Being a Protestant Fundamentalist

From ZNet:

When I hear Jim Wallis (God's Peoples) call himself an evangelical, I have to laugh. I know what he means: Christianity inherently is evangelical, but he is no fundamentalist. Wallis tries to convince his ignorant, liberal, secular audience that his kind of "evangelism" can challenge the "bad" kind. Not a chance. I wish it were so. I tried to make the transfer when I was nineteen years old. I fell in love with a fellow Oklahoman my age who was an atheist. Fortunately, for me, he did everything he could to free me of my fundamentalism, which took about six months. It was like what I have read about cult de-programming. He had read the Bible (he was raised Christian in a liberal family) and could argue me down mostly using arguments from science, particularly evolution and astronomy. Scientific knowledge became more majestic to me than the Book of Revelation and the Rapture. It is no wonder that fundamentalists insist on getting evolution out of the schools. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reported that forty percent of biology teachers in the public schools avoid teaching evolution, not all because of their beliefs, rather to avoid harassment from fundamentalist groups and parents.

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Great essay. Check it out.

It took me, personally, years of associating with outspoken atheists and free-thinkers for me to get over my own Christian fundamentalism. When I finally decided that I was no longer a Christian, I realized that it had really all been about my identity from the get-go, instead of actual belief: I had my feet in two worlds, the rational, fact-based world, and the mytho-psychotic fundamentalist world. Fortunately, good friends made me see that, and the hardest part of my "coming out" was declaring that I was no longer part of a group of people for whom I had genuine affection. Fundamentalism is one tough nut to crack, and I really do get the feeling that most liberals just don't understand it. They try to use reason, but showing fundamentalists the error of their ways will never be accomplished through public discourse. It's got to be face to face. If we ever want to get anywhere with fundamentalists, we're going to have to be friends with them. Scary, huh?

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