(To counter some brows raised, an
explanation concerning the omission of Islamic fundamentalism in this entry is
in order. There is a special entry in my Collective
section dealing with Islamic radicalism [sic!]. It will suffice to say here
that I regard Islamic radicalism as a thoroughly political movement dressing
itself in religious clothing, to the detriment of the religion of Islam through
such unwanted association.)
It is one of my by now familiar
postulates that a legitimate religion always represents an established culture
and conversely, a viable culture cannot sustain itself without a religion
deeply ingrained in it.
The process of natural evolution,
that is a certain measure of adaptation to changing times, affects culture, and
consequently it affects religion. Yes, in that order! It is a grave mistake to
try to “modernize” religion ahead of the corresponding changes in culture, but
it is equally erroneous to stop, and even reverse cultural progress by
reverting to the so-called religious fundamentalism.
The old Jewish experience makes
sense in that respect. With the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70
AD, the religion of Torah Judaism was retired, or to put it more gently, placed
in suspended animation. The practice of rabbinical Judaism replaced Torah
Judaism, even though it represents a radical departure from Biblical Judaism,
and some have argued that it is not a religion at all.
The latter is of course nonsense.
As long as there is an established Jewish culture, which nobody would try to
dispute, there has to be a corresponding Jewish religion represented by two
clusters of religious practice: Orthodox (including Ultra-Orthodox) and Reform
(including Conservative, but hardly Reconstructionist or Secularist, which are
artificial creations).
There is no “fundamentalist” harm
however even in the Ultra-Orthodox denominations of Judaism, because they are
only driven by rabbinical authority and do not claim for themselves the
authority of God. In other words, this is a matter of practice, rather than of
faith.
***
Turning now to modern Christian
fundamentalism we can describe it with sufficiency as an effort to regard the
Bible as the literal Word of God, rather than as a complex and sophisticated
metaphor. In an earlier posted entry on this subject, I already pointed out
that literalness in reading the Bible severely undermines its general
credibility and even goes against the implicit advice of Jesus, who teaches in
parables, and thus underscores the religious value of metaphor, highly prized
in the rabbinical culture of Judaism.
Any literal reading of the Bible
immediately creates serious problems, mind you, unnecessarily. There is no
sense in arguing whether Jonah had indeed spent some time in the belly of a
whale, and this is just one case in at least a hundred. Whoever tries to read
the Revelation of St. John literally
will let me rest my case then and there.
But there are even greater woes
with the idea of Christian fundamentalism, all proceeding from the literal
reading of the Bible.
As an example of Christian
fundamentalism driven beyond the limits of reason into the realm of absurdity, we
do not have to look far. There is a knock on my door, which means that an
ultra-fundamentalist is right here.
Jehovah’s Witnesses may
consider themselves Christians, but to me their sect is a self-devouring
creature that has eaten off some of the most distinctive parts of the body of
Christianity, such as the doctrine of the Trinity and the joyful celebrations
of the greatest Christian holidays of Christmas and Easter. What else is left
there now?
Traditional Christian Churches do
not regard the movement as a mainstream Christian denomination. No big loss for
the Witnesses: they believe that the traditional Christian Churches have
deviated from the true teachings of the Bible and do not live and work in
harmony with God. They are only too happy to separate their millennial community
from the non-Witnesses, as they see themselves in the world, but
not of it.
Yet, they are not only willing,
but actively seeking to convert our poor lost souls to the way of the truth…
Fundamentalists beware! In Jehovah’s
Witnesses you are looking at your own folly through a magnifying glass!
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