…from an English perspective.
There are two ways to get an easy laugh out of a British crowd of theologians. 1) Talk about Americans that believe in 6 day creation. 2) Talk about Americans that believe in the rapture.
I’ve seen this quite a few times in various settings. With all the other progress that Americans have, the British just can’t fathom why either of those two things can still hold sway.
Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 2:42 pm
I assure you that a great many Americans feel similarly.
Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 4:46 pm
Amen Chuck.
Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 8:12 pm
I assure you that a great many Americans are quite proud of those beliefs, I among them regarding the latter.
Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 8:15 pm
It seems to me that taking cheap shots at fundamentalists is the default for someone who has nothing substantive to say. I say that as a non-fundamentalist, but one who has observed quite often the easy laughs that come from (often ex-fundamentalists) who constantly take swipes at fundamentalists. In modern academic theology and biblical studies ‘fundamentalist’ is more often than not a scare word to dismiss someone you don’t actually want to have to refute.
John Hobbins (Ancient Hebrew Poetry blog) had some good thoughts on this a while back:
http://ancienthebrewpoetry.typepad.com/ancient_hebrew_poetry/2007/12/why-i-am-a-fu-1.html
I quote Hobbins (and couldn’t agree more):
“In the hands of those who use these terms [BD: fundamentalist, etc.] pejoratively, we all know what purpose they serve. They are designed to smear the character of an abominable “other.”
Labels like these are designed to define who is “in” and who is “out.” As already noted, they are used to give someone, literally, a bad name . . .
The terms are not designed to start a conversation, but to end one . . .”
Okay I will get off my soapbox now. By the way, I am not saying this is true of you in this post (or elsewhere) Ben. Your post simply got me going on a pet peeve of mine.
Thursday, 29 May 2008 at 9:43 pm
I guess this blog just attracts lots of ‘bens’…
Ben D., I agree that it’s often an unwarranted pejorative term. You would think that these beliefs were akin to thinking the world is flat.
On the whole, I’ve found the british to be much more open to discussions with people that are coming from a different perspective, but for whatever reason these beliefs get pigeon-holed.
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 12:49 am
That is very true. I even found it to be the case w/ British Christians that have fundy leanings. Ben, remember the first theology seminar we attended on Intelligent Design (ID)? It was an ID bashing session, and the speaker (an older lady) had very little to say on ID–the consensus was that it didn’t even deserve debate. I was sorely disappointed but the whole session underscores your point–at least on 6 day creation. I think when a lot of Brits (and Americans) hear ID they assume 6 day creation.
British Christians did not go through the intense mudslinging that Am. Christians did in the twentieth century over these issues. I think that might be part of it. Anything that resembles classic Fundamentalism is rejected outright. It is an impulse to avoid the antics of those silly American Christians.
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 12:57 am
For clarification, I understand 6 day creation and rapture to be of the same hermeneutical ilk. Both indicative of a very literal interp. This literalism emerged, or at least gained momentum, amidst the Fundy/Modernist contro. It was reactionary. Brits had less to react to b/c the contro. didn’t reach heights that it did in Am.
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 3:45 am
I agree that taking cheap shots at fundamentalists is not a good thing. I don’t mean to be offensive to someone like Keith, I’m just reacting to my own experience. My previous comment was the knee-jerk reaction of someone who was raised by a fundamentalist theology that was damaging to me.
My biggest problem with ‘typical fundamentalists’ is the lack of ability to dialogue. ‘Conservatives’ (I’m aware I’m throwing around labels here but what can I do) by definition want to ‘conserve’ and so are generally threatened by different or new beliefs. This is my experience with many of my fundamentalist family members and it is a frustration. I don’t mean to sound negative, it is just my experience.
It is significant for me that the person whose faith I most respect is a hardcore fundamentalist. I’m fine with a literalist hermeneutic (they’re usually more consistent than I am, hermeneutically), I just wish the fundamentalists in my life were not as threatened by viewpoints outside of their own. There’s my two cents.
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 3:46 am
p.s. – I don’t know how my last comment got changed to ‘ben at kilbabo’ but that helps the confusion with this amazing concentration of ‘Bens.’ Cheers brothers!
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 2:19 pm
Here is, perhaps, another easy laugh concerning the pejorative label “Fundamentalism”. It comes from Alvin Plantinga, a Christian philosopher: “But isn’t all this just endorsing a wholly outmoded and discredited fundamentalism, that condition than which, according to many academics, none lesser can be conceived? I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. [Let us] look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist.’ On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ‘sumbitch’. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given…Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in its widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’ simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it…The explanation is that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends’. The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given something like ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine” (_Warranted Christian Belief_ [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000], p. 244-245).
Friday, 30 May 2008 at 10:05 pm
Gotta love Plantinga.