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Fundamentalist Christianity

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There is a remarkable trend toward fundamentalism in all religions — including the different denominations of Christianity as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Increasingly, true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: "Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong," and the next step is "inherently inferior." The ultimate step is "subhuman," and then their lives are not significant.
That tendency has created, throughout the world, intense religious conflicts. ~ Jimmy Carter

Fundamentalist Christianity, also known as Christian fundamentalism or fundamentalist evangelicalism, is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among conservative evangelical Christians, who, in a reaction to liberal theology, actively affirmed a fundamental set of Christian beliefs: the inerrancy of the Bible, Sola Scriptura, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent personal return of Jesus Christ. Some who hold these beliefs reject the label of "fundamentalism", seeing it as a pejorative term for historic Christian doctrine, while to others it has become a banner of pride.

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Look closely. Those are evangelical leaders and pastors — people who represent America's various streams of fundamentalist Christianity — venerating a president who, I think it's safe to say, reflects none of the qualities Jesus is believed to have embodied.
It has become almost banal to recite Trump's ugly, vulgar, misogynist, racist mendacity, and yet here he is in an official White House photo, an image clearly meant to invoke the Last Supper, in the midst of an ecstatic laying on of hands.
It is no exaggeration to say many evangelicals consider Trump an anointed figure; a clearly venal man somehow chosen by their God to rescue America from venality. ~ Neil Macdonald
  • There is a remarkable trend toward fundamentalism in all religions — including the different denominations of Christianity as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Increasingly, true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: "Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong," and the next step is "inherently inferior." The ultimate step is "subhuman," and then their lives are not significant.
    That tendency has created, throughout the world, intense religious conflicts. Those Christians who resist the inclination toward fundamentalism and who truly follow the nature, actions, and words of Jesus Christ should encompass people who are different from us with our care, generosity, forgiveness, compassion, and unselfish love.
    It is not easy to do this. It is a natural human inclination to encapsulate ourselves in a superior fashion with people who are just like us — and to assume that we are fulfilling the mandate of our lives if we just confine our love to our own family or to people who are similar and compatible. Breaking through this barrier and reaching out to others is what personifies a Christian and what emulates the perfect example that Christ set for us.
    • Jimmy Carter, Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005) Ch. 3 : The Rise of Religious Fundamentalism, p. 30 ; response on being asked by Christianity Today to explain the statement in his 2002 Nobel address in Oslo: "The present era is a challenging and disturbing time for those whose lives are shaped by religious faith based on kindness towards each other."
  • What the world witnessed, during the late 1970s, throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, was a widespread retreat from the churches and established religious bodies which had sought to rationalize their beliefs and come to terms with societies which in general were non-religious; and simultaneously, the growth of fundamentalism, which bypassed rationalism, stressed the overwhelming importance of faith and miraculous revelation and rejected the idea of compromise with institutions based on non-belief. The outstanding symbol of 'rationalizing' religion was the World Council of Churches, which throughout the 1980s had stressed ecumenicalism, minimalist beliefs and the need to reach agreement with Marxism and other anti-religious creeds. It lost support throughout the decade, and came close to discrediting itself finally in February 1991 during its meeting in Canberra. i
    • Paul Johnson, Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties (1991), p. 705
  • Any hope that America would finally grow up vanished with the rise of fundamentalist Christianity. Fundamentalism, with its born-again regression, its pink-and-gold concept of heaven, its literal-mindedness, its rambunctious good cheer... its anti-intellectualism... its puerile hymns... and its faith-healing... are made to order for King Kid America.
    • Florence King, Reflections in a Jaundiced Eye, St. Martin's Press: 1990, page 33

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