What is a "Fundamentalist"

I received my June 2008 copy of Christianity Today on Saturday and, while reading the letters to the editor, I noticed this response by Tim Stafford to a letter questioning an article he had written:

"Fundamentalism as I used the term is belief plus attitude. Fundamentalists draw much of their self-identity from warning against those who don't agree with them. Thus, you can speak of liberal fundamentalists, environmental fundamentalists, free-market fundamentalists, and so on. Among Christians, such attitudes led to the rise of evangelicalism, which tried to hold to biblical fundamentals in the 1940s and '50s while maintaining a more welcoming, positive attitude toward those outside. ..." -- Christianity Today, June 2008, pp 8-9

I have to agree fully with Tim Stafford here. Evidently Stafford used the word "fundamentalist" 17 times: 3 times in a positive way, twice in a neutral way, and 12 times in a negative way. Tim Stafford's original article was about Philip Yancy's crisis of faith brought on by fundamentalism at its worst, that breakdown of usage is understandable.

When a belief system feels it needs to devote a significant amount of time toward attacking people with different beliefs, it raises questions about their ability to actually defend what it is they believe.

The Lord does not require Christians to run inference; He can take care of himself. What he DOES require is for us to do justice, love mercy, and to walk humbly with Him (Micah 6:8 paraphrased). In this general set of principles can be found, I think, the ability to tell the Good News in a clear and cogent manner and to defend our beliefs in a loving, yet firm fashion.

To be sure, it would be hard to discuss Martin Luther with out some passing reference to indulgences. Or much of Reformed theology without make some sort of comparison between differing beliefs among Christians. How one makes such comparisons can be positive or destructive. Or, in other words, a discussion or a harangue.

Which is more likely to serve the Lord?

Richard Dawkins Calls Himself A "Cultural Christian" - News Bloggers

Richard Dawkins Calls Himself A "Cultural Christian" - News Bloggers:

"Asked by a British member of Parliament if he is one of those atheists who wants to get rid of Christian symbols especially during the Christmas season, atheist Richard Dawkins replied that he is not. Dawkins said that he himself sings Christmas carols and that he considers himself a 'cultural Christian.' Just as many Jews regard themselves as Jewish, defend Jewish interests and cherish Jewish culture while not participating in Jewish religious rituals, Dawkins says that he respects the fact that the history and traditions of the West are shaped by Christianity. Dawkins says he's not one of those who wants to purge the West of its Christian traditions. The main threat to Christian symbols, Dawkins argues, does not come from atheists like him but rather from Muslims and members of other faiths. ..."

Dinesh d'Souza, who has written a book titled What's So Great About Christianity, suggests that Dawkins might be coming to a realization that Christianity may be more of a force for good than a force for evil in the world. I'm not sure I buy into all of his analysis of Dawkins' motives, but he certainly makes some interesting points.

Answering the Atheists | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Answering the Atheists | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction:

"Let's face it: Atheism is in. Not since Nietzsche have disbelievers enjoyed such a ready public reception to their godless message—and such near-miraculous royalties. But even that hasn't put them in a good mood. Snaps Christopher Hitchens, who wrote God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (although not, presumably, the pronouncements of atheists), 'Many of the teachings of Christianity are, as well as being incredible and mythical, immoral.' A feuding Richard Dawkins suggests that believers 'just shut up.' Apparently, they didn't get the tolerance memo. ..."

Stan Guthrie has written an engaging "Readers Digest Condensed" version of why he is a believer, drawing in many areas of his life and experience. The points Guthrie makes provide many useful tools for the apologetics toolbox. At the same time he demonstrates the fundamental untruth of the often-repeated assertion that believers are, at their core, irrational.

Williams questions Dawkins' critical thinking about religion | Ekklesia

Williams questions Dawkins' critical thinking about religion | Ekklesia:

"Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams has said that Richard Dawkins and other apostles of anti-religious sentiment are oversimplifying complex issues and often missing the point. His comments came in a weekend lecture on ‘misunderstanding religion’ at the University of Swansea. ..."

"... Dr Williams stressed that his intention was not to defend religion but to uphold the principles of serious intellectual discussion. The archbishop said that proper thought about religion, as in any field of enquiry, was marked by self-criticism.

When asked by a member of the audience “whose fault is Dawkins?”, Dr Williams replied that religious believers themselves were partly to blame, adding that in the past the understanding of God had often been reduced “to the kind of target Dawkins and others too easily fire at”.

The lecture, entitled ‘How To Misunderstand Religion’, opened a series of theological addresses at Swansea organised by the university chaplain, the Rev Nigel John. It was Dr Williams’ first visit there since he became the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Dr Williams said that while Richard Dawkins was undoubtedly a “lively and attractive writer” his actual arguments in The God Delusion failed to engage with where a lot of religious people actually were and with the deepest intellectual accounts of the relationship between faith and reason. ..."

Rowan Williams makes some good points in this article, couched in incisive language. He correctly places part of the blame for the current proliferation of anti-religion books to the believers themselves for providing fodder for attacks.

The main issue for Williams is the failure of certain atheists to engage religion on an intellectual basis. The Archbishop of Canterbury points out that not all atheists follow the lead of Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, or Christopher Hitchens; some feel these outspoken individuals do far more damage to fellow atheists than to religious adherents. He quotes Michael Ruse as saying in a letter to Daniel Dennett that "[N]either of you are willing to study Christianity seriously and to engage with the ideas… it is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil, as Richard claims…"

Some of the people with whom I have come into contact over the years are atheists or agnostics. Civil discourse is possible as long as people listen and speak respectfully. I can't claim to have converted any atheists, but I can claim that the challenges I have received over the years have spurred me to look things up for myself, and as a result my faith has been strengthened.

What we are dealing with here is the "straw man fallacy" -- by misrepresenting or exaggerating religion, such atheists as Dawkins, Dennett, and Hitchens can only demolish their own image of religion. Yet religion remains a vital part of people's lives. The "straw man" should be a caution to religious apologists -- it does no good if we respond in kind to the attacks of a few (and there is ample Biblical support for that point). Characterizing all Christians by the excesses of a small number of people is no different than characterizing all atheists by the emotional excesses of a very few.

An argument for intelligent belief - International Herald Tribune

An argument for intelligent belief - International Herald Tribune:

"An increasingly common argument against religion is to point out how irrational it is. Authors like Richard Dawkins ('The God Delusion'), Sam Harris ('The End of Faith') and Christopher Hitchens ('God is Not Great') all make the point that the essential irrationality of religion leads people to do stupid, dangerous, and even violent things.

Let's admit it: They're at least partially correct. Many ostensibly religious people have done appalling things in the name of religion and, more importantly, because of their religious beliefs. In that long list of abuses you could include the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and the bombing of abortion clinics.

To listen to these critics of religion, however, you would think that this is all that religion does, and that believing in God necessarily means being stupid, ignorant and narrow-minded. But ignoring the simple fact that religion is one of the foundations of modern learning is itself, well, stupid, ignorant and narrow-minded."

Well, this article is off to an interesting start.... James Martin cuts quickly to the chase here and makes his case that faith is NOT inherently irrational.

I can remember a conversation I had maybe 30 years ago -- I made a comment that faith was, at its core, irrational. The person with whom I was speaking said "no, faith is reasonable". By this he did not dismiss lightly the idea of a "leap of faith", but rather he suggested that because he could reason his way through faith, the leap was a reasonable outcome. After 30 years of head-scratching on my part, I am still learning things that make my faith not only reasonable to me, but also that make it easier to articulate my faith to others.

Lee Strobel Comes To Columbia

Lee Strobel returned to his Alma Mater this week for a visit and a couple lectures. Wednesday he spoke at one of the local churches in what was billed a "public" talk, but I had choir practice that evening. Thursday's engagement was in the Hearnes Center (the erstwhile basketball arena) and was billed as a "student event". I look a little old to pass for a student, but I decided to go anyway.

I'm glad I did. The crowd was quite large -- well in excess of 1000, I'd say -- and consisted of about half students and half community. Strobel's latest book, The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ, was available for $15, so I bought a copy and leafed through it while waiting for the talk to begin.

The lecture was less of a book promotion than a personal reflection on Lee Strobel's journey to faith. This journey passed through atheism, anger, and drunkenness, but he did not dwell overly long on this, nor did he provide us with "too much information". In addition to his degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, he earned a degree from Yale Law School -- a combination that provided impeccable credentials as a skeptic. It also provided him with a penchant for getting to the facts, which served him well as he was challenged by his wife's conversion to Christianity. The changes he saw in her prompted him to begin a search for the truth about Jesus.

In his search, he found that it all boiled down to two questions:

1. Did Jesus claim to be the Son of God?
2. Did Jesus rise from the dead?

The first question is dealt with by reading and understanding the plain sense of Scripture. When Jesus said "I and the Father are one" (John 10:30) he used a word that means "of the same nature" or "equal". If that is not enough, this elicited a rapid and violent reaction from the crowd, who picked up stones in order to carry out the prescribed penalty for blasphemy. There are a number of other Biblical references to Jesus claiming to be God's son..

The second question took a little longer to resolve. Strobel used five lines of evidence (the five "E's":

• The Execution -- The medical accounts of crucifixion reveal that the cause of death is suffocation due the way the victim hung mainly by his or her outstretched arms. The only relief was to push oneself up with the feet -- which were nailed to the upright beam. The Roman soldiers, who were very good at their job, would eventually break the legs of those who were still alive. Since they thought Jesus to be already dead, a spear was thrust between his ribs. The executioners were satisfied. Secular sources, including Josephus, support this account. The Talmud mentions the crucifixion.
  
• The Early Accounts -- The Gospels' descriptions of the event along with the post-resurrection appearances suggest that people accepted the events as described. Were they a local legend that took on a life of its own? Not likely. According to those who study the development of legends, such phenomena do not arise as quickly as the Gospel accounts demonstrate. Where was the body? All the authorities had to do was produce the body, yet they failed to do so, even though a cover story was concocted.
  
• The Empty Tomb -- The tomb was sealed and guarded, yet the tomb was empty two mornings later. Here Strobel invokes the "criterion of embarrassment" -- The Gospel accounts do not portray any of the disciples in a particularly good light. While they were in hiding, the women went to the tomb following the end of the sabbath and found it empty. When they told the disciples, they were unwilling at first to believe them. The Gospel writers told the story as they saw and believed it, even if the menfolk were embarrassed by their timidity.
  
• The Eyewitnesses -- Paul describes over 500 people who saw the risen Lord, including many who were still alive (20+ years following the resurrection?). Strobel holds that the scholarly consensus is that the disciples and others understood that Jesus rose from the dead, and the contemporary accounts support that. Mass hallucination? Mental health professionals point out that hallucination is an individual thing, not a shared experience. What about wishful thinking leading to self-delusion? Did Paul, who was traveling around organizing persecutions, desire to see a risen Jesus? Yet he had an extraordinary encounter on the road to Damascus.
  
• The Emergence of the Church -- How and why did the Church "explode" into existence in an atmosphere of repression. It is even more astounding that this rapid growth was led by people who had cowered in fear until after the resurrection, including one who lied three times about his relationship with Jesus. The eleven remaining disciples KNEW the truth and most of them died violently for their faith.

At some point in this journey, Strobel found that it took more faith to remain an atheist than to accept that Jesus was who he said he was. He zeroed in on what Paul saw as the logical key to his faith:

^{1Co 15:12} But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? ¹³ If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. ¹⁴ And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

Another way to put this is that theology matters. The Resurrection is an essential of our faith, and cannot be explained or negotiated away.

Toward the end of his talk, he told a moving story about his daughter, then 5, who had known only the old Lee Strobel. It was not long before she wanted whatever her daddy had gotten that made such a change in him.

Strobel said little that was totally unfamiliar to me, but his synthesis of many lines of evidence taken together provides a powerful testimony and one that has broadened my knowledge of apologetics. In this age when there is a proliferation of books written by atheists who preach their faith^* with evangelistic fervor, it is refreshing to see Lee Strobel's intellectually honesty and willingness to let his assumptions be challenged.

*I'm not trying to be cute here. It takes a great deal of faith to be an atheist for the simple reason that it is logically impossible to prove a negative. The non-existence of God is a step of faith, wrong though it may be. Perhaps this why such former atheists as C.S. Lewis, Francis Collins, and Lee Strobel make such strong Christians -- they already know what faith is.