Fundamental Christianity

[Áthas]

Sorry, I know this has been discussed many times before, but I have a seminar at university which brought it up again. I'm searching through all the old posts, but still I'd like to hear some "new" views and opinions, especially about what you consider to be fundamental in Christianity. I know that there are people who wouldn't consider themselves to be fundamental, but whose behavior seems very fundamental to me.
So my question now to all of you: how would you define fundamental Christianity, are there things you consider to be "typical" for fundamental Christians?
There is, as an example, evolution. Is it fundamental to totally abolish the whole idea of evolution and to see "Intelligent Design" as the absolute truth?
How do fundamentalists see the world? I remember having experienced something like fundamental Christianity and I was taught that the world was evil, that it wasn't my home and certainly shouldn't feel like my home and that everyone and everything that wasn't clearly and absolute Christianic was considered to be evil and satanic. So one shouldn't be in contact with "non-Christians" (except for missionary work) and certainly could have friends who weren't Christian.... btw, I still often hear people say they couldn't really have friends who are no Christians because they couldn't understand these people and they didn't have enough in common.
Looking forward to your replies.

[Karen]

is a link to the book upon which the word "fundamentalist" is based, so we're all on the same page, so to speak. :)

[bekados]

Oh my, maybe the required reading for the course will discourage any "heated" debate. Karen, have you read all 12 volumes?

[Karen]

[bekados]

[John Anthony]

[contra mundum]

[tangent]

[Áthas]

[contra mundum]

Dear Athas:

You identified two things as being the marks of the "fundamental Christian": opposition to evolution/support for Intelligent Design, and separation from non-fundamental Christians. Historically, I find it interesting that both marks you mention would have originated with the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925, which was for years the defining moment for American Christian Fundamentalism--far more defining than the publication of The Fundamentals.

If you're not familiar with the Scopes Trial, I can think of few historical events that have so shaped American culture and the political fault lines that currently run through it. So if you understand the trial, how it was reported/perceived, and the reaction to it when it was over, you will gain much understanding of American culture. If you're interested in further reading, probably the best resource on the Scopes Trial is Edward J. Larson's book, Summer for the Gods. Or if you don't have time to read a book on the subject, I'd be happy to give you a brief synopsis.

One final point: in your original post you mention Intelligent Design as something associated with "fundamental" Christianity. While that is a common misperception, it is indeed a misperception. Most fundamentalists dislike Intelligent Design; they prefer the view that God specially created all things roughly 10,000 years ago, and view Intelligent Design as a compromise. And few, if any, Intelligent Design advocates are "fundamentalists," at least in the sense you're thinking of. They do not separate themselves from the broader culture, but rather attempt to engage the culture at every opportunity. Almost all of them have earned graduate degrees in science or philosophy from major universities. And they usually do not dispute "evolution" so much as they dispute the notion that evolution has been driven entirely by the Darwinian mechanisms of random variation and natural selection.

[Josh]

[contra mundum]

Josh:
Thanks for the correction: I wrote in my previous post that fundamentalist anti-evolutionism originated with the Scopes Trial. That was obviously incorrect, because if there had been no anti-evolutionism prior to the Scopes Trial, there would have been no Scopes Trial. I should have said that both fundamentalist anti-evolutionism and separatism are related to the Scopes Trial, with the relation being something like: anti-evolutionism and separatism existed prior to Scopes, but Scopes threw a lot of fuel on both fires. And the trial probably affected the non-fundamentalists' perception of fundamentalism even more than it affected fundamentalists themselves.

I don't want to de-rail this thread, Josh, but I'd be interested to know what you didn't like about Larson's book (I ask because, for all the extremely helpful information in Larson's account of the lead-up to the trial and the trial itself, some of his comments about the trial's aftermath led me to believe that he hasn't really thought through the implications of what he himself knows). Perhaps we could take it up privately or, if there is enough interest, start a new thread.

[Theo]

Wow. I had barely heard of the Scopes trial but I just checked it out on . Fascinating stuff. :)

[WolfVanZandt]

[Áthas]