Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Women in Religion
How Fundamentalism Shoots Itself in the Foot

How Fundamentalism Shoots Itself in the Foot

Last updated on: October 23, 2022 at 3:55 am by Gregory T. Smith

How Fundamentalism Shoots Itself in the Foot 2022-10-19T10:59:29-08:00 Gregory T. Smith

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Fundamentalism shoots itself in the foot by telling people that they can’t be good Christians unless they believe in a narrow-minded set of doctrines.

Image by ngo1 from Pixabay

You’ve heard people say that you can’t claim you believe the Bible at all unless you believe all of the Bible. And by this, they mean their own limited and literalistic interpretation of it. If you disagree with even one point, they say, then you have essentially left of faith. And then they wonder why so many people are leaving. Fundamentalists shoot themselves in the foot and then blame the foot for getting shot. Here are just three examples:

Creationism Vs. Evolution

I remember hearing Ken Ham from Answers in Genesis making the above claim. All of our biblical understanding, he says, rests on a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. If you don’t believe that creation took place in six 24-hour cycles, then you don’t believe the Bible. And if you don’t believe the Bible, you’re not a Christian. This kind of narrow view forces people to choose apostasy over fundamentalism, once they start to accept the facts of science.

“The Gay Agenda”

My stomach turns every time I hear a fundamentalist say, “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” The gay agenda, they claim, is trying to turn good Christian children into gays. For them, there is only one interpretation of the clobber passages of scripture that mention homosexuality. That interpretation is that it’s all sin, sin, sin. If you believe anything else, then you are saying that the Bible is wrong. And if you don’t believe the Bible, you can’t be a Christian. For fundamentalists, there are no gay Christians. Christians can’t be LGBTQIA+ allies, either. Then, they wonder why Christianity is declining. With all their talk about “biblical marriage,” fundamentalists are shooting the church in the foot, and they don’t even understand how they pulled the trigger.

Fundamentalism and Racism

Sprinkle in a little white Christian nationalism, and it gets even worse. God wants the races to stay separate, they say, claiming that God divided people at the tower of Babel. Again, they cite how after the flood, Noah’s sons settled in different regions. They use the curse of Ham to prove their point. They talk about how God forbade the Israelites from marrying Canaanites, and apply that rule to modern interracial relationships. So, if you believe that Black lives really do matter, and then you go to church and hear the opposite, are you more likely to adopt a racist position to accommodate fellow parishioners, or are you more likely to leave the church? If you are a member of a white, fundamentalist, Southern church and then you marry a Black man, the conservative churchgoers will likely make you both feel unwelcome before long. But then they’ll wonder why you left the church. They just shot themselves in the foot.

Thought Experiments

I could give more examples, but you get the point. You could try a few thought experiments to see if you would remain in a church like that. Imagine that you are a Venezuelan immigrant, and you are visiting a church in the United States that is full of white Christian nationalists. Or imagine that you are a woman or a divorced man, wanting to be ordained as a deacon in a fundamentalist church. Or picture yourself as a teenager raised in a fundamentalist church, where you can’t come out as a different gender from your body. Would you stay in a church like that?

Chances are that you would leave your fundamentalist church and find a more open-minded and inclusive church. Or, if fundamentalists had you convinced that theirs was the only true brand of Christianity, then you would leave the faith altogether. And all the people at your home church would wonder why you left.

Why the Church is Declining

Conservative Christians wonder why the church is declining in the West. All the while, they are immovable as a mountain and as dead as a gravestone. This is not what Jesus meant when he said, “On this rock I will build my church.” The church is built on the testimony that Christ is Lord. All of these other things are just details. When the church lives or dies on creationism, gender and sexuality issues, race and nationalism, or anything else peripheral to the gospel, it does a disservice to the very people they’re trying to reach. The church ties “heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others, but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.” And then they wonder why folks leave.

Thirty years ago, pastors could go to conferences on church growth. Fifteen years ago they shifted to focusing on church health, understanding that growth was too much to expect. Now, conferences talk about damage control and managing decline. I know pastors who describe themselves as hospice chaplains for dying congregations, focused only on palliative care.

Is There a Solution?

I offer a simple solution to all of this. Stop driving people away by insisting that unless they believe like you, they aren’t real Christians. This attitude only proves to people that if their viewpoint diverges, they need to leave the church. The way to keep your church from dying is to stop shooting yourself. In fact, you might even consider taking the bullets out of your gun entirely.

General Christian

Evangelical

Catholic

Women in Religion

Relationships and Religion

Politics and Religion

Home and Religion

History and Religion

Challenging the Church

Creationism vs evolution

fundamentalism

gay agenda

Interracial marriage

white Christian nationalism

Previous Post

October 19, 2022

Should Christians Celebrate Halloween?

Next Post

October 27, 2022 Was Blind, But Now I See: Deconstruction and Plato’s Allegory of the Cave

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Challenging the Church Deconstruction For Pastors Heathen Christianity Holidays and special days Mental Health Social Justice Spirituality Taoism Theology Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does the word Genesis mean?

Select your answer to see how you score.

History Creation Beginning Law

How Fundamentalism Shoots Itself in the Foot

Creationism Vs. Evolution

“The Gay Agenda”

Fundamentalism and Racism

Thought Experiments

Why the Church is Declining

Is There a Solution?

What does the word Genesis mean?