The End of Christian Fundamentalism?

Bob Jones University: Don’t call us fundamentalists In his latest “President’s Corner,” Bob Jones University head Bob Jones III says the word fundamentalist has become co-opted. “Bob Jones University is unashamedly Fundamentalist, but the term is beginning to carry an onerous connotation with the world at large because of the media’s penchant for lumping Christian Fundamentalists in the same heap as Islamic Fundamentalists,” he writes.

Instead of Fundamentalism defining us as steadfast Bible believers, the term now carries overtones of radicalism and terrorism. Fundamentalist evokes fear, suspicion, and other repulsive connotations in its current usage. Many of us who are separated unto Christ feel it is appropriate to find a new label that will define us more positively and appropriately. It is too early in the process to know what term may ultimately be embraced by the majority, but I like Preservationist.

This may prove to be an important split. To quickly sum up (and oversimplify) the last 125 years or so of conservative Christianity: battles over biblical inerrancy and other important theological flashpoints formed a split between “Modernists” and “Fundamentalists.” This latter group was named largely after the publication of The Fundamentals, a series of 12 booklets published between 1910 and 1915 that outlined core conservative doctrines. After World War II, leaders like Billy Graham still wanted to affirm these doctrines, but believed Christian fundamentalism had become too isolationist. In a recent Christian History profile of Graham, biographer William Martin wrote,

The enduring break with hard-line fundamentalism came in 1957, when, after accepting an invitation from the Protestant Council of New York to hold a crusade in Madison Square Garden, Graham announced, “I intend to go anywhere, sponsored by anybody, to preach the gospel of Christ, if there are no strings attached to my message. … The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love. Christians are not limited to any church. The only question is: are you committed to Christ?”

Fundamentalists attacked Graham as assisting liberals, and the split has never really healed. This, of course, is a very quick summary. For more, check out Christian History‘s issue on early fundamentalism and Joel Carpenter’s Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (CT review | purchase). In fairness, Jones paints a slightly different history:

Until the late 1940s, the strongest Bible believing Christians distinguished themselves from religious liberals by the term Evangelicals. When the strongest Evangelical group of the day, the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), slowly began a leftward turn, which has accelerated unto the present day, those who wished to be more steadfast and less ecumenical began identifying themselves as Fundamentalists.

In any case, since the fundamentalist-evangelical split, fundamentalists like Jones have tended to wear the label with pride. “In recent years,” says the Associated Press Stylebook, “fundamentalist has to a large extent taken on pejorative connotations except when applied to groups that stress strict, literal interpretations of Scripture and separation from other Christians. In general, do not use fundamentalist unless a group applies the work to itself.” Until now, Bob Jones University was one of those. But now with the most prominent of the fundamentalist institutions seeking to abandon the term (there are still churches that wear the label with pride, but few institutions remain willing to do so), it may be time to retire the word for good.

Maundy Tuesday? Unless you have a subscription to The Wall Street Journal, you won’t be able to read its fascinating piece on changing Holy Week schedules. “Call it flexible praying,” writes Nancy Ann Jeffrey.

With spring’s main religious celebrations coming up, a small but growing number of churches and synagogues are taking the unusual tack of rejiggering worship schedules for busy congregants. They’re moving the pre-Easter “Maundy” service from the traditional Thursday to Tuesday (for less-hectic Easter weekends), holding Passover seders on the obscure third and fourth nights of the holiday week, and in some cases closing their doors on Sunday. The United Methodist Church alone says 30% of its 35,000 U.S. congregations now celebrate some part of the Easter service at an untraditional time, double the number in 1997.

Traditionalists—actually, lots of folks—think it’s crazy. “This is just playing fast and loose with the Christian calendar,” says Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) spokesman Jerry Van Marter, who has never exactly been known as Mr. Traditional Values. “Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter. Why … would you have it on Tuesday?”

Not St. Patrick Sure, make the interesting religion article unavailable, but run an incorrect one for free. The Wall Street Journal does offer “The real St. Patrick” by Julia Vitullo-Martin on its free OpinionJournal.com site, but don’t bother. In an effort to reclaim St. Patrick’s Day from the drunken revelers, Vitullo-Martin writes that the former slave “borrowed the Druid shamrock to explain the Trinity and approved of bonfires, lit by the Irish in homage to their gods, in Easter celebrations. He created the Celtic cross by centering a pagan sun on a Christian cross.” Uh, no, no, no, and no.

Life ethics:

Ohio gets federal ally in anti-abortion case | U.S. Justice Department lawyers are defending an Ohio law that outlaws partial-birth abortions (Fox News)
Questions raised on stem cells | Adult cells found less useful than embryonic ones (The Washington Post)
Also: Pro-life groups suffer setback over results of stem cell studies (The Daily Telegraph)
Also: Expert doubts stem cell findings (The Scotsman)
Two Jewish groups back therapeutic cloning | Orthodox leaders break with right (The Washington Post)
Pataki vows to sign controversial women’s health-care bill | Edward Cardinal Egan called it an “outrageous violation of religious liberty.” (New York Post)
Also: Egan Rips Coverage For Birth Control (New York Daily News)
Earlier: Cardinal lobbies in Albany against bill for contraception coverage (The New York Times)
Prolife victory over BBC ‘censorship’ | The BBC and other broadcasters unlawfully censored a party election broadcast containing graphic images of aborted fetuses, the Court of Appeal decided yesterday (The Daily Telegraph)
Also: TV firms were wrong to block ‘shocking’ images of abortion, says Court of Appeal (The London Independent)
Also:Judges say BBC wrong to censor anti-abortionists (The Times, London)
Also: BBC found guilty of abortion censorship (The Guardian)

Politics:

Bad faith | In his NRB speech, Ashcroft encapsulated everything that is admirable, and everything that is awful, about the Bush administration’s understanding of religion in the United States (Peter Beinart, The New Republic)
Helms pow wows with celebrity set over Africa’s AIDS epidemic | Senator buddies with Chris Tucker, Bono (Fox News)
Lutheran leader says Bush should create ‘axis of love’ | Lutheran World Federation bishop criticizes attempt “to divide the world so easily into good and bad guys.” (Religion News Service)
Blair’s faith much misunderstood | Prime Minister’s theology is liberal, ecumenical and centered on the historical reality of the person of Jesus rather than the literal truth of the Old Testament. (John Rentoul, The London Independent)
Pickering’s nomination derailed | Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the nomination 10-9 in three party-line votes after the most bitter, partisan Senate fight since the confirmation of Attorney General John Ashcroft. (The Washington Times)

Church & state:

Religious charities able to use space | Religious charities should be allowed to use the common areas in public housing to offer residents counseling, job training and other services, the government is advising local housing authorities. (Associated Press)
Church asks Supreme Court to halt malpractice lawsuit | Episcopal Diocese argues allowing suit over secretly recorded counseling session to proceed would have chilling effect on religious practices (Freedom Forum)
Florida man fights to keep ‘ATHEIST’ license plate | After 16 years, state now considers the tag “obscene or objectionable” (Associated Press)
Rutherford County will post Ten Commandments | Decalogue will go up in country courthouse despite lawsuit threat (The Tennesseean)
Florida town finds Satan an offense unto it | Carolyn Risher has banished Satan from Inglis, Fla.,—by mayoral proclamation. (The New York Times)
Earlier: The Holy City | A mayoral ban in Inglis, Florida designates the town free of Satan. (Christianity Today, Feb. 12, 2002)
The Ten Commandments in court: Power and its abuse | The misguided argument that the Ten Commandments are merely legal and historical treats them as though they are an indissoluble whole. Of course, they are not. (Marci Hamilton, Findlaw.com)

Persecution:

China targets religious groups: Report | Fides news agency said that over the past month “China has accentuated its hard- line policy toward the Catholic Church and other religions.” (Associated Press)
Seeking asylum, North Koreans storm Spanish embassy in Beijing | “My first son wants to become a Christian missionary” says one (The Washington Post)
Religious services available in 2008 Olympiad: Chinese bishop (Xinhuanet)

Education:

School attacked over ‘evolution’ teaching (BBC)
Also: Bishop calls for new check on Creationist school (The Daily Telegraph)
Also: Inspector alerted over creationist school | Prime Minister Tony Blair defends Emmanuel City Technology College (The Guardian)
Christian math teacher denies swearing at pupils | John Anthony Cole, who resigned after misconduct allegations, had condemned “spilling of seed” (Ananova)
Latter-day studies | Scholars of Mormonism confront the history of what some call “the next world religion”(The Chronicle of Higher Education)

Sex & marriage:

Scouts lose United Way funds over gay ban | At least 39 United Way affiliates around the country have stopped direct community funding of the Boy Scouts to protest the Scouts’ ban on homosexual leaders (The Washington Times)
Groups fight florida’s ban on gay adoptions | Gay and civil rights agencies and children’s advocates have organized to challenge a Florida law prohibiting gays from adopting. (The New York Times)
Bride, 54, told she is too old for groom, 27 | The Rev. Ruth Wollaston said she thought the marriage ill advised and that she was unable to officiate. (The Times, London)
Gays ask court to force Massachusetts to issue marriage licenses | Same couples filed suit last year (Associated Press)
Military discharges of gays rise, and so do bias incidents | Both the number of military discharges of gays and reported incidents of anti-gay harassment have risen. (The New York Times)
Christian group says gay policy unneeded | School board already decided against changes (The Winston-Salem [N.C.] Journal)

Priest, parishioner shot in Long Island:

No answers in shooting at church | The 24 names Peter Troy neatly inked inside a spiral notebook under the heading “Lynbrook Church Death List,” were strangers to one another, to their author, and to the church where Troy gunned down a priest and a parishioner during Mass this week (Newsday, Long Island, New York)
Police say suspect in church killings kept a ‘death list’ | The man accused of murdering two people in a Long Island church kept 24 names on a list of potential targets. (The New York Times)
Coming back to place of worship | Red-eyed and weary, parishioners returned yesterday to reclaim the sacred place of prayer that 24 hours earlier had become a chaotic scene of bloodshed (Newsday, Long Island, New York)
‘A saint on Earth’ | Laotian family mourns slain priest who rescued them (Newsday)
Alleged church gunman troubled, ‘didn’t fit in’ (Newsday)
Police: Gunman had ‘death list’ | But despite the list’s horrific title, none of the names on the list were of clergy or parishioners of Our Lady of Peace Church (Newsday)
No motive cited in priest killing | Police in N.Y. see no ties between suspects, pastor (The Boston Globe)

Crime:

Pastor arrested for attempted murder | Carl Jenkins, pastor and founder of Dale City Christian Church, charged with trying to murder a woman who works and prays at the church (WJLA, Washington, D.C.)
Graham Staines was attacked with spear during jeep fire, says forensic expert | Missionary murder trial continues in India (Associated Press)
Con men turn to religion for victims, experts warn | Investment scams involving members of church groups or religious organizations have been on the rise recently, the Alberta Securities Commission (Calgary Herald)

Templeton Prize winner

Cambridge priest wins Templeton Prize | John Polkinghorne, who has been called the “C.S. Lewis of Christianity and science” (The Washington Times)
Priest, once physicist, wins $1 million religion prize (The New York Times)
Priest-physicist Polkinghorne wins Templeton religion prize (Los Angeles Times)

Missions & ministry:

Star Trek chaplains? | If humans set out to colonize the universe, what will happen to their faith? (UPI)
Finding the way | Little has been said of the gargantuan leaps the “Lost Boys of Sudan” have made from lives as children of primitive cattle herders to 21st-century residents of the world’s most powerful city. (The Washington Times)
Students take faith to new level | Teens look for deeper relationship with God (News-Press, Ft. Myers, Fla.)

Abuse:

Court allows lawsuits against churches | Florida Supreme Court says churches cannot use the First Amendment to protect themselves against lawsuits alleging sexual abuse by priests (The Orlando Sentinel)
As scrutiny rises, dioceses reassess policies on abuse | Five major Roman Catholic dioceses in the New York metropolitan area are responding to growing attention nationwide to cases of pedophilia.
Also: Fla. court: Churches not protected (Associated Press)
When investigating cases of sex abuse, church is often judge, jury and prosecutor | In part because state law does not obligate them to report allegations of sexual abuse of minors to law enforcement agencies, church officials have often been free to investigate the complaints and decide what action, if any, is warranted. (The New York Times)
Bush expresses his confidence in Law | President calls cardinal “a man of integrity” (The Boston Globe)
Archdiocese weighs fund-raising options | Options include selling buildings, borrowing money, and asking large donors for contributions (The Boston Globe)
Priest’s rape arrest stirs shock (Fresno [Calif.] Bee)
Bitterness in Brooklyn diocese over abuse case | Three nuns in a Brooklyn parish have gone public with allegations of sexual abuse by three priests in the Diocese of Brooklyn. (The New York Times)
224 sex charges against priest dismissed | Statute of limitations has expired (Associated Press)

Church life:

Mexican bishop plans biggest Mass | The idea is to pave over a dry lake bed, bus in 5 million people and hold the open-air Mass on July 30 — the middle of thunderstorm season. (Associated Press)
Ethiopians plan church in Denver area | $2 million is needed for one of the nation’s newest and largest Ethiopian Orthodox Christian churches (The Denver Post)
Tank fire hits Bethlehem church | Tanks were parked 300 meters from the Church of the Nativity. (Associated Press)

Personalities:

Don’t insult Mother Teresa, say Christians | Christians in Calcutta are begging the mayor not to rename a street housing nightclubs, bars and pubs after Mother Teresa. (Ananova)
Thomas Kinkade: Profit of light | Besides the publication of his first novel and the recent opening of a housing complex whose $400,000-plus homes were “inspired” by his art, Kinkade has plans to take on the Goliaths of his métier. (USA Today)

Religion in America:

Cultural lens: Judging you, judging me | Confronted with terror, Americans are rethinking their ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ culture (The Christian Science Monitor)
Keeping the faith, but on their own terms | Disinclined to submit to a will other than their own, Americans are transforming the practice of religion. (Adweek)

Pop culture:

Apocalypse soon: For series’ authors, the ending justifies their means | LaHaye and Jenkins believe their books are True (Chicago Tribune)
Greece is the word for pop monks | Group hoping to break into a wider market with their third album, which contains English-language songs. (BBC)

Giving up turtle meat for Lent?

Pope asked to call sea turtles ‘meat’ | Group cites Mexican tradition of eating the threatened reptiles during Lent. (Los Angeles Times)
Also: Vatican ban sought on turtle meat (Associated Press)