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“When I asked my fundamentalist teachers and mentors how to reconcile portions of the Bible with each other I was harshly put down as trying to use reason on what is essentially beyond reason.” - Roger Olson

Discussion

Thu, 12/22/22

Olson’s perceptions of fundamentalism aren’t important to me personally, but he does have some interesting observations as a sort-of-but-never-really insider who rejected all fundamentalisms early in his career.

He has some observations that fit pretty well with some of my experiences.

What he seems to miss/or just under-factor is that all Christian groups have to

  • define what is essential to the faith (in the sense of define authenticity) and what is not
  • separate, at least in the form of not choosing to actively cooperate with those ‘outside’ those boundaries
  • identify distinctives they are passionate about that define their identity as a ‘denomination’ or subgroup, or ‘movement’

So if you can put attitudes and practices on those things on a spectrum, there really isn’t a huge difference between fundamentalist and mainstream orthodox Christianity as you approach the middle.

In short, he seems to see differences in kind where I’m mostly seeing differences in degree. But degree matters.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Thu, 12/22/22

He doesn’t claim there are only two. The two variants he talks about are, in my view, not distinct things… they overlap with each other and with lots of non-fundamental groups. But is there a systematizing tradition and a more anti-intellectual tradition? That certainly fits what I’ve seen, and loosely parallels the expositional tradition and the revivalist tradition I’ve noted before.

It’s interesting. To me, it’s all history, but bits and pieces of it remain influential.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Tue, 12/27/22

Except that the “those who don’t” category has no people in it.

We’re pretty wired to think in categories, though we often overdue that/get lazy about it and lump things/people into categories when we don’t really have to.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.