Fundamentalist Christianity, which is the basis of the Republican religious right, is based on a specific set of doctrines. Since they are religious doctrines rather than political doctrines they should have little effect on American politics. Unfortunately, the religious doctrines of Christian fundamentalism are in direct opposition to and are contradicted by the commonly accepted ideas of rigorous procedures of thought which grew out of the Enlightenment. Since the American Republic is based on Enlightenment doctrines, American Christian fundamentalism finds itself contradicted and attacked by the Constitution and by the very intellectual basis of American political society. American Constitutional political thought and Christian fundamentalism are in basic conflict.
So what are the basic ideas of Christian Fundamentalism? They are: the inerrancy of the Bible, Sola Scriptura, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Jesus Christ. These religious doctrines are not themselves incorrect (nor are they provably correct in any objective manner) but as specified in the Bible, they are not the same as what modern theologians have demonstrated they really were.
This set of doctrines as currently taught in Fundamentalist Churches are a reaction to Modernism. They are not ancient ideas. They were developed in the 19th century as a reaction to "modernism." That leads to the logical question - what is Modernism in Christianity? The most important point is that modernism in Christianity grew out of the Enlightenment requirements for rigorous procedures of thought. Both politics and Christian doctrine were among the many aspects of human life to which such rigorous procedures of thought were applied. In politics it led to democratic forms of government. In Economics it led to the Industrial Revolution. With all the other changes in society, Christianity was not ignored by modernism. Modernism changed the way many people looked at
Christianity.
Modernism in Christianity is not a set of beliefs. Instead, it is the idea that by using modern tools of analysis as developed by Enlightenment thinkers, the basic source of Christianity - the Bible - came under question. The Enlightenment is characterized as demanding the use of rigorous procedures of thought rather then deferring to authority or tradition. Enlightenment ideas require the application of rigorous procedures of analysis and thought to ancient documents. The application of such procedures to the Bible must make the Truth inherent in the Bible more accurately understood.
Such analytical procedures demand that instead of viewing the Bible as an inventory of factual statements, the statements reported in the Bible must be considered as documents of the human authors' beliefs and feelings about God at the time of its writing — within an historic/cultural context. So Biblical Modernism is just a set of procedures that are used to try to learn what the authors of the Bible were describing within their personal limitations of description. Such an outgrowth of the Enlightenment forms of scientific research are designed to reach the reality behind written descriptions in the Bible.
The Christian fundamentalists see Modernism as inherently wrong. They believe that what is written in the Bible is (forgive me) gospel Truth. They believe that the very words of the Bible are “The Truth of God.” The Christian Fundamentalists reject the application of rigorous procedures of thought to the Bible. Instead the Bible is to be taken as "literal Truth" based on the face of the words it presents.
Instead of an analytical understanding of the Bible, the Fundamentalists offer – nay, they demand – the application of the ideas given by their authorities. The fundamentalists Biblical authorities read the words of the Bible and take the truth to be what they find in the literal interpretation of those words. Then those authorities demand slavish acceptance of the doctrines of the inerrancy of the Bible, Sola Scriptura, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Jesus Christ a they interpret them. The authorities establish doctrine.
A doctrine is body of principles presented for acceptance or belief, usually by a religious leader. A doctrine is the concept that the religious leader expects you to accept as describing the meaning of evidence provided to you, but it is not necessarily the real meaning. It is the opinion of the religious leader regarding what the evidence presented means. Doctrine is not something given by God. It is something men use to try to understand reality, but it is not reality.
This fundamentalist authoritarian doctrine is the intellectual demand that supports social control by tradition, irrationality, superstition, and tyranny. This is the basis of Christian Fundamentalism. Authority and tradition overrule rational thought. This is the basic intellectual(?) underpinning of the Republican religious conservatives. In my opinion, I don't think that Christ, the Gautama Buddha. Or Lao Tze would accept such poor thinking, and probably not Muhammad.
Christian fundamentalism is based on this sand of foundation. It is a reaction to modernist investigation that provides a greater in-depth idea regarding the religious truth of the Bible than does tradition.
It is a poor foundation for religious belief, and it is not decent support for political action.
A lot of people fear leaving the religious beliefs they have been comfortable in all their lives. OK. Fine. But they cannot enforce those irrational beliefs on the rest of us through government. Such an action violates both reality and the American Constitution. But this is religious, not political doctrine.
The problem with the Christian Fundamentalist religious doctrine is that the American political doctrine is based on Enlightenment modernist thought and enshrined in the U.s. constitution. The Fundamentalist religious doctrine cannot survive in an environment of modernist Enlightenment thought, so Christian fundamentalism, being basically authoritarian in nature, is inherently in opposition to the American Constitution and to democracy.
This is the conflict that America is currently undergoing. We have an inherently premodern authoritarian set of religious beliefs that represents the beliefs of a significant minority of the American population - especially the Old South, because the Bible was used there to justify slavery and is still used there to justify segregation. These believers are in direct conflict with and feel attacked by modernist democratic beliefs that dominate most of the rest of America. Federal government enforcement of laws requiring Civil rights for minorities (especially Blacks), women and homosexuals are key elements of this attack fundamentalists face.
Politically adherents of fundamentalist religion have been the "swing vote" in America since the Depression. They were the Southern Democrats, who, with the Democrats in the rest of the nation, controlled the federal Congress. When Nixon's Southern Strategy incorporated the Southern fundamentalist racists into the Republican Party, they took with them the control of the federal government. But only for a short time.
Most of America is intellectually based in the Enlightenment. The fundamentalist and authoritarian views of the American South became allied with the Wall Street Republicans who were still unhappy that the 1929 Depression they caused them to lose control of America in 1033. Between them the Republican allies elected Reagan, Bush 41, the 1994 Congress, and with greater emphasis on the fundamentalist Christians, Bush 43 in 2000. They were shocked and angry at the repudiation the voters gave them with, rejecting the Reagan budget idiocies in 1992 and helped by the entry of Ross Perot into the Presidential race, Clinton was elected in 1992. The marginal election of Bush in 2000 was the high-water mark for the Republican alliance. Only 9/11 allowed Bush to be reelected in 2004. But the last four years especially has exposed the anti Enlightenment views of the Christian Fundamentalists, and the American public is now set to reject them nationally.
House Republicans come from highly gerrymandered districts and have strong incumbent advantages. 2008 is not going to see a large number of Republican Congressmen removed. But of the 34 Senators up for election in 2008, I am willing to bet that only those Republicans from the reddest states survive, and most of those will see declines in their margins of election.
The battle for American political dominance recently has been between modernist mostly secular voters and Christian fundamentalists. The Fundamentalists have become as powerful as they are by allying themselves with the Wall Street Republicans who still are angry at the election of FDR and who have been Cold War extremists. But American voters no longer see the relevance in any of them. Their time in politics is over.
I don't expect a massive shift in the 2008 election, though. American national politics changes very slowly. But the Republicans in 2008 will lose the White House decisively, and will lose seats in both houses of Congress. The result is going to be a collapse of the religious right as a major power in national politics.
America will finally move into the post WW II age of modern industrial nations.
Thank God!
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