by Scott Bidstrup

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Why Fundamentalism Accepts Hypocrisy

Fundamentalism, like any other belief system, has to propagate itself in order to survive and prosper.

A method used by many fundamentalist Christian religions, is to appeal in very subtle ways to some of the baser instincts in man.

It is obvious that telling someone he is right is more likely to get him to agree with you than telling him he is wrong and should reform himself.

And so fundamentalist sects do just that; they have justified slavery to slaveholders. They have justified persecution of unpopular minorities to bigots, and war to nationalists. They have justified disregard and even oppression of the poor and dispossessed by the wealthy and powerful.

What have the fundamentalist sects gained by such behavior? Obviously it is membership and financial support among members, and an acceptance and acquiesence among its neighbors.

Yet a fundamentalist religion cannot make such base appeals openly. To do so would be to deny the principles of religion that make religion a positive force in the minds of most people. Religion must be respectable to survive for long, so fundamentalist sects will invariably pay a great deal of lip service to the ideals of true religion, all the while ignoring them in practice, and occasionally even being contemptuous of them in private. An example is the anti-abortion movement; while it makes a lot of noise about the sanctity of life, rarely do its adherents concern themselves with the lives of the babies after they’re born. The reason why is that they don’t really care about the infants; what they really care about is the control.

Why Fundamentalism Promotes Intolerance

The fundamentalist believes that he is right. Period.

He believes he knows the will of God. We’ve all seen that bumper sticker that says, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” Of course the fallacy is that there’s no proof, or even reliable evidence, that God ever said anything.

When someone takes such a doctrinaire approach to religion, without being willing to accept that he may be wrong, it becomes very easy to believe that he knows what’s right for everyone else as well.

When he believes that he knows what is best for everyone else, it is a very short leap to the feeling that he has the right, if not the responsibility to impose on others the point of view he is so sure is not only correct, but even infallible. After all it is for their own good, is it not?

Thus the fundamentalist has, by his conviction that he is correct, justified the extinction, by force if neccessary, of opposing points of view. This is why so many highly public fundamentalists take positions that would not only be familiar, but quite comfortable to most fascists. This is why Randall Terry, the founder of Operation Rescue, feels justified in saying that he doesn’t want pluralism. It is why Ralph Reed used to describe himself as the “stealth” candidate, “painting [his] face and travelling at night.”

The philosophical Achilles’ heel, here of course, is that the fundamentalist can be wrong, and occasionally have to admit it. There are few Southern Baptists today who would openly argue that God meant for people of African descent to be enslaved to people of European descent. Yet that argument is precisely how the Southern Baptist Convention came into being. Now, a century and a half later, the doctrine seems to have changed, in spite of their notion that the Bible should be interpreted literally, and therefore it’s meaning can’t change.

Well, if the Southern Baptists were wrong about slavery, and later about segregation, those very facts beg the question, what else are they wrong about? Yet it is remarkable how few Southern Baptists ever stop to consider that question. The belief is that by asking such questions, you’re somehow falling into “Satan’s trap” as if logical inconsistency wasn’t itself a trap.

from http://www.bidstrup.com/religion.htm