According to Pastor Stephen L. Anderson, an independent Baptist pastor of the extremist sort, the ISIS attacks in France occurred because of Humanism, the Enlightenment, French abortion rights, gay rights, the former gay Mayor of Paris, and wicked fashions called down the Judgement of God. During his recent 50 minute rant, proudly posted on Youtube, he said to the people of France “God allowed these heathen hordes to invade you because you are a heathen nation… France’s problem is not my problem. Because I’m not the one who said adultery is fine, I’m not living in the gay capital of Europe,… If God want to judge them, that’s between them and God… But you know what, we’re next.“
He noted that his sermon would be illegal in France, because the French National Assembly passed legislation banning homophobic speech in 2004, another reason for judgement to be passed on them. Sometimes, only rarely, but sometimes I wish our Bill of Rights were not quite so strong a guardian of free speech. He’s also an anti-semite and holocaust denier. He tells his faithful that 6 million Jews did not die under the Nazi’s, that Jew’s just love the number “six.” He said:
“That’s like a magic number to them, that 6 million figure. It’s not really based on real history and science, it’s just a number that was foreordained, Because of the fact that the Jews loved numbers and that’s what the Kabbalah is all about. It’s the mystery of numbers and the Gematria and think about all the things that they always fixate on that have to do with the number six. They have a six pointed star, 6 million dead in the Holocaust, the Six Days War’s and how many supposed death camps were there? Well of course there were six.“
This man, and his followers, show us what it looks like when the processes of fundamentalism grab hold. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a member of ISUS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban or the Faithful Word Baptist Church of Tempe Arizona, the soul destroying, mind numbing, conscienceless principle is the same. This particular version of a fundamentalist leader also hates Martin Luther King, fluoridated water, Pope Francis and trans-humanism. He tells his followers that he prays for the death of President Obama, and that America should institute a death penalty for “gays.” You get the idea. His congregation isn’t particularly large, but last I checked, he has 38,796 subscribers on YouTube. Whether we like that or not, that’s a remarkable amount of influence for someone so clearly irrational.
But then, irrationality is at the core of fundamentalism in all its varieties. Most of us who’ve studied Scripture seriously realise that fundamentalist interpretations depend on cherry picking literalism. What does that mean? Cherry picking means they choose to only read passages that suit pre-existing conceptions of what their religion should be about. This is also called “proof texting.” Literalism for a fundamentalist means that they choose to only use their own pre-existing understanding of what they need particular word or phrase means. Reading in this fashion they deny their own active interpretation. I think most of us understand that when you read any kind of text, you approach it with your existing predispositions and experiences guiding you. The modern biblical scholar will read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and realise that the act of raping an angel (which we take not to be a winged being, but in the more accurate sense of the word – a messenger of God) is the culmination of the city of Sodom’s refusal of God. The story as a whole is not even about the fate of the city of Sodom. It’s about God rescuing the faithful from destruction. The fundamentalist uses his or her notion of “plain meaning” along with a rather limited understanding of the history of interpretation, to instead focus in on homosexuality, failing even to distinguish between homosexuality and rape. I’m not suggesting that the book of Leviticus does not exist, or that early Jewish thought did not impose strict penalties upon homosexual acts. But, it’s not what the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about, and many fundamentalists can’t or won’t see this.
How does this happen? During the 19th century in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Europe, a virtual war broke out within the churches concerning biblical interpretation. Most of what we now call mainline churches favoured an historical approach – that ministers and biblical scholars should understand the history of the text, how, where, and why it was written, and use this data as part of their active interpretation. On the other side were a group that rejected this method, calling for the “plain truth.” This battle has continued on till today. In the early 20th-century a letter was circulated in support of literal interpretation that identified a bill of particular items that were considered fundamental to proper Christianity. This is where the word “fundamentalism” came from. However, this doesn’t help us understand the true nature of the movement. For that, we need to understand that the roots of fundamentalism are to be found in a rejection, at a personal level, of the world we live in. For most Christian and Islamic fundamentalists alike, the world is viewed as a context for sorrow.
At a personal level, fundamentalists see their lives, their identities, their futures threatened. This is why so many fundamentalists complained vociferously about change. “You’ve taken prayer out of the schools.” “You’re destroying marriage.” “You’re taking Christ out of Christmas.” Anything the State does to maintain a neutral stance toward religion is seen as an attack. For ISIS members, the very act of voting is considered apostasy, and is punishable by death. Traditionally, many fundamentalists called for abstaining from politics. In recent years, a substantial percentage of American fundamentalists attempted to engage the political process and direct it toward their own ends. They have had some degree of success, much more than most of us would like. Yet, though their voice is among the loudest in Congress, they persist in weeping and gnashing their teeth at the manner in which government supposedly assaults their values. Why then, the strained relationship with politics? For ISIS, the proclamation of a Caliphate is a necessary step in their prophetic interpretation of Islamic Scripture, the Koran. They believe that God is calling them out of this world into heaven. If this sounds familiar to the Christian readers of this note, it’s because both in the persecuted Christianity of the early church and in today’s fundamentalism, there was, and now is again a kind of trembling preference for the soul over the body. The world has become once again such a fearful place, such a place of dis-ease, that the fundamentalist chooses the promise of heaven over the reality of the earth. One might say, “But the members of ISIS are terrorists. They kill people. Fundamentalist Christians don’t do that.”
In fact, fundamentalist Christians extremists do kill, and not just in the historical records of Crusades and religious wars. Over the last 20 years we have seen report after report indicating a strong rise in fundamentalism in our own Armed Forces. It’s not simply that our military tends to recruit from the so-called Bible Belt. In our military academies there has been complaint after complaint and multiple investigations of coercive proselytising on the part of fundamentalist Christians in the officer corps. Steps have been taken, we are told. Senior officers have been shuffled out of the academy in order to fix this problem. But, when one looks closely, it is discovered that the officers who replace them follow the same pattern. Those who are moved do not follow the usual pattern of reprimand and quiet retirement, but instead go to other places of responsibility. Beyond this, let’s look at the actual actions of government in recent years. Fundamentalist Christians brought us into the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fundamentalist Christians even now are leading the charge for retribution after the Paris bombings.
“That’s like a magic number to them, that 6 million figure. It’s not really based on real history and science, it’s just a number that was foreordained, Because of the fact that the Jews loved numbers and that’s what the Kabbalah is all about. It’s the mystery of numbers and the Gematria and think about all the things that they always fixate on that have to do with the number six. They have a six pointed star, 6 million dead in the Holocaust, the Six Days War’s and how many supposed death camps were there? Well of course there were six.“
[There weren’t six camps. In total, the Nazi’s maintained 71 major non-POW camps. In at least 31 of these camps the death toll exceeded 10,000 prisoners, with Auschwitz exceeding all others with at least 1.1 million victims. The infamous Buchenwald for instance, was under Nazi theory not an extermination camp, but a labour-till-death camp. At Bernburg, a so-called “Transit Camp,” more than 100,000 died. But camps are not the only place that Nazi’s executed Jews. There were killing fields, ghettoes, mobile gas chambers, and simple roadside executions. In parts of conquered Soviet territory a favoured method was to place an entire village’s population in a single barn and then set it alight. This was done in villages that were thought to harbour partisans, and in villages were Jews were present in large numbers. Lucy Dawidowicz, in her 1986 book “The War Against The Jews: 1933-1945,” calculating from pre-war census records estimates that the total of Jewish victims exceeded 5.93 million or 67% of Jewish occupants of Germany and German occupied territories. Other reasoned methodologies have produced estimates ranging from 4.5 million to 7.5 million.]
But then, irrationality is at the core of fundamentalism in all its varieties. Most of us who’ve studied Scripture seriously realise that fundamentalist interpretations depend on cherry picking literalism. What does that mean? Cherry picking means they choose to only read passages that suit pre-existing conceptions of what their religion should be about. This is also called “proof texting.” Literalism for a fundamentalist means that they choose to only use their own pre-existing understanding of what they need particular word or phrase means. Reading in this fashion they deny their own active interpretation. I think most of us understand that when you read any kind of text, you approach it with your existing predispositions and experiences guiding you. The modern biblical scholar will read the story of Sodom and Gomorrah and realise that the act of raping an angel (which we take not to be a winged being, but in the more accurate sense of the word – a messenger of God) is the culmination of the city of Sodom’s refusal of God. The story as a whole is not even about the fate of the city of Sodom. It’s about God rescuing the faithful from destruction. The fundamentalist uses his or her notion of “plain meaning” along with a rather limited understanding of the history of interpretation, to instead focus in on homosexuality, failing even to distinguish between homosexuality and rape. I’m not suggesting that the book of Leviticus does not exist, or that early Jewish thought did not impose strict penalties upon homosexual acts. But, it’s not what the story of Sodom and Gomorrah is about, and many fundamentalists can’t or won’t see this.
How does this happen? During the 19th century in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Europe, a virtual war broke out within the churches concerning biblical interpretation. Most of what we now call mainline churches favoured an historical approach – that ministers and biblical scholars should understand the history of the text, how, where, and why it was written, and use this data as part of their active interpretation. On the other side were a group that rejected this method, calling for the “plain truth.” This battle has continued on till today. In the early 20th-century a letter was circulated in support of literal interpretation that identified a bill of particular items that were considered fundamental to proper Christianity. This is where the word “fundamentalism” came from. However, this doesn’t help us understand the true nature of the movement. For that, we need to understand that the roots of fundamentalism are to be found in a rejection, at a personal level, of the world we live in. For most Christian and Islamic fundamentalists alike, the world is viewed as a context for sorrow.
At a personal level, fundamentalists see their lives, their identities, their futures threatened. This is why so many fundamentalists complained vociferously about change. “You’ve taken prayer out of the schools.” “You’re destroying marriage.” “You’re taking Christ out of Christmas.” Anything the State does to maintain a neutral stance toward religion is seen as an attack. For ISIS members, the very act of voting is considered apostasy, and is punishable by death. Traditionally, many fundamentalists called for abstaining from politics. In recent years, a substantial percentage of American fundamentalists attempted to engage the political process and direct it toward their own ends. They have had some degree of success, much more than most of us would like. Yet, though their voice is among the loudest in Congress, they persist in weeping and gnashing their teeth at the manner in which government supposedly assaults their values. Why then, the strained relationship with politics? For ISIS, the proclamation of a Caliphate is a necessary step in their prophetic interpretation of Islamic Scripture, the Koran. They believe that God is calling them out of this world into heaven. If this sounds familiar to the Christian readers of this note, it’s because both in the persecuted Christianity of the early church and in today’s fundamentalism, there was, and now is again a kind of trembling preference for the soul over the body. The world has become once again such a fearful place, such a place of dis-ease, that the fundamentalist chooses the promise of heaven over the reality of the earth. One might say, “But the members of ISIS are terrorists. They kill people. Fundamentalist Christians don’t do that.”
In fact, fundamentalist Christians extremists do kill, and not just in the historical records of Crusades and religious wars. Over the last 20 years we have seen report after report indicating a strong rise in fundamentalism in our own Armed Forces. It’s not simply that our military tends to recruit from the so-called Bible Belt. In our military academies there has been complaint after complaint and multiple investigations of coercive proselytising on the part of fundamentalist Christians in the officer corps. Steps have been taken, we are told. Senior officers have been shuffled out of the academy in order to fix this problem. But, when one looks closely, it is discovered that the officers who replace them follow the same pattern. Those who are moved do not follow the usual pattern of reprimand and quiet retirement, but instead go to other places of responsibility. Beyond this, let’s look at the actual actions of government in recent years. Fundamentalist Christians brought us into the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fundamentalist Christians even now are leading the charge for retribution after the Paris bombings.
In the extremist version of the political voice of fundamentalism, there is also the incessant call for a “Christian America.” We are told that our revolution was fought by Christians for Christians, ignoring the reality that many of the founders of our revolution were in fact Deists. If one listens carefully, we are also told that a “Christian America” has a role to play in the coming apocalypse, for which the fundamentalist longs. If we listen carefully, you will hear many voices from Christian fundamentalism calling for an end to secular America, and and to anything that we would recognise as democracy, calling for the creation of a nation run by Biblical Law. This too, in albeit smaller way, has shown a worrisome tendency toward violence. From the murder of abortion providers and intimidation of associated clinic staffs and service recipients, to the horribly botched governmental handling of both the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents, the Eric Rudolph’s, Centennial Park Olympic Bombing, and his attack on a Lesbian club, the 1996 attacks in Washington State by Christian Identity devotee’s Barbee, Berry and Merelle , the Michigan based Hutaree’s aborted attempts at violence in 2006 on behalf of the ”Colonial Christian Republic,” along with countless other incidents of homophobia, and antigovernment violence show in their depths a deeply seated concern with Christian apocalypse or Christian identity. Sometimes, though thus far rarely, the Fundamentalist’s overt alliances with government give direct evidence of this movement towards violence. Randall Paul’s call to exclude non-Christian refugees from the crisis in Syria and Iraq cannot but redound to America’s record with wartime Jews. Though he has not spoken of such things, we must ask, does he wish for us to have the Coast Guard and Homeland Defence turn back their boats and aircraft as we did to wartime Jews in the Nazi era?
I know that to many readers this will sound as if tinged by paranoia. Truth be told, the vision I’m describing is more commonly held than most of us think. It’s not mainstream evangelical Christianity. But then, neither is ISIS mainstream amidst conservative Islam. Overall numbers of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are no longer rising in this country. Their numbers, like the numbers of all religious believers, are starting to slowly fall. But, I would argue that this actually increases the pressure on fundamentalist believers. Fortunately, so far, they have not developed the sophisticated methods used by fundamentalist Islam to recruit and radicalise disaffected youth. Al Qaeda, ISIS and related Muslim terrorist groups recruit both from a very large network of religious training centres (I refuse to use the word schools, because the structures of these institutions are not educational, but purely one of religious indoctrination), and from recruiters associated with university centres and urban centres of disaffected Muslims.
Regrettably, every mistake on the part of government (as in Waco and Ruby Ridge) feeds both the alienation and apocalypticism that funds fundamentalist extremism among Christians. Such mistakes reinforce the walls of difference that separates the fundamentalist Christian extremist from other Christians. I have found that the opportunity for genuine conversation between fundamentalists and liberal Christians is almost nonexistent. Efforts on the part of liberal Christians to “understand” or “analyse” the phenomenology of fundamentalism are simply viewed as another attack by “false Christians,” “secularists,” or the “liberal elite.” Any leader of Christian fundamentalism who would extend a hand in friendship or simply conversation to a “liberal Christian” experiences and immediate loss of authority within his community (I use the word “his” intentionally, as the overwhelming majority of such leaders are male.”). There will be no way of convincing Pastor Anderson that the children of the Enlightenment are not his enemies. And in point of truth, we are. We are not willing to give up reason, traditions of interpretation, our history of scholarship in the context of academic freedom, nor are liberal Christian’s willing to allow for the historical Jesus to be wholly subsumed into a narrow theology of the atonement, ignoring the teachings of Jesus in order to claim victory in the afterlife through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. But recent and increasingly reflexive habits of discourse have begun to create walls around us, as much as Anderson seeks to create walls around himself and his believers. Our concerns for inclusion,tolerance and universality, our abhorrence of schism have made us less and less inclined to place limits around the teachings of other denominations and supposedly “Christian" groups. Witness in the Episcopal Church the confused relationship to the Church of the Latter Day Saints, a group born out of apocalypticism Strategically, he believes that he is winning, and not only because God is on his side. He also believes that even as he considers us monolithic in our evil, we are nonetheless in disarray. It is the failings of our society that make him strong.
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