The early Christian communities were compassionate and caring – and charismatic and creative, when it came to their ministry and rituals. Men and women, who were heads of households, presided at Eucharist. They considered themselves a community of believers not an institutional church.

The communities gathered regularly, breaking-bread in memory of Jesus the Christ, and they created rituals for welcoming new members, reconciling members who had fallen away, and comforting and supporting those who were sick or close to death. 

Their spirit and lives were anchored in the exhortation of Jesus: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31)

Tertullian (c. 155 AD – c. 220), the early Christian author from ancient Carthage in the Roman province of Africa, imagined pagans looking at Christians and saying, “Look . . . see how they love one another (for they themselves the pagans hate one another). And see how they are ready to die for each other (for the pagans themselves are more ready to kill each other).”

The early Christian community elected and evaluated their leaders. The first century Christian document known as the Didache tells Christians “You must, then, elect for yourselves overseers [i.e. “bishops”] and deacons who are a credit to the Lord…who are gentle, generous, faithful, and reliable.” 

In his Apostolic Tradition, Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 – 236), an influential second-century theologian, emphasized that “The one who is ordained as an overseer, being chosen by all the people, must be irreproachable.” Cyprian (c. 210 – 256), writer and bishop of Carthage in North Africa, stressed that, by virtue of the community’s divine authority, the bishop should be elected by all the faithful. He added that the people “have the power of choosing worthy priests and of rejecting unworthy ones.” 

Speaking of the election of Cornelius (died in 253) as bishop of Rome in 251, Cyprian remarked “Cornelius was made overseer by the judgment of God and his Christ, by the testimony of almost all the clergy, by the vote of the people who were present, and by the college of mature priests and good people.”

Christian social and cultural identity shifted dramatically, however, under Emperor Constantine (c. 272 – 337) who made Christianity an important and legitimate religion in his Roman Empire and under Emperor Theodosius I (347 – 395) who made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380.

As Christianity developed a well defined institutional structure, thanks especially to strong Constantinian support, a major ecclesiastical paradigm shift was underway. 

Sometimes people and leaders don’t see and don’t understand the long-term implications of what they are getting into. True yesterday. True today. Antiquated structures get formalized into stone-like monuments. Leadership people lose sight of their real purpose and focus more and more on promoting their own egos and power.

In the autumn of 312 CE, according to the old legend, Constantine and his soldiers had a profound military-religious experience which encouraging them to fight under the sign of Christ. Fighting under the insignia of Christ, at the Battle of the Tiber’s Milvian Bridge, Constantine’s troops defeated his major rivals, especially fellow emperor Maxentius (c. 283 – 312), whose head was triumphantly carried through the streets of Rome. 

Constantine became the single Roman Emperor. He converted to Christianity (but was not baptized until shortly before his death in 337). Historians wonder if he really became a Christian or very pragmatically used the growing Christian religion to tie together his unsteady empire. Personally I think he was a very pragmatic politician and a very distorted Christian. In any event, Constantine hoped to unify his Roman Empire by promoting (and taking advantage of) just one religion for all. His was the earliest form of Christian nationalism.

In 313 Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, making Christianity one of the legally recognized religions in the Roman Empire. Then, in 325, he convened a council of all Christian bishops in Nicaea (now İznik, Turkey). They formulated the Nicene Creed – still used today — and demanded that all Christians accept it. For Constantine it was another step in unifying his empire. Constantine desired unity in the church not for the sake of Christianity but for the welfare of his empire. 

Basically he annexed the church to use it as an agent of political and social control. Bishops became civil judges. Although Constantine died in 337, forty-three years after his death his dream was realized with the Edict of Thessalonica, which declared Nicene Christianity to be the ONLY legitimate religion for the Roman Empire. Church and state were becoming one. Church leaders became imperial leaders in power and influence, as well as courtly attire, and institutional protocol. The bishops of Rome gloried in it. 

Constantinian Christianity clearly mirrored Constantine more than Christ. Although Constantine really preached a false gospel, church leaders marched to to beat of his imperial drum because he had eliminated persecution and had given them great power and status. 

Curiously, the Nicene Creed of 325 said nothing about what Jesus had taught, beyond the idea that God is a Father. It said nothing about loving one another, about compassion, or forgiveness, or helping the poor and needy, or renouncing violence, or building bridges with one’s enemies. Christianity shifted its identity focus from correct Christian conduct to doctrinal fidelity and institutional obedience. Jesus had empowered people to change their lives. Constantinian Christianity exercised power over people. Compassion was replaced by control. 

The episcopal office evolved into an excessively organized institutional bureaucracy. The Council of Trent, held between 1545 and 1563 in Trento, Italy, reinforced the power and position of bishops. Already in the medieval period, Christian bishops had assumed the place of Roman commanders, making secular decisions for their cities, and even leading their own troops in military battles when necessary. Let us not forget that the popes had their own army and navy up until the fall of the Papal States in 1870. The last ships of the papal flotilla were sold in France after the death of Pius IX in 1878.

Under the princely acting bishops, relations with ordinary people were not always cordial. The institutional church had become an administrative pyramid and the bishops were at the top. They controlled not only ministry (ministerium) but also theological teaching (magisterium). Bishops became powerful men who had not only institutional power but considerable economic and political power. They had once been called “Father,” but their titles became what they are today “Excellency” or “Eminence.” And of course they began to dress like Renaissance princes in luxurious clothing. 

Church members, back then as today, had no voice in electing or critiquing their institutional leaders. We should change that today. Certainly the synodal movements point in that direction. But will they be effective? We need a more horizontal leadership structure and a reform much more extensive than the 16^th century Reformation. The church should not be an authoritarian pyramid.

I think J. P. Grayland, a presbyter of Palmerston North Catholic Diocese in New Zealand, says it very well in an October 26 article in LaCroix: 

          “The Catholic Church cannot avoid institutional change much longer because its institutional model, at least in the West, has passed its ‘use-by’ date. One of the dominant models of perceiving the Church is the model of institution. This model’s decision-making structure is more oligarchical than collegial, and its approach to contemporary questions is preservationist rather than integrationist. Whether we like it or not, the Western Church’s operating model as a hierarchical edifice is challenged by the forces of institutional collapse.”

James Martin, S.J., editor at large for the monthly magazine America is the author of Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity, HarperColins, 2017. In his book he stresses that Roman Catholic teaching at the most basic level is contained in the Gospels and, even more specifically, in the revelation of God’s love in Jesus Christ. Therefore, Martin emphasizes, the most fundamental of all church teachings about gay and lesbian people should be that God loves them. Gay and lesbian people are beloved and created by God, deserving, like all of us, God’s loving care.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, however, the same-sex orientation is considered “objectively disordered.” Needless to say, official Catholic teaching rules out same-sex marriage and any sort of sexual activity outside of the marriage of a man and a woman, like premarital sex, adultery, and even masturbation, “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” 

Theologians Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler from Creighton University have written extensively about Catholic sexual morality. I strongly recommend their book The Sexual Person, Toward a Renewed Catholic Anthropology, Georgetown University Press, 2008. Their book draws historically and anthropologically from Catholic tradition and provides a helpful context for current ethical debates about marriage, cohabitation, sexual orientation, and reproductive technologies.

Todd and Michael contend that the Catholic Church is being inconsistent in its teaching by adopting a dynamic, historically conscious anthropology and worldview on social ethics and the interpretation of scripture while still adopting a static, classicist anthropology and worldview on sexual ethics. They propose a definition of human sexuality that finds love and truth in all just and loving heterosexual, lesbian, gay, and bisexual acts. Current Catholic teaching, however, adheres to a definition of human dignity that finds love and truth in an understanding of human sexuality that is limited to sexual acts in heterosexual marriage. The Church proposes norms and legislation based on that definition.

Currently, there is no scientific consensus on the origins of sexual orientation. While scientists do not know the exact cause of sexual orientation, they theorize that it is caused by a complex interplay of genetic, hormonal, and environmental influences.

About sexual activity, there is no doubt that all animals have genitals in order to reproduce. Human animals, however, have added a second meaning to their genital activity, namely, to express in a bodily activity the personal love they have for one another. Much depends on our human nature. But that opens an important discussion.

Some argue, with Church support, that same-sex activity is unnatural. Contemporary sexual anthropology, however, recognizes sexual orientation as an intrinsic dimension of human nature, and what is accepted as natural sexual activity will vary depending on whether a person’s sexual orientation is same-sex or heterosexual. Gay and lesbian acts are natural for people with a same-sex orientation. Heterosexual acts are natural for people with a heterosexual orientation.

Heterosexual and same-sex acts, therefore, are natural because they reflect the person’s fundamental human nature as interpreted by right reason. To be ethical, Salzman and Lawler stipulate, every human sexual act, same-sex or heterosexual, must be not only natural but also free, just, loving, and respectful of the human dignity and flourishing of both partners.

I know and greatly respect Todd Salzman, who did his doctorate in Leuven in 1994. I conclude this reflection with an excerpt from a 2020 article written by Todd and Michael Lawler, “Exploring Human Dignity: Foundations and Applications that Transform Contemporary Society.” (Interdisciplinary Journal for Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society, Volume 6 (2020): Issue 1 July)

 “Church teaching on the truth of the meaning of human sexuality, that homosexual orientation is objectively disordered, that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, and that legislation preventing same-sex civil unions, adoption by homosexual parents, and employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender is deeply flawed and violates human dignity and the truth of God’s unconditional love for all people. It is also driving young people away from the Church, doing serious emotional, psychological, relational and spiritual damage to our LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and unintentionally legitimizing hate-speech and violence against them.”

And so what should we do today? 

First of all of course we need to check our own attitudes and behavior. Then we need to work with others in changing institutional attitudes and behavior. Just expressing our genuine concerns and assuring people of our thoughts and prayers is not enough. As the old saying goes: “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good people do nothing.” 

It is a very big issue. The American Library Association, for example, reports that in 2022, public and school libraries have received a record-breaking 1,650 calls for elimination of books, with over a third of the targets featuring LGBTQ content. Meanwhile, far-right Christians are still insisting that any teacher or librarian who makes LGBTQ-friendly material available is part of a global pedophilia ring, an accusation that began with QAnon. It is crazy and becoming even more crazy as people push toward the November 8 midterm elections.

For more information about being supportive of LGBTQ+ people, I recommend checking regularly with Dignity USA via their website.      https://www.dignityusa.org/

The most fundamental of all church teachings about LGBTQ+ people should be that God loves them. They are beloved and created by God, deserving, like all of us, God’s loving care – and our loving care and support. And “loving care and support” demands that we work to change institutional attitudes, teaching, and behavior. Working together we can do that. As my friend, Patrick Sullivan, emeritus president of ARCC, has so often said: “Once people start to believe change is possible, the drive to achieve it accelerates.”

This week’s reflection is a bit longer than usual. Please bear with me…

Some have argued, and still do, that Christianity is the national faith in the United States. Others argue that historically Christianity, the Deism of the founding fathers, and other religious traditions have long inspired U.S. Americans. Today of course Christian nationalism is very much in the news.

Religion and values in U.S. American society has been my academic and research focus for the past thirty years. I would argue that, for a very long time, there has been a well-institutionalized civil religion in the United States, alongside of and clearly differentiated from the established religious traditions like Christianity and Judaism. 

All religions are systems of beliefs and practices that help people answer their deeper questions about identity, life, and meaning. U.S. civil religion has all the qualities of a religion. It has foundational sacred texts with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The National Archives building in Washington DC, in fact, is designed like a temple; and the nation’s sacred scriptures are displayed in an altar-type protective reliquary. (Many years ago, when we were little kids, my sister and I visited the National Archives. We walked in, looked around and the first thing we did, as good Catholic kids sensing a church-type environment, was genuflect. Then we were embarrassed and just started laughing.)

U.S. civil religion has national saints like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. (I don’t think there will be a Saint Donald Trump. But many of his followers would love that.) The U.S. has a broad collection of laws establishing codes of conduct. The key civil religion symbol of course is the Stars and Stripes. There are abundant sacred shrines in U.S. civil religion: places like the Capitol in Washington DC; the Lincoln Memorial; the Statue of Liberty; Arlington National Cemetery, where the “martyrs” are buried; Mount Rushmore, commemorating four civil saints; the Vietnam Memorial; and a great variety of statues and memorials scattered across the country. I have been to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC many times. What always strikes me is how silent people become when they walk up the statue of Abraham Lincoln.

And of course we have civil religion holy days like the Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Washington’s Birthday, Martin Luther King Day, and of course Thanksgiving.

U.S. civil religion has been a deeply felt and strongly patriotic universal religion of the nation. It does not compete with established religions but exists alongside them and is supported by them. In many U.S. church sanctuaries, for example, the American flag hangs as a traditional adornment. People growing up outside the United States, like my European friends, cannot understand the U.S. reverence for the flag and that U.S. citizens are expected to hold their hands over their hearts during a rendition of the national anthem or when they recite the Pledge of Allegiance. In Belgium the flag comes out when there is a big football game.

The U.S. civil religion concept, originating  in the work of Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) with echoes in Alexis de Tocqueville (1805 – 1859), made its first major impact on the sociological study of religion in the United States with the publication of an essay titled “Civil Religion in America,” written in 1967 by the sociologist of religion Robert Bellah (1927-2013). “While some have argued that Christianity is the national faith,” Bellah observed, “few have realized that there actually exists alongside the churches an elaborate and well-institutionalized civil religion in America.” (One of my delights some years ago was a series of informal conversations and lunch with Robert Bellah and his wife, when they visited our university.) 

Civil religion is unique in U.S. culture because it does not claim an identifiable social group but the entire society itself; or as British writer G. K. Chesterton (1874 – 1936) once observed: The United States is “a nation with the soul of a church.”

U.S. civil religion has not only the common features of a religion but a regularly expressed belief in Divine Providence that looks over America: “In God we trust,” and annuit coeptis – translated as “He favors our undertakings” – on the one dollar bill, by way of example.  In 1956, during the height of the Cold War struggle with the officially atheist Soviet Union, Congress passed a joint resolution, signed by President Dwight D.Eisenhower (1890 – 1969), declaring “In God We Trust” to be the national motto of the United States.

Up until the Civil War (1861 – 1865), U.S. civil religion focused on the American Revolution (1765 – 1791) as the final act of the Exodus from the old world across the sea. George Washington was seen as the divinely appointed new Moses who led his people out of the old world tyranny of the British Empire. 

With the Civil War, new themes of death, sacrifice, and rebirth entered U.S. civil religion. They were symbolized in the life and death of President Abraham Lincoln (1809 – 1865); and, at the end of the Civil War, in a series of national, civil religion, Holy Week events. Confederate General Robert E. Lee (1807 – 1870) surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant (1822 – 1885) on April 9, 1865 — Palm Sunday. When he was shot on Good Friday, April, 14, President Lincoln shed his blood for his country. Lincoln died on Saturday and so, on the following day — Easter 1865, “Reconstruction” resurrection began under President Andrew Johnson (1808 – 1875). 

A few years before his own death, the American poet, Robert Lowell (1917 – 1977), understood the civil religion impact of Lincoln and offered this reflection: “The Gettysburg Address is a symbolic and sacramental act. In his words, Lincoln symbolically died, just as the Union soldiers really died – and as he himself was soon really to die. By his words, he gave the field of battle a symbolic significance that it has lacked. For us and our country, he left Jefferson’s ideals of freedom and equality joined to the Christian sacrificial act of death and rebirth. I believe this is the meaning that goes beyond sect or religion and beyond peace and war, and is now part of our lives as a challenge, obstacle, and hope.”

Following the Civil War, the great number of war dead required the establishment of several national cemeteries. Of these, Gettysburg National Cemetery, which Lincoln’s famous address served to dedicate, has been overshadowed only by the Arlington National Cemetery, begun on the Robert E. Lee estate across the river from Washington.

Memorial Day grew out of the Civil War. Memorial Day integrates people and local communities into a national observance, just as Thanksgiving Day, which was institutionalized as an annual national holiday under the presidency of Lincoln, serves to integrate families into a national civil religion celebration of unity and gratitude for the blessings of Divine Providence.   

Post WWII America was fertile ground for American civil religion; and President Dwight David Eisenhower its strong advocate. With the support of people like the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale (1898 – 1993) and the Rev. Billy Graham (1918 – 2018), Eisenhower presided over a vigorous assertion of the place of religion in public life. Even when, as he said, he didn’t care what the religion was. He established the annual “presidential” prayer breakfast, and the presidential practice of ending speeches with “May God bless America.” With Eisenhower’s support, Congress inserted “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance and placed “In God We Trust” on all currency. Few Americans opposed such steps. Protestants and Catholics were happy, and Jewish Americans felt they could live with Eisenhower’s vague public religiosity. 

A very popular civil religion spin-off fellow at this time was the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale and his “Positive Thinking” religio-psychiatry.  Peale was probably the most famous clergyman in the United States in the 1940s and early 1950s. When Donald Trump was a child, the Trump family regularly attended Peale’s Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Years later, Peale presided over Trump’s first marriage to Ivana (1949 – 2022) in 1977. It was Norman Vincent Peale, by the way, who taught Donald Trump to promote and worship himself.

U.S. civil religion has never been anticlerical or militantly secular. It has consistently borrowed from set religious traditions in such a way that the average U.S citizen has seen no conflict between the two. In this way, civil religion, with no opposition from the churches, has been able to construct powerful symbols of national solidarity and to activate deep levels of personal engagement for the attainment of national goals. And here one really must also acknowledge the contribution of public schools as shapers of civil religion values. 

Sustaining the whole panorama of American civil religion are key biblical archetypes: Exodus, Chosen People, Promised Land, New Jerusalem, and Sacrificial Death and Rebirth. But how should people understand these themes today? Do they correctly understand them? Even Robert Bellah observed years ago that “civil religion has not always been invoked in favor of worthy causes.” 

Today civil religion is buried in Christian nationalism and various fundamentalist movements. We see it being used in a rather fanatic way to justify racism, police brutality, homophobia, misogyny, and xenophobia. 

U.S. civil religion has taken a complicated shift since January 6^th 2021, as the American political idea has been linked to Christian nationalism. Among those who invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6^thwere many who said they were led by their Christian beliefs. Interestingly, however, members of the Capitol Police warned the protesters that they they were violating the “sacred space” of the Capitol.

The religious nationalism present at the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington stands, however, in clear contrast to the U.S. tradition of civil religion, which places sanctity in the symbols (such as the Capitol building with Saint George Washington portrayed in the rotunda dome) and ceremonies that represent U.S. guiding principles like national unity and the dignity for all. 

In his inaugural address, on January 20, 2021, President Biden condemned the violence at the U.S. Capitol in the language of religion, asserting the sacredness of American democratic traditions. “On this hallowed ground where just a few days ago violence sought to shake the Capitol’s very foundation,” he said, “we come together as one nation, under God, indivisible, to carry out the peaceful transfer of power as we have for more than two centuries.” 

John Carlson, associate director of religious studies at Arizona State University, and interim director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict, wrote on the day after the Biden inauguration that U.S. civil religion was on full display during the inauguration:  “Presidential inaugurations serve as the high holiday of our American civil religion: In front of ‘the temple of our democracy’ — the Capitol — presidents and vice presidents take their ‘sacred oaths’ by placing their hands upon special bibles, often with histories as rich as the ceremony itself. The president’s inaugural address serves as a kind of sermon or catechism to the masses….’Civil religion,’ then, is a scholarly term for the common understanding of principles, ideals, narratives, symbols and events that describe the American experience of democracy in light of higher truths.”

My head-scratching these days: Is the concept of U.S. civil religion still useful for understanding socio-cultural life in the contemporary United States? If not, how should one think about religion in the U.S.A. today? How do we interpret what is happening –- socio-politically —  in the contemporary United States?  What will be the implications of the November 2022 midterm elections, when, according to a Washington Post analysis, a majority of Republican nominees for House, Senate, and key statewide offices — 299 in all — have denied or questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election?

I still reflect on the stirring words and phrases from Amanda Gorman’s inaugural poem: “The Hill We Climb.”

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us,

but what stands before us.

We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,

we must first put our differences aside.

We lay down our arms

so we can reach out our arms

to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.

As a believer today, what are your big questions? Your concerns? Are there some specific questions you woukd like me to address?

You can reply to: jack.dick@kuleuven.be

Many thanks

Jack

Closing the three-day National Conservatism Conference, in Miami on September 13, 2022, Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, argued that the great divide in the United States is now between Christian theology and a “woke religion that is raising itself up as the official state ideology,” adding that “insofar as conservatism as a movement has a future, it is a future that is going to be increasingly tied to explicit theological claims.” 

“Theological claims” of course caught my attention.

Mohler is a “young earth creationist.” He maintains that our Earth and its lifeforms were created by the Abrahamic God, just 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Mohler is an ardent fundamentalist.

My point today is not to get into a discussion about the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky but to share some thoughts about fundamentalism, because it underlies so many contemporary religious – and political — movements. On both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe: Hungary, Poland, Turkey, and now Italy, by way of examples.  

The word “fundamentalist” was first used in print in the United States, in 1920, by Curtis Lee Laws, editor of The Watchman Examiner, a national Baptist newspaper. He proposed that Christians who were fighting for the fundamentals of their faith should be called “fundamentalists.” But the term “fundamentalism” was extended to other religious traditions around the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1978-79.

In general all fundamentalist movements arise when people are confronted with an unsettling disruption of their “normal” way of life. Sensing societal chaos, they develop strong feelings of anxiety and fear about losing control over their lives and losing personal and group identity. 

Regardless of the religious tradition to which they belong, all fundamentalists follow certain patterns: 

• Religious ideology is the basis for their personal and communal identity.

• They insist upon one statement of truth that is inerrant, revealed, and unchangeable

• They see themselves as part of a cosmic struggle between good and evil. 

• They seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in the light of this cosmic struggle. 

• They demonize their opposition. 

• They are selective in what parts of the religious tradition and heritage they will stress. 

Although we have not usually thought of Roman Catholics as fundamentalists, the term can certainly be applied to a number of Roman Catholic individuals and movements. Certainly more than a few of today’s U.S. Roman Catholic bishops are starting to resemble fundamentalists in their words and actions.

Religious fundamentalists place such a high priority on doctrinal conformity and obedience to doctrinaire spokespersons that they end up sacrificing values basic to all the great religious traditions: love, compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, and caring.

When Christian belief becomes highly fundamentalized, churches start to become repositories not of grace but of grievances. They become places where something like tribal identities are reinforced, fears are nurtured, and aggression and nastiness become part of a holy cause. In their overwhelming seriousness about “their” religion, fundamentalists do not hesitate to intervene in political and social processes to ensure that society conforms to the values and behaviors required by their fundamentalist worldview. Fundamentalists become their own justification.

Fundamentalism appeals for a variety of reasons: 

• For people who feel unimportant or insignificant, fundamentalism says you are important because you are God’s “special messenger.” 

• For people who are fearful, fundamentalism says “you can’t be saved without us…join us and be saved.” 

• For the confused, fundamentalism says one doesn’t have to think about doctrine nor even be educated in it. Just believe what we say.

• Fundamentalism makes the fundamentalist feel good about himself or herself. It is self-stroking.

• Fundamentalism justifies hatred of one group of people for another, because it believes that God hates those who do not conform to the fundamentalist worldview.

• Fundamentalism appeals to people burdened by guilt and shame because it exempts them from responsibility for situations or actions that cause guilt and shame. Fundamentalism says…if you are one of us, you are OK.

• Fundamentalism excuses people from honest self-examination; and it justifies their prejudices, zealotry, intolerance, and hatefulness.

What does one do about fundamentalism?

• The best way to confront the narrow vision of fundamentalism is through broad-based education that emphasizes critical, analytical thinking skills.

• Broad-based education emphasizes the importance of gathering evidence and then proceeding to conclusions. Fundamentalists work in the opposite fashion. They begin  with their conclusions and then search for arguments to support them.

• We need to establish channels for dialogue and support those institutions that promote multi-cultural knowledge and understanding.

• We need to courageously work against ignorance and speak-out about dishonest or faulty information. And speak-out about those who advocate and publish it.

• We need to humbly realize that we too are still on the road to discovery. We cannot fall into the trap of many fundamentalists who have become self-centered know-it-alls.

****

“Truth is always complicated by the human envelope in which it is enclosed.
It’s not only an intellectual problem, but one at the heart of the gospel itself. It was not sinners who turned Jesus off. It was the righteous religious types who felt they had all the answers.”- Rev. Raymond E. Brown (1928 – 1998), Catholic biblical scholar