Unfundamentalist

Above All, Love

Cindy Brandt

Fundamentalism Tells You Food Is Good While Taking Away Your Ability to Taste

by in Fundamentalism

Fundamentalists claim that unless we submit to the Bible as the Word of God, we cannot have objective morality. Our sense of right and wrong would be subject to personal taste or popular opinion.

I think this essentially becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Those who grow up in fundamentalism rely on the external authority of other people’s interpretation of the Bible and morality. We are taught to DISREGARD our personal ideas, and we lose the ability to discern which opinions are worth our attention.

It is an insidious vicious cycle to keep people from functioning out of their own moral agency and stay under the control of religious gatekeepers. This is the reason for the arrested development of many fundamentalist adults, that they continue to rely on external authorities to dictate their everyday choices.

Breaking free from it takes time and incremental steps for a lot of us. It took me years to reclaim a strong sense of agency over my own spirit, mind, and body–to trust, once again, that I can discern for myself which ideas are compelling, what activities are worth engaging in, and who gets to be an influence in my life.

Contrary to popular fundamentalist opinion, gaining self-agency doesn’t mean we become free-for-all selfish beings who float around in hedonistic airs without purpose or moral grounding. It means putting back together a robust integrity of personhood that was broken by abusive religious teachings. And it means we can participate in the… [Read more…] about Fundamentalism Tells You Food Is Good While Taking Away Your Ability to Taste

Long Obedience in Different Directions

by Cindy Brandt in Christian Spirituality

We had left our baby girl in the makeshift nursery to attend one of the meetings for the orientation that was to launch our missionary career. In the next few days, she would get sick with her first fever while we were trapped in a damp, chilly, tiny lodging with an outside shower that provided limited hot water. It was our inaugural taste of “suffering for Jesus,” and it was miserable and gritty but grand.

In a roomful of fellow missionaries, some seasoned, others new to the field, the energy was palpable. We had gathered to reach the nations, just like I had dreamed as an evangelical teen on fire. The speaker spoke powerfully, and the one phrase that resonated in my young adventurous mind, the one mantra that would sustain me through some of the most stressful years of my life, was this: “long obedience in the same direction.” The speaker was using the title of Eugene Peterson’s Christian classic, which I had not read, but the catchy title was pregnant with meaning, and especially poignant for a life of mission. We were fueled by the intense longing to stick it out for the long haul, to persevere despite the suffering, to be faithful in our long obedience.

We were faithful, for a year. And then two. And three and a half more years after that. But there started a stirring in my spirit, like a pea at the bottom of twenty mattresses, which kept me tossing and turning in the dark night of my soul. That small pea quickly turned into a full blown faith crisis that first… [Read more…] about Long Obedience in Different Directions

What I Believe Doesn't Matter

by Cindy Brandt in Christian Issues

“Cindy Brandt, Do you believe in Hell?” asks the most recent commenter on my blog.

I feel like a little kid whose parent uses my full name because they are upset with me, and I  sense that this question isn’t really seeking an earnest answer but is instead a veiled threat. But I will give the commenter the benefit of the doubt that it is a genuine question and reply:

What I believe does not matter.

I have come to a peaceful place, knowing that if there is a God, then God loves and accepts me for who I am, not for what I believe. I could be a missionary on fire to evangelize the world or a raging heretic, chasing after God or resisting God at arm’s length, but God will always be within my reach.

The people who taunt me with litmus tests of orthodoxy no longer affect me because I simply do not care about a passing grade—like I tell my kids, your grades are just a number, what matters is that you are learning and that you learn to love learning.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that ideas do not matter. Ideas shape our actions and theology drives our ethics. Much of the destruction from religious fundamentalists is a direct result of terrible theology, so it is important to be able to engage theological issues with nuance and academic rigor. Nor do I dismiss the meticulous work of philosophers and theologians throughout the centuries who persisted in critical engagement. Their works were an invaluable resource to me as I wrestled through my existential and faith… [Read more…] about What I Believe Doesn't Matter

Three Reasons Why We Don't Pray the Sinner's Prayer With Our Children

by Cindy Brandt in Christian Issues

Praying the prayer to ask Jesus into their hearts with children is the seminal moment in evangelical families. It is believed to be the moment they are saved into securing eternity in heaven, and a commitment to follow Jesus for the rest of their lives. It is a significant and momentous event, one worthy of celebrating. And yet, even though my husband and I are both Jesus-following Christians raised with evangelical backgrounds, we have decided to not pray the sinner’s prayer with our two kids. Here are three reasons why:

1. Children are children before they are sinners.

One of the more harmful teachings of fundamentalist families is to interpret children’s normal behavior as sin. For example, toddlers test boundaries because of the curiosity wired in them — it is a necessary developmental stage to establish their growing identity. And yet, I have seen Christian parents define normal toddler defiance as evidence of sin inherent in children. I believe this is driven by the desire to get children to a place of recognizing a need for the saving grace of Jesus as quickly as possible. Define the problem → provide the solution.

I think this has potential to do much damage to children’s psyches by denying their natural, human inclinations and judging that behavior as sinful. It becomes difficult for children to listen to their own intuition and God-given conscience because they have been taught to be self-abasing and self-denying.

I believe in sin and its… [Read more…] about Three Reasons Why We Don't Pray the Sinner's Prayer With Our Children

Teaching Children About Hell

by Cindy Brandt in Christian Issues, Fundamentalism

I was a morbidly fearful child. I was also a highly literate child, having learned to read before school years. My mother tongue is Mandarin, and the storybooks I consumed were Chinese folk stories. Some of them were harmless tales of developing moral character, but many recounted ancient Chinese myths of hell. In Chinese folk religion, hell consists of eighteen levels, each containing a specific type of torture reserved for corresponding sins. It is not a stretch to say that the images of hell I saw in picture books as a young girl impact me to this day. I was terrified.

Fast forward to my school-age years, when my parents sent me to a Christian school started by western missionaries, where I learned of the Jesus who could save me from hell. It was a no-brainer for me. I believed swiftly because I was deathly afraid of hell.

I have told this testimony many, many times throughout my growing up years in the Christian world. It was the ice-breaker to my testimony, the chuckle-inducing anecdote to begin a speech: “I accepted Jesus because I didn’t want to go to hell!” People would smile and nod with approval at my child-like faith. How did nobody tell me it was not funny?

Certainly, as I grew in cognitive and spiritual development, I learned there was more to the Christian life than an escape from hell, but once you begin a relationship with God based on fear it takes years to unlearn the image of the punitive God to be able… [Read more…] about Teaching Children About Hell