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Denied a birth certificate and SSN# by her fundamentalist parents

by in Fundamentalism

(I got in this letter last night, and thought I’d share it here.)
Hey John, I hope your novel is going well. I saw your latest post about it and I sympathize with the feeling of trying to juggle several big activities.

I thought you might find this case interesting. Another story of patriarchal fundamentalism gone wrong, and this time it’s happening to one of my close friends, Alecia. She left home at 18 to escape the oppressive and manipulative environment. But she has no ID and no way to prove her citizenship. Her parents, who never got her a birth certificate, SSN, or anything, are refusing to help unless she agrees to their unreasonable terms (basically, they’re using her civil rights as leverage in an attempt to control her). They’re whining about how she betrayed them by moving out.

She made the video below to ask for help with figuring out what to do, because she’s tried a lot of ways to get documentation and it isn’t working. I figure the more publicity she can get, the sooner and easier she can get the legal help she needs.
Alecia’s mother, Lisa, writes a blog she calls The Pennington Point, featuring “lots of tips on Parenthood, Mothering, Home and Faith.” She titled the post she wrote about Alecia running away from home The Hardest Post I Ever Wrote.* In it she (of course) cast herself as the victim:
On Wednesday, September 24th my life was changed forever. My 18 year old daughter left home. She gave us no warning, no signs that it was… [Read more…] about Denied a birth certificate and SSN# by her fundamentalist parents

One question fundamentalists cannot answer

by Chuck Queen in Christian Spirituality, Fundamentalism

For several years now I have been asking Christian fundamentalists and conservatives the same question; namely, Why would God care more about what we believe about God than how we live for God?   

Rarely does a fundamentalist/conservative even attempt to offer a rational answer to this question. Instead, they generally respond in one of three ways:

1: Shout louder: You are denying the truth! That’s the wrong question to ask! The question has no bearing on what is true!, and so on. They respond with accusations and denials, and never get around to actually wrestling with the question.

2. Quote Bible verses and/or recite the talking points of their learned doctrine.

3. At least try to approach it rationally—but, again, never really respond directly to the question. (They usually say something about God’s holiness demanding that Jesus die in our place—which, in the end, amounts to nothing more than a recitation of a doctrine they think essential for salvation.)

And all along the question lingers, and waits, and hopes to be answered . . .

The reason no fundamentalist can reasonably answer the question is because no reasonable answer exists for it. No answer makes sense based on common sense, reason, human dignity, and our best intuitive sense of what is good, right, just, fair, and of most value. So all they can do is quote the Bible, deny the importance of the question, cling to their creed, and stumble around the question as best they… [Read more…] about One question fundamentalists cannot answer

Back to the ’90s: My Hometown (Again) Spurns the LGBT Community

by Don M. Burrows in Current Events, Fundamentalism, LGBT

Like many others, I was very disappointed earlier this week when my hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas, where I was born, went to college, and worked for nearly a decade as a reporter, editor, and columnist, again repealed an anti-discrimination ordinance passed by the City Council.

Ordinance 119 gave legal protection from discrimination to gays, lesbians, and transgender individuals, but a vocal group from outside of the city, led by famous breeders Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, waged a campaign of fear and misinformation and successfully repealed it at the ballot box Tuesday.

For those from Fayetteville, it was history repeating itself.

The very same thing happened in 1998 when the city passed a resolution merely extending a similar policy to its own employees. The religious conservatives would have none of it then either, and spread similar libels, lies, and misinformation, leading to its repeal the following November.

I remember feeling hopeful then, as I did earlier this week, that Fayetteville could prove to the outside world how different it is from the rest of Arkansas on matters of diversity and inclusivity. But ultimately the votes then and now show that while the core of Fayetteville — the University of Arkansas and the downtown businesses that give the town its unique and interesting flavor — often does buck the unfortunately well-deserved stereotypes earned by the rest of the state, there is still enough anti-gay ideology simmering from its many… [Read more…] about Back to the ’90s: My Hometown (Again) Spurns the LGBT Community

What the hell is Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler fired up about now?

by Don M. Burrows in Christian Issues, Fundamentalism

My friend John Shore sure stirred a hornets’ nest when he dared to imagine a Christianity without hell in in his recent post What Christianity without hell looks like.

Actually, to be more accurate, he stirred a nest of Southern Baptists, specifically the one feathered by Al Mohler, the denomination’s go-to pseudo-intellectual on, well, everything.

I’ve written before about Mohler’s penchant for having no clue what he’s talking about. Many times.[1] Anyone possessing a dollop of critical thought is capable of spotting the glaring problems in his arguments.

Mohler’s shtick is really just a variation of the Southern Baptists’ favorite creedal theme: If you doubt or question any part of what we teach, you might as well flush all of Christianity down the basement drain in the fellowship hall.

Mohler’s biggest fret, of course, is over “Biblical authority,” which is a doctrine, and not, in fact, a reasonable conclusion arrived at by those who have studied the Bible academically. For Mohler, “Biblical authority” consists of “being faithful to the inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture,” which is, again, a doctrine — a doctrine that Southern Baptists and other conservative evangelicals care very much about, but not one believed by the vast majority of Christians worldwide.

Mohler takes Mr. Shore to task for his “hermeneutic,” and explains for his readers that “hermeneutics” are “the science or the discipline of interpreting the Scripture.” Related… [Read more…] about What the hell is Southern Baptist leader Al Mohler fired up about now?

Some Classic Lessons from a Film Classic

by Chuck Queen in Fundamentalism, Movie Reviews

The Shawshank Redemption came out 20 years ago today and remains at the top of my all-time great movies list. It is punctuated with great lines and saturated with rich spiritual symbolism.

The warden, Samuel Norton, functions as an icon of toxic Christianity. The warden presents himself as a socially respectable, church-going, Bible-quoting Christian. It becomes clear, however, from the moment he appears in the story that his Christianity is in name only. His faith has holes in it larger than the one Andy Dufresne chiseled through his cell wall.

When Andy and the other new prisoners are first introduced to the warden and prison life, the warden’s self-righteousness dominates the scene. When one of the prisoners asks, “When do we eat?” the warden has him beaten. Holding out a Bible he says, “Trust in the Lord, but your ass is mine.”

Contrast the scene above with the one in Luke 4 where Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, applies Isaiah 61 to his mission:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In one scene, the warden enters Andy’s cell and lays hold of his Bible. Andy and the warden engage in Bible ping pong quoting Scripture. The warden does not open the Bible, which is a good thing since hidden inside is the rock hammer Andy uses to tunnel through his… [Read more…] about Some Classic Lessons from a Film Classic

Al Mohler Fit the Battle of Jericho and Inerrancy Came Tumblin' Down

by in Fundamentalism

The hallmark of modern Christian fundamentalism is an unwavering adherence to the notion of Biblical inerrancy. In its most extreme forms, belief in the inerrancy of the Bible stifles inquiry, perpetuates ignorance and glorifies dogmatism.

A prime example of the head-in-the-sand attitude that inerrancy engenders can be found in Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president Al Mohler’s contribution to Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy (Zondervan).

Contributors to the book were asked to deal with several biblical texts that seemingly stand at odds with inerrancy. One of those texts is Joshua 6, about which the editors write:

We chose Joshua 6, since current archaeological and historiographical evidence calls into question the details of the text’s account … we wanted to see how Joshua 6 could still function as Scripture without being factually correct.

Joshua 6 contains the famous story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho: “Joshua fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumblin’ down.” The problem this passages poses to inerrancy is summarized by Douglas King and Amy-Jill Levine in The Meaning of The Bible (HarperOne):

Archaeologists have long tested the evidence for the sweeping military campaign portrayed in the book of Joshua, and their results are not encouraging for a Late Bronze Age setting, sometime after Ramesses II during the 13th century BCE. The famed battle of Jericho cannot have happened, as no city and no walls existed at that time.… [Read more…] about Al Mohler Fit the Battle of Jericho and Inerrancy Came Tumblin' Down

The Lies Christian Fundamentalism Taught Me

by Christy Caine in Fundamentalism

We recently published here a piece called Getting Over “Get Over It,” in which Sylvie King Parris asked the question:
How does one “get over” discovering that everything they’d been taught about God and religion since childhood was a lie?
Since then we have received comments challenging the idea that so much of what Christian fundamentalism teaches is, in fact, a lie. We’ve also been asked why some people can’t simply stop believing what they were taught as children. As one commenter to Ms. Parris’s piece put it on our Facebook page:
Everything they’ve been taught is a lie? Who has the authority to say this? … We CHOOSE what we believe – all of us.”
I was raised a fundamentalist Christian. Here is some of what we were taught, both explicitly and in a million different little ways, every single day of our lives:

You are worthless.
God hates you, unless you love him.
Obedience is love.
Punishment is love.
The Bible is infallible and not to be questioned.
The pastor is infallible and not to be questioned.
Our interpretation of all Scripture is without error and not to be questioned.
Outside the church bubble waits evil.
Everyone who is different should be feared.
Bad things happen to you because God is trying to teach you a lesson.
Bad things happen to you because God let Satan tempt you.
Bad things happen to you as a punishment for disobedience.
Depression is a sign of sin in your life.
To resist what you are taught is to rebel… [Read more…] about The Lies Christian Fundamentalism Taught Me

Fundy Christian college students who fear knowledge

by Don M. Burrows in Fundamentalism

In the wake of my review of the movie God’s Not Dead, a movie which I submit plays into conservative evangelicals’ narrative fantasy about secular universities, many have responded with anecdotal stories about this or that professor or university where they witnessed outright hostility toward fundamentalist Christians.

Does this hostility toward fundamentalists and/or Christians generally exist among college faculty? Sure, sometimes. But should anecdotal instances be inflated into a grand narrative concerning all of the thousands of professors who teach at our colleges nationwide? No.

Yet this narrative persists. At the beginning of almost every school year, some conservative pundit writes up a piece about how college will negatively affect your Christian children, with some even going so far as to say they shouldn’t attend at all. The drumbeat is always the same: university campuses are a hotbed of liberalism, where good Christian students will be tempted away from their faith.

This narrative is a fantasy, yes. But it’s true enough that sometimes there is grousing in faculty offices about fundamentalist students turning in papers—but not for the reasons many of these fundamentalists assume. It’s not because the professors simply disagree with them on the issues that they are asked to address. It’s because often said students reject the entire methodology of the class from the start; from the outset they reject the very critical tools they are supposed to be there… [Read more…] about Fundy Christian college students who fear knowledge

Getting over "Get over it"

by Sylvie King Parris in Fundamentalism

I belong to a wonderful private Facebook group. What makes this group part of my daily social networking addiction is what we all share in common. We are all former members of a fundamentalist Christian cult.

We share our stories, really bad jokes, get brutally and often profanely honest, connect with old friends, and generally support one another as we all work through what growing up in a very controlled and toxic environment has done to us. Personally, it has helped me finally have a place to share with those who truly understand what my past was really like, something I’ve not been able to do completely until I found this crazy cavalcade of cult survivors.

Every so often someone joins our group, and is dismayed by the raw and painful emotions they encounter there. They don’t quite understand the anger and the pain displayed, often by people who escaped the cult years ago. And so they usually end up offering the same advice: Get over it.

I really hate that platitude.

How does one “get over” discovering that everything they’d been taught about God and religion since childhood was a lie? How does one get over needless deaths or prolonged illnesses brought on by church teachings? How does one get over being inculcated into a “religion” that fostered rape, child abuse, spousal abuse, forced divorce, abandonment of every sort—that created and insisted upon poverty?

How does one “get over” losing family members who will no longer have anything to do with you,… [Read more…] about Getting over "Get over it"

The Waco tragedy and the cult of Christian evangelicalism

by in Fundamentalism

Embed from Getty Images

In the March 31st, 2014 New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 1993 F.B.I siege on David Koresh’s Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the government’s failure to understand the motivations of the group they were dealing with.

Gladwell places the Branch Davidians in “the religious tradition that sees Christ’s return to earth and the establishment of a divine Kingdom as imminent. They were millennialists. Millennial movements believe that within the pages of the Bible are specific clues about when and how the Second Coming will arrive.”

He also compares the Branch Davidians to Mormons, identifying both groups as actively cultivating a culture of separatism. From David Koresh’s Branch Davidians to Joseph Smith’s Mormons, “countless religious innovators over the years have played the game of establishing an identity for themselves by accentuating their otherness.”

It seems clear to me that modern American evangelicals also fit this mold. These self-proclaimed “defenders of biblical Christianity” perpetuate a narrative of themselves in constant conflict with a debased and immoral culture; it’s all us versus them, the faithful versus the faithless, their sacred versus everyone else’s secular.

As today’s evangelicals continue to self-identify in terms of opposition to society, they find themselves increasingly isolated not only from American culture, but from the mainstream of Christianity itself.

Just as Koresh and his… [Read more…] about The Waco tragedy and the cult of Christian evangelicalism