Don’t call them terrorist

March 12, 2002 6:32 AM

Don’t call them terrorist – call them "Koran Preservationist." Bob Jones III, writing on BJU’s website, says that his university & Christians in general should move away from the word "fundamentalist" because of it’s negative connotations since the September 11th terrorist attacks.

"Bob Jones University is unashamedly Fundamentalist, but the term is beginning to carry an onerous connotation with the world at large because of the media's penchant for lumping Christian Fundamentalists in the same heap as Islamic Fundamentalists. Instead of "Fundamentalism" defining us as steadfast Bible believers, the term now carries overtones of radicalism and terrorism. "Fundamentalist" evokes fear, suspicion, and other repulsive connotations in its current usage."

Is Bob Jones III right to lay blame solely on the media? Or is the public at large simply fed up with religious zealots, young earthers, fundies, anti-abortion bombers and terrorist?
posted by wfrgms (25 comments total)

Being a fundamentalist is not inherently wrong. It depends on which fundamentals you're -ist about. If your ideals involve the violation of other individuals' rights, they're wrong and dangerous. If they don't, they might still be wrong, but at least they're no threat to others.
posted by dagny at 6:45 AM on March 12, 2002

I vote for "fed up."
posted by Fenriss at 6:45 AM on March 12, 2002

Mark two for "fed up". Many religions have themes to suggest that earthly authority is meaningless in the face of the un-earthly authority. Is the eclipsing for our common sense social contract something to value? (Not lumping all people of faith in this.)
posted by McBain at 7:03 AM on March 12, 2002

Gee, with their racist, biogted and homophobic behavior, I'm glad they have cleared up the confusion about who is giving the term fundamentalism a bad name.

Side note: BoJo A Go-Go is a great site that plumbs the depth of Bob Jones U's asininity.
posted by thewittyname at 7:08 AM on March 12, 2002

(twoyearoldhumor) I still think it's interesting that BJU is a religious school. (/twoyearoldhumor)
posted by SpecialK at 7:52 AM on March 12, 2002

Don’t call them terrorist

...they've been here for years!

(sorry, ignore this post, carry on...)
posted by Succa at 8:40 AM on March 12, 2002

Fundamentalism, whether religious, political, economic, or dietary, is the enemy of rational thought. It encourages one to ignore evidence contrary to one's beliefs. It is a crutch for those who desperately need assurance and affirmation, which, I guess, would be all of us to some extent. Personally, I'm fundamentalist about only one thing: One person, one vote.

BJU is right to try to distance the school from the term, for all the good it will do. They'll still be a bunch of non-drinking non-dancing non-screwing fuddy duddies.
posted by Ty Webb at 8:47 AM on March 12, 2002

What's wild is that the BOJO fundamentalists in this country, in fact have a lot in common with the Muslim fundamentalists, and not in name only.

Karen Armstrong's brilliant book The Battle For God examines Protestant fundamentalism in the US, Jewish fundamentalism in Israel, and Muslim fundamentalism in Iran and Egypt, and it proposes the following model:

1) All of these religions generated vast mythologies, complete with holy texts. The premodern believers' relationship to this mythology is something that is hard for us to comprehend due to the extent to which modern ideas of scientific inquiry, Truth, and History have pervaded pretty much every culture in the world. Suffice it to say that the idea of interpreting these mythologies as 'Literal Truth' was a totally alien concept.

2) Along comes the Age of Reason, the Industrial Revolution, Kant, Darwin, and a rational world-view which is threatening to totally secularize political society. Conservative elements of the religions get scared that their religious identity is under attack and a reactionary movement begins to attempt to entrench traditional religion against the attack of Modernism, Reason and Science.

3) In spite of themselves, however, these conservative reactionaries have also been trained to think in a Modern idiom. The result is that for the first time they begin to offer their traditional mythologies as rational arguments to counter the arguments of the secularists. These mythologies begin to be read literally, and their truths are approached with a kind of ideological dogma that was unknown before the Enlightment. In Armstrong's terminology, they are confusing mythos for logos and interpreting information that was never intended to be taken literally as truth -- which in turn influences the way in which they interact with the world politically, and which is entirely a 20th century phenomenon.

Both the protestant fundies in the US and the terrorist maniacs follow this model. The terrorist maniacs just happen to also be from a disenfranchised, post-colonialist culture where that kind of fundamentalism is more likely to result in violence. The American Christians, meanwhile, just have to wear ugly ties, make sure they all have bad haircuts, and wait to be raptured.
posted by milkman at 9:23 AM on March 12, 2002

Many religions have themes to suggest that earthly authority is meaningless in the face of the un-earthly authority. Is the eclipsing for our common sense social contract something to value?

Our founding fathers thought so. So did John Locke, who drew his social compact theory directly from Calvinist covenant theology as expounded by the Rev. Samuel Rutherford's in Lex, Rex
posted by gd779 at 9:59 AM on March 12, 2002

Maybe those geniuses at BJU will attempt to alter the meaning of the word "racists" so that they don't fit into that category anymore, either.
posted by bingo at 10:51 AM on March 12, 2002

I think they should just call themselves "Small Minded Pricks in Bad Suits whom you Wouldn't Want to Sit Next To At Dinner of America." Just so we'd all know where we stood.
posted by hob at 12:42 PM on March 12, 2002

Fundamentalism, whether religious, political, economic, or dietary, is the enemy of rational thought. It encourages one to ignore evidence contrary to one's beliefs. It is a crutch for those who desperately need assurance and affirmation, which, I guess, would be all of us to some extent. Personally, I'm fundamentalist about only one thing: One person, one vote.

Faith by fundamentalism is "conforming one's beliefs and actions to the highest rules of truth", so if you believe the highest rule of truth is to go along with the masses or feelings, you define right and wrong purely according to consensus or mere sentiment.

If a non-Christian view of things is true,
then there is no reason for respecting others,
loving our children, opposing injustices,
feeling guilty, preferring truth,
reasoning, or staying alive.

[source]

With the exception of course of flighty human emotions, the government,and succession of some sort of irrational obscruction to entropy etc., all being temporary things in the scope of life.

Being a TRUE Christian fundamentalist is about being dogmatic about:
- love
- mercy
- peace
- truth
- God gets the glory and worship, not the self
- life is sacred
- Jesus was God's act of love

If you think THAT's "close-minded" or "small-minded" then obvious you think to be open-minded we ought be open to hating everything and everyone, strife, lies, self-worship and fulfillment, the idea that nothing is sacred, and the idea that God doesn't love you.

Shoulds and should-nots, for instance love, mercy, and cruelty, are untenable by mere Reason. Listen to that: Love by mere Reason is untenable.

By your statement I get that all your beliefs are purely based on human sentiment, and the highest rule of truth you could come up with is a political ideal.

If you want to be a relativist at heart, then everything is valid, and absolutely nothing is right or wrong.
posted by aaronshaf at 2:13 PM on March 12, 2002

Oh, I recommend "On Ethics" by C.S. Lewis.
posted by aaronshaf at 2:17 PM on March 12, 2002

- love
- mercy
- peace
- truth
- God gets the glory and worship, not the self
- life is sacred
- Jesus was God's act of love

If you think THAT's "close-minded" or "small-minded" then obvious you think to be open-minded we ought be open to hating everything and everyone, strife, lies, self-worship and fulfillment, the idea that nothing is sacred, and the idea that God doesn't love you.

Aside from the straw-man in this post, there is a pretty clear bait and switch in the Fundamentalism is not about conforming to such high ideals as truth, justice, and the American way (wait, that's superman). I don't know of anyone who disagrees that peace, truth, mercy, and the sacredness of life are good things. By that standard, all Christians qualify as fundamentalists.

Instead, fundamentalism is about claiming the bible as a literal truth that can not be interpreted (except when for obvious snafus as proclaiming Pi=3.0.)
posted by KirkJobSluder at 2:31 PM on March 12, 2002

"I don't know of anyone who disagrees that peace, truth, mercy, and the sacredness of life are [absolutely] good things. By that standard, all Christians qualify as fundamentalists." [inserted]

All relativists, agnostics, materialists (materialism, the philosophy), and believers in mechanism.

Fundamentalism: "... a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles"

Those principles being peace, truth, and the sacredness of life. We're all fundamental about something.

Yes, all real Christians qualify as fundamentalists.

Perhaps we should use the term "scriptural literalists". Not all language is meant to be taken literally. The Bible is meant to be read as literally as possible, and when something absolutely cannot be taken literally, then the metaphor is sought. Nevertheless, Christians are fundamental about the truths in the Bible.
posted by aaronshaf at 2:40 PM on March 12, 2002

aaronshaf, I usually avoid having religious discussions with self described Christians(not to be confused with Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and mainstream Protestants) as they seem much too arrogant and self involved to talk to, but your blanket statements just pissed me off.
First, as a very religious non Christian, I am insulted that you think that somehow Christians have the monopoly among religious people of love, truth, mercy, peace, worship of God over self, and the belief that life is sacred. Take a look, a good look at the Torah, the Koran, the Gita and you will find that threads of love, truth, mercy, peace, worship of God over self, and the belief that life is sacred run through them all. The majority of the religious in the world read one of these three books and function just fine. They do find many deep, meaningful and intense reasons for respecting others, loving our children, opposing injustices, feeling guilty, preferring truth, reasoning, or staying alive without being Christian.
Second, Fundamentalism is the arrogance to believe that you or the human that you have currently chosen to lead you has even a partially grasp of the highest rules of truth, especially based on a translation of your holy book that has gone through so many hands and so many languages.
posted by ajayb at 3:23 PM on March 12, 2002

>The Bible is meant to be read as literally as possible, and when something absolutely cannot be taken literally, then the metaphor is sought.

Then who is deciding what is to be taken literally and what not? You know it when you see it? It seems to me, by many Christian's own reason, the word of God is infallible. And metaphor doesn't meet the rigid standard of "The Word".

Morals need not enter the picture if we have DEMOCRATICALLY chosen the standards by which government shall intervene. Yes, that allows for our society to choose to live by what many consider horrible guidelines. Religion would have those standards imposed by skipping the democracy part. How can the two coexist then?
posted by McBain at 3:33 PM on March 12, 2002

truths in the Bible

Truth, is the important word aaronshaf. Very few people(including most non-theists) would deny that the Bible contains many profound and beautiful truths, not to mention plenty of excellent advice for living.

What the "fundamentalists" being decried in this thread have done is a kind of reverse alchemy-transmuting golden truths into base "facts" which they use to back up their own prejudices and hatreds. The process outlined in the Karen Armstrong book mentioned by milkman sounds like an excellent description of this. Bruce Bawer's Stealing Jesus is an excellent guide on how we might reverse it.
posted by jonmc at 3:36 PM on March 12, 2002

If a non-Christian view of things is true,
then there is no reason for respecting others,
loving our children, opposing injustices,
feeling guilty, preferring truth,
reasoning, or staying alive.

This may just be the case though. Why is it out of the realm of possiblity, because God says so?

It could be that we are just pretty well programmed to survive, and respecting others, taking care of our children, opposing injustices, and REASON are all really good tools for me to live well and long.
posted by McBain at 3:42 PM on March 12, 2002

Is it just me, or do others hear "A Mighty Fortress is Our God" in their head when reading aaronshaf's posts?
posted by Ty Webb at 3:54 PM on March 12, 2002

>Yes, that allows for our society to choose to live by what many consider horrible guidelines.

Before gd jumps in and points out that inalienable rights are granted to indivduals in our democracy to protect individuals, don't bother.

While I am sure the ff's believed that these were produced by God and must be protected through our government (as you so eloquently explained in another thread) I think it is reasonable to believe that humans, all being very similar organisms, simply have such closely common interests that logically certain protections MUST be made to insure that all indivduals have these basic common goals met and to protect from an absolute democracy where a majority could rain tyranny on a minority.

Maybe I am not making sense, but I am trying to say that REASON can arrive at similar conclusions as the ff's did, while leaving God totally out of the picture and putting in it's place the innate common interests (living long, reproducing, being comfortable) millions of years of evolution have left us with.
posted by McBain at 4:08 PM on March 12, 2002

i just want to point out that an argument about what fundamentalism 'is' is ludicrous. we can all go around redefining the terms to fit our arguments and we won't get anywhere.

Aaronshaf, rather than trying to claim the word for the 'true christians', why can't we just presume that the word means something else -- at least for the purpose of this discussion -- and focus on the specific things that it connotes in this context?

Then again, i guess that redefining terms is exactly what BOJO is doing.

I just think people have a tendency to mistake what has come to be known as 'fundamentalist' -- which historically means something very specific -- with a more generic 'conservativism'. And if you insist on continuing to define yourself as the 'true fundamentalist', you just have to contend with the fact that their are other people who also call themselves that who simply don't agree with you about what it means.
posted by milkman at 4:22 PM on March 12, 2002

Fundamentalism: "... a movement or attitude stressing strict and literal adherence to a set of basic principles"

Those principles being peace, truth, and the sacredness of life. We're all fundamental about something.

Yes, all real Christians qualify as fundamentalists.


According to one priest, a Christian is anyone who believes that Jesus is his savior. That seem like a reasonable criterion to me. On the other hand, one could simply believe in Jesus, the same way that one might believe that ice cream is tasty, without strict or literal adherence to a damn thing. Thus, if this is correct, it is possible to be a "real" Christian without being a fundamentalist (on this definition of "fundamentalism"). Fundamentalism, defined this way, does not refer to what you believe in, rather to how you go about believing it.
posted by epimorph at 5:57 PM on March 12, 2002

Those principles being peace, truth, and the sacredness of life. We're all fundamental about something.

Yes, all real Christians qualify as fundamentalists.

Well again, this is a bit of a bait and switch. By this standard, materialists are also fundamentalists because I have yet to meet a materialist who did not value love, mercy, peace and truth.

But of course "fundamentalist" does not mean "belief in the fundamental truth [of something]" in this context. I after all can't claim to be a fundamentalist because I believe in the fundamental truth of a universe billions rather than thousands of years old. Or because I believe in the fundamental truth of the 7+/- 2 rule for human working memory.

Perhaps we should use the term "scriptural literalists". Not all language is meant to be taken literally. The Bible is meant to be read as literally as possible, and when something absolutely cannot be taken literally, then the metaphor is sought. Nevertheless, Christians are fundamental about the truths in the Bible.

Amazing, start off with a straw man, segue right into a bait and switch, and then wrap it up with the no true Scotsman fallacy. (The majority of Christianity that doesn't subscribe to scriptural liberalism can be removed from discussion because they are not true Christians.) But of course, this is really the big core of the debate in regards to fundamentalism. Not peace, truth, mercy, love, and justice but about whether the Bible should be treated as a literal word of God or a set of commentaries written by people trying to understand God. So for example with the evolution debate, fundamentalists insist that evolution must be wrong because it contradicts the word of God (transmitted directly from God to the scribes, to the translators) while to most of the rest of Christianity the actual details of whether the world was created in seven days is less important than the message that the world was created. Most of Christianity agrees on the fundamentals, the universe was created, humans fell from grace, God gave Jesus to bridge the gap between humanity and God. However fundamentalists go on to be picky about the details.

But the issue of interpretation is still important. For a real-life parable, I know a young man who is a fundamentalist Christian and who also happens to be homosexual. After struggling with his sexuality for several years and engaging in deep Bible study and prayer he came to the decision that God would accept him in spite of his homosexuality and therefore he stopped worrying about it so much. In response to this difference in interpretation his church excommunicated him. From there, the conflict shifted to his family. His family after quite a bit of prayer and after deep Bible study decided that regardless of their son's sinful nature, the right thing for them to do was to still love him as their son. Their refusal to disown him resulted in the entire family being excommunicated.

Of course fundamentalist foibles result in fights over an extremely trivial issues. For example my father grew up in a community in which half the town believed the other half was going to hell because one church emphasizing the examples of the wedding banquet and the last supper preached moderate alcohol use and even used real wine for communion on the special occasions, while the other church emphasizing Paul's admonitions against drunkenness argued that the "wine" of the Bible was really just grape juice, and all alcohol was forbidden. Similar fights occur over the use of music in services. Levitical laws are referenced when necessary to advocate the death penalty for homosexuals and non-believers, but ignored in regards to the Sabbath and kosher dietary laws. Of course, very few fundamentalists follow the examples set down in acts of communal property, and most seem to get the Sabbath wrong.
posted by KirkJobSluder at 6:29 PM on March 12, 2002

jonmc: What the "fundamentalists" being decried in this thread have done is a kind of reverse alchemy-transmuting golden truths into base "facts" which they use to back up their own prejudices and hatreds.

wow, great line, i'm going to steal it :) interesting side note: the first christian sect to call itself "fundementalists" were a group in Strassbourg during the Reformation who "pleaded for agreement on the fundementals and an end to lethal hair splitting ... they were hated by all the others..." (Barzun)
posted by hob at 9:21 PM on March 12, 2002