this task!  And, of course, awareness of the narcissism of this mind-set was not allowed to breach this hermetically sealed view of the world of “embedded thinking.”

Ms. Davis provides another example of a person embedded in her own thinking.  And being ensconced therein, she cannot budge for she cannot acknowledge that, though her spiritual convictions are valid for herself, they are not valid for the rest of the world.  But she thinks these convictions are valid for the rest of the world and is willing to jeopardize her job and even fines and imprisonment, knowing that in a worst case scenario she will have the comfort of being a martyr in her crowd of like-minded souls.

I have no doubt this is a good woman.  But good women…and men…can have ideas in which they are entrapped which lead to very bad decisions.  I have wasted decades of my life because of my choice to remain imprisoned in ideas of this sort.  It is wonderful, even exhilarating, to know that one is “right” even though the root cause is a deep-seated, unconscious “knowledge” that one is intrinsically “wrong.”  But this “knowledge” is specious, totally overlooking the Christian message that one is “ok”, an awareness of which would empower one to recognize the same of other people.  But when one is trapped in one’s own binary thinking one must have somebody “out there” who is wrong to avoid his/her anguish over the illusion of being intrinsically wrong.”  When my self-percept is one of being intrinsically wrong, I must fashion a world in which I am “right.”

Poet Gene Derwood once noted, “Big thoughts have got us.”  Kim has been “gotten” by a really big thought, the story of Jesus, and I personally think it is a marvelous and beautiful story of redemption.  But when one is enslaved by any vein of thought, regardless of how meaningful and rich it might be, one has sold his soul and has become a mere ideologue whose life is merely “the toy of some great pain.”

(HERE ARE TWO STORIES ABOUT THIS MATTER: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michelangelo-signorile/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis_b_8071594.html; http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/31/politics/kentucky-gay-marriage-licenses-supreme-court/index.html)

Republican identity crisis

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It is fun to watch the Republicans re-define themselves even though that is not what they had, or have, in mind.  They have a real identity crisis on their hands and I hope I live long enough to see how it ends up.  They are now poised to nominate Romney and he is so foreign to their ideals.  And in their virulent hatred of him and what he represents, they have been forced to attack basic Republican ideals, i.e. standard “business” practices.

But re-definition is good for us all and is applicable to all political parties and all concerns.  As T. S. Eliot noted, “We wrestle with words and meanings” and one purpose in life is to “purify the dialect of the tribe.”

Now this is really mean-spirited of me.  But all of you….ahem, both of you…know that mean spiritedness is not above me—I just love the notion that extreme right-wing, bible-thumping, fundamentalist Christians might have to choose between Mitt Romney (a “Mormon”) and a liberal Democrat who happens to be a “black man.”  That will put them in a tough spot.  My money is on the liklihood they will vote for “the Mormon” over “the black man.”  Yes, that delimma will get their panties in a wad.

Book review re Frank Schaeffer’s “Crazy for God”

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Frank Schaeffer is the son of Francis Schaeffer who was a leading spokesman and intellectual for the Christian Right in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s.  Frank himself was groomed in his childhood as their heir apparent for his father and did indeed step into that role as a young man.  But, safely ensconced in that prominent position, he became disaffected and disillusioned by the bigotry and closed-mindedness that he witnessed and eventually left the fold.  But, if that wasn’t enough, he began to speak and write about what he witnessed during his youth, not just with the Christian Right, but with his family itself.  His book, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All of It Back” is the story of his “conversion” from hyper-fundamentalist Christianity and political conservatism to a pronounced liberal stance in both regards.  If you are an ex-fundamentalist, or if you are a fundamentalist who would deign to look critically at yourself, you really need to read this book.

Politically and familial-ly his book is a story of a standard dysfunctional family, a family trapped inside its own limited world-view and incapable of dealing honestly and openly with the world.  Families of this sort are in service to the myth that they are caught up in and dutifully dedicate themselves to perpetuating that myth even at the expense of its members own soul. Yes, it is sheer lunacy at times.

However, let me note that the “lunacy” presented here cannot compare with the lunacy I noted last week when I discoursed re Muslim culture from the perspective of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.  Any closed-mindedness veers toward lunacy and will end up there unless reality sets in.  But, I much prefer our culture’s conservative lunacy over that of the Muslim world.  There are more limits set here, largely by the power of a liberal and critical press.