Fundamentalists
“Jesus was a radical, nonviolent revolutionary, who hung around with lepers, hookers, and crooks; wasn’t American and never spoke English; was anti-wealth, anti-death penalty, anti-public prayer (M 6:5); But he was never anti-gay, never mentioned abortion or birth control, never called the poor lazy, never justified torture, never fought for tax cuts for the wealthiest Nazarenes, never asked a leper for a co-pay; and was a long-haired, brown-skinned, homeless, community-organizing, anti-slut shaming, middle eastern Jew.”
@JohnFugelsang
I’m not a religious person, but I was a fundamentalist Christian for 20 years, and a Baptist minister for 15 years. I have veered between stringent atheism, to progressive Christianity. If you know Rachel Held Evans, then her faith very well explains mine. I am a doubter. However, the quote above is a good example of where I wish most Christians would find themselves. There’s nothing wrong with these opinions at all. Unfortunately, what progressive Christians find is that they have obviously no support on the fundamentalist side, but they also find zero support on the atheist side. The fundamentalist says you’re blasphemous and still going to hell; while the atheist says you’re just compensating for your fake religion.
There is this concept in atheism that the world is better off without religion. That somehow we can rid the world of religion like it is a disease. I am not so sure that this would improve the world. When the atheist makes these comments, I know they are referencing September 11, 2001, and they are referring to LGBTQ+ conversion therapy camps, anti-abortion people, etc. I do think we could do without that form of religion for sure. However, we need to be careful of generalizing. There is also this concept that a person is a Christian because they are weak. I think those that think this way must not know many Christians. My Grandmother, who passed in 2011, was one of the strongest women I knew, and she was a major Christian. Have you ever met a Marine? As an Air Force veteran, I can say that they are some of the toughest out there. Still, many are Christians.
One of the things that led me to atheism was the generalizations of others that turned out to be false. For example, “all gay people are bad, all Muslims are bad, all atheists are bad, all progressives are bad.” Then I allowed myself to embrace others and the surrounding reality, and I realized that none of those things were true. In the military I met some wonderful people of the LGBTQ+, Muslim and atheists communities. That is when the unraveling started for me. In fact, there are great people on all sides of the religious, political and cultural spectrum. I have also come to realize that when we hold a current view because of a personal experience, or deeply reinforced teaching that a-lot of times, we are not entirely at fault for our views. It is a distortion of reality constantly. Of course, we have to have personal responsibility and accountability, but that is for ourselves, we should not constantly cast that personal responsibility on others. We have no idea what they may have been through that caused them to arrive at the position they are in.
Furthermore, unless they experience something outside their echo chamber they are unlikely to change their position. I am not saying that someone shouldn’t be challenged for their viewpoints, or even be criticized. Actually, I think we should be free to challenge someone for staying in a toxic frame of mind. At the same time though, we must realize that the process of coming out of an echo chamber can be terrifying. Until that decision to leave the echo chamber, there is this constant back-of-mind understanding that everything we have believed may come crashing down if we keep working our way out of our inherent biases. We also realize undoubtedly, that our circle may fall apart as well. To clarify, that would be our family, our friends, perhaps even intimate relationships of marriages.
With that backdrop, I challenge you to be careful in criticizing someone who is working through these cognitive challenges. When we heavily criticize, or even start casting judgments and empty platitudes at someone for not being as “woke” as we are, we risk shoving them back into their safe place. Which, until they have found a new support group, will be back into their original echo chamber. Instead, if we will celebrate a person through the process of challenging long-held beliefs and biases then we might just see them grow and change.
Finally, we have to realize that we all hold some level of bias and belief constantly. Even if we “think” we have arrived, we most likely have simply adopted some new echo chamber and fundamentalism of the day. Again, it is probably one of the hardest psychological struggles that we go through. Just remember, growth is hard, but love is patient and love is kind.
Warmly,
Bill Crocker
