Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

The Ideology of Jesus

by Rich A. Rosendahl in Christian Issues

We all submit to social norms — some are helpful, some are unhelpful and even hateful. Often, the social norms we adhere to are rooted in ideologies that have developed over time and are connected to an affinity group that we may be part of. In other words, we are following them because people like us follow them.

For example, I am a white guy who grew up in a small town in the Midwest with a culturally Christian and conservative background. These are just a couple of examples of potential attributes from my formative years that could affect the affinity group and subsequent social norms that I adhere to for the balance of my life.

Jesus, on the other hand, seemed to have zero concern for social norms or ideologies of those who he was supposed to be like — his affinity group. When he went against these norms he was often challenged or ridiculed and eventually even killed for his approach and ideology. But none of that stopped him from having what sometimes seemed like a big F*** You attitude when people tried to pressure him to conform to their social norms.

So what was this ideology of his? It was the ideology of Love.

To this day, we fight the concept of Loving others, often to the death. Our affinity groups lead toward division, mistrust, and misunderstanding. While we are busy trying to conform to the social norms that make us part of our group, even if unintentionally, others are doing the same. This creates gaps between us and others that sometimes seem… [Read more…] about The Ideology of Jesus

To My Conservative Christian Friends

by Sheri Faye Rosendahl in Christian Issues

Those who support the Muslim Ban, are adamantly against universal healthcare, support drone strikes that kill thousands of children abroad, yet call themselves “pro-life” — I am trying to understand where you are coming from because I can’t for the life of me figure out how this perspective aligns with the ways of your savior.

From what I can see, it appears life before birth is something you consider a cause worth fighting for — but, in the same breath, you fight vigorously against a system that ensures healthcare to all children domestically and are totally cool with policies that condemn to death children abroad, deeming them “collateral damage.” When is life precious and when is it “collateral damage?” Real talk — I need an explanation to understand the logic.

I struggle because, from where I’m standing, it seems that you like the idea of pro-life, but not at the expense of threatening your sense of self-protection and first world comforts. You can picket abortion clinics and call young women murderers and you lose nothing. There is no personal cost to you. It’s not like you’re out there offering these young terrified women who feel there is no other option another way out. Think about it, if this was truly a cause you cared about so ferociously as “Christians,” wouldn’t it make more sense to look to the ways of Jesus and extend love instead of condemnation?

In the meantime, there is a clear tendency to find any possible reason to oppose anything that… [Read more…] about To My Conservative Christian Friends

Understanding Backwards

by Barry Casey in Christian Spirituality

“Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards.” — Soren Kierkegaard

For a good part of my life, I have seen religion as a duty which must be accomplished with dedication if not enjoyment. Since all people are sinners and sinners must seek salvation, it did not occur to me that some people might not see the point in all this religion business. “Oh, I’m not religious,” some friends would say to me, as if it were genetically transmitted or perhaps an acquired taste. They would blithely go about their lives, unencumbered by guilt, enjoying their sins, and occasionally pausing to shake their heads at my dutifulness. “Why do you bother?” they would ask curiously.

For my part, I could not understand how religion could be regarded as an accessory. It was core, at the heart, deep inside, that which guided and prompted all that was good and pure and true. One could no more shuck it off and live a decent, upright life than one could see one’s hand in a room without light. There was one way to salvation and that was through obedience to the rules, as inexplicable as they appeared sometimes. And yet I continued to meet people who claimed no religious allegiance, but seemed to me honest and good, the kind of people who would take you in during a storm or give you a lift miles out of their way. It was disconcerting. Some of them even smoked.

So I tried harder, tried to be dutiful, tried to be aligned without completely losing myself. But myself would… [Read more…] about Understanding Backwards

Faith in the Fog: Making Peace With the Messiness of the Bible

by Emma Higgs in Christian Issues

This guest post was written by Emma Higgs and is part of her Faith in the Fog series. You can read Part 1 here, Part 2 here, or follow the entire series on her blog.

My Christian faith has undergone some drastic changes in recent years.

I’ve often wondered if my growing skepticism would eventually lead me to abandon faith altogether.

As it turns out, diving all the way in to my deepest doubts and fears hasn’t led me away from Christianity, but instead has revealed a richness and beauty to the Christian faith I had never known. It now resonates on a much deeper level, and seems to speak more profound truth than it ever did before.

This sort of faith can be difficult and frustratingly foggy at times, but it has an honesty and authenticity that allows it to exist comfortably alongside my skepticism. It allows me to fully engage my brain as well as my heart, and isn’t so easily shaken when faced with the inevitable tough questions.

One of the most significant changes has been to the way I see the Bible.

Contrary to well-meaning advice from many a concerned Christian, reading the Bible is not a good cure for skepticism. In my experience, it usually magnifies it.

The Bible is messy.

It’s confusing and contradictory and just plain weird in some places. For a skeptic like me, every passage raises new questions and doubts, and shines a floodlight on any that were already lurking in the shadows. For a while, I actually refused to… [Read more…] about Faith in the Fog: Making Peace With the Messiness of the Bible

Every Non-Religious Person Should Be Able to Answer These Questions

by in Christian Issues

Over on the Friendly Atheist blog, Hemant Mehta, in a post titled “Every Religious Person Should Be Able to Answer These Questions,” draws attention to a “street epistemology” video in which an interviewer named Reid asks a Christian named Tia about her beliefs.

Tia has a difficult time articulating why she believes her Christian faith is true and ends up saying that her faith is an “internal feeling.” But the interview really begins to run off the rails when she’s asked:
“If someone from another religion came up to the table and said that believing in their god gave them joy and that they had really good internal feelings about that god, is that a justifiable way to come to that belief? By going off feelings for that?”
Tia’s response isn’t too bad:
“No. I would say that’s awesome. I would say that’s cool, but check out what I have to say.”
But she becomes flummoxed when asked to apply that logic to her own beliefs. Faced with the question “If it’s [faith] not reliable for them, why is it reliable for yourself?” she says “You’re asking tough questions!”

Tia simply can’t resolve the dissonance caused by the idea that her feeling of faith might be equally reliable (or unreliable) as that of a person from a different religious background.

It’s easy to poke fun at the faith of someone like Tia, but I’m sure if most people were put on the spot about their beliefs, they would also struggle to articulate them. Anyone who’s taken a course in epistemology or read a good book… [Read more…] about Every Non-Religious Person Should Be Able to Answer These Questions

A Trauma-Informed Approach to Sin

by Alex Camire in Christian Issues

I was sitting in a chair against the wall of a dimly lit room in the corner of the ER. My mom, who was sobering up and preparing to go to an in-patient detox facility at another hospital, began to recount to me some details that she recalled about her father who was, allegedly, physically and sexually abusive to her older siblings when she was a child.

My mother is an alcoholic. She started drinking late in life sometime during the period when my paternal grandmother passed away. My mom’s parents had died earlier in life so my dad’s mom was the last parental figure my mom had and she took the loss hard. She kept the drinking hidden for roughly a year or two until the day the police found her passed out in her car. She received a DUI, and that’s when her drinking became public knowledge.

For about the next eighteen months she drank on and off. Sometimes she would go a week or close to a month without drinking. But then, at some point, she would go on a bender, often for the whole weekend.

At its worst, she called out of work and remained intoxicated for an entire week. I only became aware of this when on the Friday of that week I, as her emergency contact at the time, received a phone call from her boss. My mom had called out every day that week except for that Friday, and so her boss was concerned. Fortunately, I was in the same town as my parents’ house when I received the call and I went to check on her right away. I found her drunk to the point of… [Read more…] about A Trauma-Informed Approach to Sin

Christian: You Are Upset About the Wrong Things

by Darrell Lackey in Christian Issues

Sociologist Tony Campolo has been known, when speaking to Christian audiences, to begin by saying something like this:

“I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact I just said ‘shit’ than you are that 30,000 kids died last night.”

When citing this, I have had people prove his very point by responding something to the effect of, “Yeah, I get it, but I still wish he would make his point some other way…” Ummm, that is his point. His point, in my opinion, isn’t really about the children (although it is, obviously); his point is that we (Christians) get upset over the wrong things. Our moral sense of outrage is often misdirected.

The fact that we notice the language, our being offended, before we really register the fact that children are dying, tells us all we need to know. Any focus on a crude term and not on his greater point that children are dying of starvation or malnutrition and that we might be complicit proves his very point. If there was a tiny gasp from the crowd at that word or an awkward silence—such reactions were misdirected. These people were upset about the wrong thing.

The legalistic, simplistic, and shallow world of fundamentalism (and even many aspects of evangelicalism) breeds some rather odd triggers for what it is we are supposed to… [Read more…] about Christian: You Are Upset About the Wrong Things

Finding Community in the Image of God

by Jonathan Gaska in Christian Issues

Reverend Jonathan Gaska wrote this letter as a meditation for the annual Dellabrook Presbyterian Church/Trinity Presbyterian Church Picnic. The two churches gather each year in an ongoing effort to mend the racial divisions in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, by worshiping and eating a meal together. Each year the location shifts between the east side, which is prominently African American, and the west side, which is prominently white. The event has taken place every year for 39 years.

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…So God created humankind in God’s image, in the image of God they were created; male and female God created them… (Genesis 1:26-27)

Dearly Beloved,

Perhaps you can remember the story from a few years back. It was about an elementary school principal who at the end of each school day, after the bell would sound, would catch every single child as they scurried out the front door, pointing at them and saying, “Your life matters.” In church language, we might say that she was reminding every single student that they are created in the image of God.

Beloved, you are created in God’s image. When God imagined a world bursting forth with goodness, after God spoke a liberating word which unfurled the universe, when God wondered who will bear the image of holy love and community, God created…you.

Remember, though, God says, “Let ‘us’ make humanity in ‘our’ image.” God’s image is communal, which means our… [Read more…] about Finding Community in the Image of God

Anti-Fundamentalism: Divisive, Not Exclusionary

by Alex Camire in Fundamentalism

I hear people throw the word, “divisive,” around a lot these days.

This person is divisive.

That person is divisive.

Stop being so divisive.

It sounds bad, doesn’t it? It sounds like a bad word that produces discord. In the Christian realm, I often hear a paraphrase of Mark 3:25, “a house divided cannot stand.” The implication being that if you create discord, swim against the current, ruffle too many feathers, etc., you’ll produce some evil in the form of disunity.

When did we decide that division was an intrinsically bad thing and, conversely, that unity was intrinsically good? Sure, the words carry bad and good connotations, but I don’t believe this should be the case.

In the world of partisanship, in-group/out-group social structures, and either/or, all or nothing thinking, it’s difficult to stay centered and very easy to fall into the pit of restrictive dichotomies.

As I continue to reevaluate my faith, I sometimes find that my core values as a Christian are more defined by the things I don’t believe in, rather than by the things I do. I can even look at Christianity itself and, instead of seeing what it can be, I notice the things it shouldn’t.

And so, on the surface, I feel like a contrarian when it comes fundamentalism. I tend to lean the opposite of the conservative evangelical worldview I grew up with. In order to be a part of that group, you had to speak and act a particular way:

You voted Republican, held a firm pro-life… [Read more…] about Anti-Fundamentalism: Divisive, Not Exclusionary

Faith in the Fog: Science, Atheism and the Search for Proof

by Emma Higgs in Christian Issues

This guest post was written by Emma Higgs and is part of her Faith in the Fog series. You can read Part 1 here, or follow the entire series on her blog.

The Fear of Science
One of the biggest steps toward learning to deal with my own crippling skepticism has been to convince myself that Christianity is not irrational.

Deep down, I had always feared that if I thought too deeply or learned too much about science, this faith that brought hope and meaning to my life would eventually be exposed as wishful thinking, no more credible than an ancient myth or fairy tale.

You know what I’m talking about.

That nagging suspicion that if the beliefs at the center of our faith were examined under a microscope for too long they might disappear into nothing, revealed to be unfounded and delusional.

The fear that science might disprove God.

In its more extreme forms, this fear of science leads some Christians to make absurd claims about the historical and scientific accuracy of Biblical texts. They fear that if even one aspect of their belief system is proven false, the whole thing might collapse. In the eyes of these Christians, scientists must be either deluded or evil, deliberately trying to distort the truth.

My fear of science came in subtler forms. For example, it concerned me that spiritual experiences and “answers to prayer” could be explained away by psychology and neuroscience. How could I fully trust the Christian story if science was able to give equally… [Read more…] about Faith in the Fog: Science, Atheism and the Search for Proof