A netfriend asked:

‘Fundamentalist Christians are poorly educated. True or False?’

Just a question. Anyone here with a college degree. How about a masters or doctorate?

Another responded:

***Does having a certificate showing that you did what someone wanted you to do…make you educated in life? or just the subjects you took? Some of the wisest folks never went to school at all.

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And I chimed in:

Good response ….

1. Depends on what kind of fundamentalist… soft to hard…

All fundamentalists are prone to inhabiting ‘simplicity this side of complexity’

Soft fundamentalists are simple people who are accepting of others

Hard fundamentalists are *simplistic* people who cannot easily tolerate diversity within the family of God

2. Depends what you mean by ‘educated…’

I’ve known ‘soft fundamentalists’ who’ve had a better life-education than some woolly-headed liberals I’ve met.

And some fundamentalists who are ‘concrete thinkers’ have brilliant PhDs…

But, yes, generally speaking, fundamentalists believe what they have believed for a while (and what the preachers believed who got hold of them when they were impressionable). The test: ask them ‘On what major theological issues have you radically changed your mind with new insights/information’?’

(You don’t need to know my ‘formal education’ qualifications – I’m ‘dying by degrees’: in some contexts they don’t mean anything more than that I’ve done a good job impressing examiners :-)!

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Shalom!

Rowland Croucher