Chapter 6: When Religion Bolted the Door

“The glory of God is to conceal a thing, but the glory of the king is to find it out” as if, according the innocent play of children, the Divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to the end to have them found out; and as if kings could not obtain a greater honour than to be God’s play-fellows in that game; considering the great commandment of wits and means, whereby nothing needeth to be hidden from them. Sir Francis Bacon.

Sir Francis Bacon was an Englishman born in 1651. He was both a man of God and a man of science; deeply religious but also a proponent of the scientific revolution that was reshaping society in dramatic ways. In the world of Francis Bacon, science and religion were not opposite poles of a philosophical spectrum. God was seen to be the ultimate force within and behind a material universe, and science was seen as a tool for discovering the natural laws of this universe. The ideas that would spawn the Enlightenment came out of the educational institutions of the day – educational institutions that were built and maintained by the Church. But science, the impetuous child of religion, was about to set the world on it’s head. When Galileo suggested that the Sun, not the earth, was the center of the universe, the all powerful church would feel the rumblings of a crumbling foundation. Although Galileo would be branded a heretic and his science suppressed, the Church would not be able to hold back the tide. Science began to tell the story of the natural world; and it was a story that was often at odds with truth as conceived by the medieval church.

The Enlightenment would be characterized by an uneasy association between the Church and science; and although the Church attempted to squelch heresy where ever it was detected, a shift was occurring. The theological worldview would give way to a humanistic worldview; and where once science was scrutinized and evaluated by the authority of the Biblical texts, the enlightenment would see the Biblical texts put under the microscope of science. Dr. Sandys-wuch describes the shift this way:

Between 1600 and 1660, the façade of biblical authority remained standing, but
there were cracks appearing whose seriousness might not have been immediately
evident to even most scholars, but in hindsight the ground was giving way under the Bible as the most important monument of the past and most thorough guide to the present. A new trend in philosophy that discounted the past and looked to future discovery; a new view of the world and its peoples that expanded the evidence of antiquity and provided a wider landscape that the Bible could not always dominate; new knowledge within the study of the Bible that capitalized on old problems and noticed new ones; a new emphasis on grammatical and philological studies based more and more on concrete evidence rather than conjecture – all these were signs that neither Roman Catholics nor Protestants would be able to maintain appearances forever. The final collapse of the structure did not take place in the mind of the general public until the nineteenth century, and even today there are people working in the ruins to reconstruct some semblance of the old edifice. (p. 117)

As impetuous children sometimes do, Humanism emerged from a theologically
dominated culture with it’s own reactionary agenda. In the last years of the Nineteenth century, the “Life of Jesus” by the German scholar David Strauss was unleashed on the English speaking world. Although Strauss purported to present an objective picture of Jesus based in historical and contextual Biblical criticism, he started with his own biased assumption that the miracles attributed to Jesus were contrary to the laws of science and therefore, fabricated and without factual basis.

To many British and American Theologians, the “Life of Jesus” was a declaration of war. The Second Great Awakening that had transformed and energized the American countryside had been based in the power of a supernatural God embodied in Jesus, the divine miracle-worker. Conservative religious scholars responded to Struass by dismissing the entire field of Biblical higher criticism. They fought against what they perceived to be an attack on the very foundation of the authority of the Bible by affirming that authority in no uncertain terms. Rallying the forces, scholars from Britain and America collaborated on the 5 volume manifesto of conservative Christianity known as the Fundamentals. This work asserted, among other things, that the King James version of the Bible was divinely inspired, without error, and the first and last word of ultimate truth for mankind. Conservative Christianity turned their back on the scientific community, retired to the Ivory tower of religion, and barred the door. Fundamentalism was born.

When conservative Pentecostal ministers met in Hot Springs in 1914 to discuss the formation of a new fellowship, one of their goals was to create religious schools where ministers could be trained, a popular trend among fundamentalists of all flavors. Secular universities and their departments of religion, in the mind of most conservative Christians, had been tainted by the higher critics, Darwin, and God-hating science. The divorce was complete.

Some have argued that one result of this retreat from secular education and humanistic society would be the dumming down of the Christian culture. Bible schools operated outside the general educational standards of the broader culture, and in most fundamentalist Bible training schools, the great philosophical minds of the ages were either ignored or given only passing mention. The Bible, being the singular guide for doctrine and practice, was studied exclusively. Often, an itinerant minister would set up his own independent school, as in the case of Charles Parham. By barring the door to the secular intellectual community, fundamentalists were left to develop their ideas in a vacuum.

Central Bible College, the school that I attended in the 1980’s, was established in 1922, during this period of isolationism. As a student there, my focus was very limited, with no emphasis on the great philosophical writings of the Western world. Yet, there were men and women of great spiritual as well as intellectual integrity there. I’ve come to believe that the intellectual constraint created a certain amount of cognitive dissonance at times for the best of them.

As I continued on my own journey after graduation – a journey that would eventually lead me out of the fundamentalist fold, I kept in contact with one of my professors for whom I still hold a great amount of respect. He would go on to establish himself as one of the most respected and published scholars in the movement. I remember one time when I had visited him at his office; I was working through quite a bit of my own cognitive dissonance. During our conversation, I blurted out with measured frustration, “don’t you ever stop and think about all the great minds that have come and gone in the last 2000 years—highly educated men who gave their lives to the study of God and the universe – people who we dismiss out of hand? Does it ever smack of ignorant arrogance to you to think that, a group of mostly uneducated folk who lived almost 2000 years after Jesus walked the earth (speaking of the founders of the movement and of those early Bible colleges)– think that they have been given the exclusive revelation of Biblical truth that was withheld from everyone else in the western world ?”

My friend and mentor was silent for a moment, and then he spoke the words that made an indelible impact on me. He said, “I can’t afford to think those thoughts very often.” For fundamentalists, independent thinking can be a very costly thing.

Fundamentalism, in it’s Isolation, has become a bulwark of social, political, and financial power. A theology of fear and immanent destruction is a powerful form of social control. Kingdoms have been built on the back of fundamentalist doctrine, and those at the helm are not likely to relinquish that power. I am convinced that change will not come from within the halls of power; but, like the first Protestant reformation, change will have to come when the independent minds who value freedom of thought and the pursuit of truth above all else dare to nail the theses on the bolted door. But change must come; for fundamentalism is no longer a viable expression of Christianity. We must change, because we have lost much. Locked in our tower of fundamentalism, we have lost credibility with the world. We have lost the sense of our own human agency. We have lost our sense of who Jesus was in the world; and ultimately, we have lost our hunger for God.

Fundamentalism and the loss of personal power

Alas, and did my savior bleed, And did my sovereign die?
Did he devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?
(Isaac Watts)

Those words are from a gospel song that is familiar and loved by old-time fundamentalists. I grew up singing those words, seeing in my mind’s eye myself as a small white grub worm, upside down on the ground, writhing to no avail to turn myself over. One of the earliest lessons one learns in fundamentalism is how utterly sinful, lost, and hopeless is every human being from the minute they enter the world. Like that tiny struggling worm, we cannot save ourselves, but must throw our sad little life onto the mercy of a God who strangely enough, cares about it. This is the background music of fundamentalism; and as a result, we grow into adults feeling that we are like ignorant sheep or naieve children, destined to self-destruct except that we turn over complete control of our lives to Jesus.

We know now that much of our adult behavior is rooted in the schemas that we developed as children. These “schemas” are the structures by which we create our expectations and interpret our experiences, and are created from the earliest messages we internalize from our interactions with significant others. When we are fed a steady diet of worm images and the hopeless sinner mythology, we internalize the maladaptive mental schema of “I am small, helpless, and can do nothing right or good if left to my own devices.” We grow up with grave doubts about ourselves, and see concepts like “self-esteem,” and “self-empowerment” as the evil conceptions of unbelievers who are disillusioned with that great sin of pride. In such a state, we are not surprised by our failures and shortcomings; in fact, we see them as the representation of our true selves; selves that we desperately try to hide under the cloak of Christianity and the power of the blood.

Perhaps you are thinking that such concepts are outdated in the new era of fundamentalism. Perhaps you’ve never sung about worms and have heard very few sermons about helpless, hopeless sinners. If that is the case, don’t think that you have escaped the debilitating, disempowering effects of fundamentalist theology. The message of the hopeless, powerless self is implicit, and is fed to children in a thousand different ways. Teaching at the University of Arkansas, I have an overwhelming number of students who come from fundamentalist homes. Many of these are bright, well-rounded individuals with great potential and unlimited opportunities. In one of the classes I teach, I have them write their “personal mythology,” the story of their life. I always look forward to reading these papers, anxious to find out who they are, what they think about, and what they want from life. Too often, I am sorely disappointed.
In many of these papers, there is no sign at all of vibrant, passionate, individual self with ideas, opinions, and dreams for the future. When asked to share about themselves, I find the same empty, lifeless, generic persona in black and white sketches, over and over, in the descriptions of themselves they offer. It looks something like this:

Who am I? A Christian who has given over total control of my life to God.

What do I want to do with my life? Whatever Christ wants me to do.

What were the lessons I learned as a child? To trust God.

What kind of person do I want to become? One that pleases God.

What do I fear most? Letting God and my parents down.

I read these sketches, and while I understand and can relate to the religious devotion, I mourn for the unique, individual selves that have been so smothered and repressed by the fundamentalist personae that they seem to be non-existent. I wonder what unique experiences and perspectives lie hidden in them somewhere, and watch longingly for flashes of the free-thinking rebel or the passionate idealist, archetypes that are so often associated with the fire of youth. But alas; too often the self has been abandoned at the onset of adolescence; chased away because it was just to dirty and dangerous to keep around.

One of the sticky problems with the “helpless, hopeless sinner self” theme of fundamentalism is that it does carry a seed of wisdom. There is something to be said for the power that can be found from recognizing one’s limits and turning over control to a higher power. Twelve step programs like alcoholics anonymous have been successful in helping thousands overcome addiction by beginning with just such a recognition. These programs are based in two key ideas: 1) the addict is helpless against the addiction, and 2) the addict can only find freedom by submitting his/her life to a higher power. There is no doubt that opening oneself to God, or the transcendent power of the universe, can drastically alter our perspective and open new channels of strength from which we can draw. This is the essence of spirituality – but does not necessarily have anything to do with religion.

I once had a wise teacher who said that “true humility is standing as tall as you can next to a God who is bigger than the universe.” When one catches a glimpse of the transcendent power of Goodness and love, the ultimate creative force not defined by man made doctrines or creeds but available to everyone, then that person is free to stand tall and celebrate the self; a unique and powerful individual who is a reflection of God, and therefore a co-creator with God. This is the moment that Buber explores; the moment when the “I” confronts the “Thou.”

This is a very different thing than the suppression of the self that is practiced in fundamentalism. In order for the “I” to confront the “Thou,” there must first exist an “I.” When a child internalizes the “helpless, hopeless sinner self” schema, the result is not humility but shame; and Shame, according to Dr. David Hawkins, is the most destructive emotion one can experience. Rather than standing tall against the God of the universe, the self doesn’t learn to stand at all; it is crushed down and confined, hidden from the world as a shameful thing, and a well-crafted persona takes its place. When – and if—it does emerge in later life, it is often stooped over and crippled from years of abuse. In fact, adherents to fundamentalist sects are often quite vulnerable to addiction because the self has been so weakened from shame, and has been conditioned to seek help from outside itself. Feeling helpless to save ourselves and being utterly dependent on some outside agent is a prescription for victimization and an abdication of personal responsibility; and it matters very little whether the outside agent is God, the government, alcohol or drugs.

Losing Jesus

As a child, the picture in my mind whenever I heard the name “Jesus” was one that looked more like an early Italian renaissance painting than a portrait of a Jewish peasant. This Jesus was a tall, handsome Caucasian man with flowing brown locks. His broad shoulders were draped in yards and yards of crisp white material, and his arms were stretched down towards the crowd that watched him in astonishment as he ascended heavenward in a radiant sunburst. As an adult, I understand that this is a purely western religious fiction; but the picture still remains. I imagine that most of American cultural Christians (as well as converts around the world, thanks to our tireless efforts at evangelism throughout the last century) carry in their minds the same conception, with minor variations. Childhood images are powerful and tend to stay with us throughout our lifetime, even though our thoughts about these images change. This picture, of course, is a picture of the Jesus of Western Christian mythology; the post-Easter, glorified God-man who is all powerful and the redeemer of the world. This Jesus was born under extraordinary and supernatural circumstances, and from the time of his birth held every one of us living here in the 21st century in his thoughts, knowing that his sacrificial death was the only way to save us all from the pit of hell. This Jesus is the stuff of powerful sermons, irresistible persuasive appeal, and has been the source of technicolor hope for the helpless and victimized peoples throughout the ages. There is no denying the spiritual relevance and meaning of this story; but here, in the 21st century, where people require objective truth as well as, and perhaps even more than, spiritual truth, does this picture of Jesus make sense? Does this picture of Jesus feel “real” to us, or does it leave us empty and bothered, like a child who has newly discovered the world of logic and reason and knows better that to believe in Santa Claus, even though his parents insist that he is real?

The Pre-enlightenment world of the average western person was very small and limited to a single time and place. There was no real conception of things like “culture”, “social landscapes” and “historical perspectives.” People read the Bible literally because they knew of no other way to read it. In the teachings of Jesus recorded in the Gospels, they found themes of love, compassion, and transcendence that provided a moral compass that often surpassed the morality of the times in which they lived. In the post-Easter mythology presented in the writings of Paul, they found a Jesus who was God in a literal, physical, flesh and blood reality. In this picture of Jesus, the ineffability of the infinite was made immediately present and accessible. . . a resource of power for people who were all too often devoid of personal power. Finally, in Daniel, Revelation, and other prophetic books, they found a concrete picture of a future in which a world set on its head was made right; the good people were vindicated and the bad people were destroyed. This mythology gave them a way to see through the inequities of the day, where the evil seemed to get stronger while the righteous met only suffering. In their vision of the future, everyone got what they deserved in the end. This story of Jesus was coherent in their world. This story gave them a way to assign meaning to events over which they had little control. Everyone in their limited sphere shared this basic world view, and the religious paradigm was the water in which everyone swam.

This pre-enlightenment world stands in stark contrast to the kind of world we live in today. We are born into, and learn to swim in the water of the scientific method and objective truth rather than the water of religious understandings. Our sphere of activity is not limited to a single time and place, but is virtually unlimited; we are always just a few key strokes away from any place in the world and any time in history. In considering any single event, we are immediately exposed to a variety of meanings being assigned from a variety of very different intellectual and religious perspectives. We know how very different times and cultures are, and concepts like “cultural relativity”, “social landscapes” and “historical perspectives” become the tools by which we navigate a sea of meanings. While a literal reading of the text was the only option for regular people in a pre-enlightenment world, to us it is only one option among many; one color in the rich and vibrant pallet that we use to paint the “truth.” To insist on using only one color is to insist on painting a picture that is flat and two-dimensional, lacking any sense of depth, complexity, or reality.

The Jesus I have come to know since leaving fundamentalism is a Jesus that is colorful, textured, complex and more real than the monochromatic Jesus I saw in the Sunday School literature. The Higher Criticism of the late 20th century has developed and evolved into a rich body of literature often referred to as the “historical Jesus” literature. Through the work of Borg, Vermes, Crossan, and others, I have come to consider a Jesus who is less than, and yet so much more than, the Jesus I once knew.

To search for Jesus the man, we must let loose of Jesus the God. We must be willing to set aside the cultural mythology that has developed around him over the years, and yearn to know who he really was, before Paul and so many after him used his life as a projection screen for their own fears and fantasies. This is a fearful endeavor for someone entrenched in fundamentalism. Just as children find security and comfort in believing that their parents are all-powerful and all-knowing, we find great comfort in believing that Jesus was the superhero we have been told that he was. Growing up involves surrendering our naiveté . . . but would we choose to remain children rather than see the world through adult eyes? Never. As far as our parents go, we don’t really begin to know them and understand them until we give up our childhood fantasies about them. For me, giving up the superhero Jesus was a necessary and felt loss; but in doing so, I have been freed to see him for the first time through adult eyes; and perhaps more importantly, I have been freed to look beyond him.

The God I never knew

Christianity is not a God centered religion; it is a Jesus centered religion. In the fundamentalist mythology, God is faraway and unreachable. Between man and God is a vast gulf of sin that we can never cross on our own. Not only is God distant, but he is, in essence, unwilling to interact with us directly because of our sinful, unregenerate state. To go even deeper into the story, he is an angry god who hates our sin and would annihilate us for it if there were not some worthy being willing to advocate for us. One need only to look into the stories of the Old Testament to see evidence of this God’s total disregard for human life. One Biblical phrase that fundamentalist take quite literally is the admonition that we are to “fear” God. Here is where the story gets all twisted up, because Paul tells us that “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love” (1 John 4:18, KJV). The answer to this from the fundamentalist is that to “fear” God really means to hold him in great awe and respect – and ultimately, this means that we are to love God. Here again, the message becomes unintelligible when fear and love become intertwined, interchanged, and both words lose all meaning. The God who is “perfect love” is also to be feared.

This is the same confusion that is often experienced by children of abusing parents. These kids live in a world where nothing makes sense; the one person in the world who is supposed to love and care for them most is the very one from whose hand they suffer violence and feelings of rejection. Some psychologists tell us that this inconsistency and doublespeak can be a contributing factor to the development of a borderline personality, and even a trigger to schizophrenia in some children. In the world of religion, I believe that it is this doublespeak about God that leaves many people, raised in fundamentalist homes, unable to sort out and judge their own deep emotions – and may also lead to a chronic disassociation from them.

As a result of this doublespeak, we are ambivalent about God. The mystery of God that Stace finds inviting and inspiring is a mystery that causes anxiety and confusion for the fundamentalist. Einstein told us that the thing that defines us is how we answer one basic question: Is the universe a friendly place? For many fundamentalists, especially children raised in a world where love and fear are indistinguishable, the universe is anything but a friendly place. In the fundamentalist story, we would be hopelessly stuck here in this unfriendly place if God hadn’t loved us enough to send his only son to die a horrible death in our place. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16, KJV). And so, the pre-ordained crucifixion of the God-man, and the blood mythology is born.

While Jesus is celebrated as the willing sacrificial lamb, the story still sells God short. What kind of parent would hand over his/her own biological child to be tortured to death in order to appease his anger at the misbehaving adopted children? In the fundamentalist mythology, this is the ultimate act of love. In 21st century understanding, it is absolutely bizarre parental behavior. But no worry. Because of Jesus, we no longer need to deal with God; at least not God the father. In this story, God exists in three different facets; God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit. In this idea of the trinity, we are able to make God the Father the shadow figure; the one to whom we credit all the dark elements of the fundamentalist mythology. He is the one who directed the Isrealites to slaughter the pagans. He is the one who sent snakes, fire, and earthquakes to consume his own disobedient children. He is the one who requires a blood sacrifice to forgive us. In this story, God, the creator of the universe and the animating force of all life, carries the shadow of human violence.

Jesus, the Son of God, is seen as fully God in human form. Because he is fully God, we don’t have to look beyond him to the mystery of God. “ If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him” (John 14:7, NIV). Pointing to this verse, the fundamentalist says that because Jesus is fully God, we have no need to look for God beyond Jesus. At this point, God the mystery becomes fully defined in the mind of the believer, and the sacred journey into the mystery of God is abandoned. Jesus is all the God we need; he is the willing sacrifice, the worthy advocate, the human brother, the last word in practical living, and the last letter from God we ever need to read. In fundamentalism we sang about Jesus, we worshipped Jesus, celebrated Jesus, and all our prayers to God were offered in his name. No one looked for God. No one contemplated the ineffable mystery of the divine, the God beyond the teachings of a single man. God, the all-encompassing positive power in the universe that is immediately present to all humanity but bigger than all of us was forgotten. With the advent of fundamentalism, we lost God. Ironically, I believe that in this state, we have abandoned the very truth that Jesus the man was all about.

And now the deconstruction is complete. We have seen the psychological and emotional toll that fundamentalism takes on adherents. We have explored the basic mythology of fundamentalism and found it to be irrational an unintelligible in the 21st century. We have looked at the bankruptcy that such an approach brings to the individual by robbing him/her of a sense of worth and personal responsibility and agency. We have seen how fundamentalism takes a complex and revolutionary religious teacher and turns him into a flat, monochromatic superhero. Finally, we have seen how the fundamentalist obsession with Jesus destroys the very heart of the religious impulse that has animated the most elevated souls throughout history; the journey into the ineffable mystery of infinite divine, the transcendent power of Goodness in the universe.

And so we have arrived back at the beach that Stephenson talks about with such poignancy. The beach on which I found myself that night as I read my books, and realized how far I had come from where I started:

"It is an odd thing to fall out of a myth. It is like standing on the shore and looking back in astonishment at the myth from which you’ve so recently emerged, a beached whale lying in the summer sun. Only yesterday you were in the belly of the whale with no idea just how contained you really were, just how much larger the vast sea could really be. Seeing your life now from outside the myth, everything upon which you had formerly stood is revalued in an instant. And great sadness, like waves along the sand, washed over the realization that such a living body, such a thing of beauty, should lie in silent rigor, exposed to time and long decay until the tide should seek the moon and bear away the bones to untold depths".

Those were the words that brought tears to my eyes. But it was the paragraph that came after that brought me back from the nostalgia, that affirmed the truth that, no matter how lonely or painful it may feel, one must emerge; and yet, not only emerge, but go forward:

"It is odd, but less and less uncommon, to see survivors of the fall staggering from the wreckage. One by one they wander out, blinking in the sunlight, unsure of just what’s happened. There are those who continue to feed off the corpse. They feed on the body of the myth, incorporating the last vestiges of its mana. They suck the final drops of its lifeblood. At least they are fed. The dry bones then are left for the scholars to pick over, who no longer try to even feed but, like paleontologists, reconstruct what it might have looked like in its day. There are those who walk away and leave the carcass to the vultures. They walk away because they see the myth for what it is – a shell no longer speaking, a lifeless form without breath, a heart no longer beating. And so they search the endless sand as if they could survive by strength of will and wits alone, but shortly they may die because they cannot go on living without a myth to feed them" (pge. 27-28).

One must not too long look back, but with determination and an open heart, one must pick up the viable pieces from the wreckage and leave the rest behind. Turning our eyes towards the landscape before us, we must search diligently for new pieces, new perspectives; and piece by piece, we must build a more honest and relevant body of faith.

Let the rebuilding begin.