Brian McClaren’s recent article on Rauschenbusch caught my eye - partly because one of my prized possessions is a copy of Rauschenbusch ‘s “The Social Principles of Jesus” from 1917. While interesting in itself, this book has another interesting link. It belonged to King Gordon, my wife’s uncle, and a very significant figure in the social gospel in Canada. 20 years later, teaching at the UC seminary in Montreal, King was fired for his radical views. The seminary said it was because of budget cutbacks – so the students banded together and said they would collectively pay King’s salary, as long as he was still able to teach. Seminary brass would have none of it, and fired him anyway. That same summer, 1937, the General Council voted to ordain the first woman minister, but also upheld the seminary’s decision to fire King. King effectively left the church. He and others of like mind started the League for Social Reconstruction and wrote the Regina Manifesto, the basis for the CCF. Many historians use King’s dismissal as the turning point when the social gospel left the church and became a secular movement in Canada.
I thought McClaren’s article was interesting but I took issue with his thoughts on fundamentalism. He describes liberalism and fundamentalism as ‘two sides of the same coin” the coin being ‘modernism’. He speaks of fundamentalism as ‘a theological idea’. While he’s right historically to link it to the tracts ‘the Fundamentals’ – the word has taken on an important broader meaning. Some words grow. Kleenex. Google. Fundamentalist. It grew because it gave us a word for a characteristic pattern of thought that was not limited to any sect, religion or philosophy. There are fundamentalist pro-lifers, pro-choicers [pro-choosers?], animal rights advocates, gun controllers and anti-gun controllers. Fundamentalist Christians, Jews and Muslims have more in common with each other than with their host religions. And that is in essence what I think fundamentalism is – a kind of lamprey or parasite that feeds on a host organism. It doesn’t matter what that organism is – a religion, philosophy, organization, whatever. The danger is thinking that the parasite IS the organism, that it speaks for the organism. It is an independent life form that feeds on the host. I think ‘fundamentalist Christian’ is an oxymoron. Jesus is the very antithesis of fundamentalism.
Because it is disordered thinking, I believe we can’t connect it to modernism any more than we can to post-modernism. It is a kind of psycho- or socio-pathalogy [or maybe better a pneumo-pathology] – and, accordingly is not culturally specific. It takes different forms in different cultures, but so do other pathologies. Using the term ‘fundamentalist Christian’ is like speaking of a ‘fascist Christian’. We need to be more accurate. ‘Fundamentalist theocrats’ maybe. Fundamentalist american-culture syncretists. Something.
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