{"id":1585,"date":"2010-01-20T17:43:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-21T01:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/01\/20\/pin-the-tail-on-the-fundamentalist\/"},"modified":"2010-12-31T00:34:14","modified_gmt":"2010-12-31T08:34:14","slug":"pin-the-tail-on-the-fundamentalist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/2010\/01\/20\/pin-the-tail-on-the-fundamentalist\/","title":{"rendered":"pin the tail on the fundamentalist"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve observed a phenomenon in the erstwhile fundamentalist blogosphere. It\u2019s called the game of pin the tail on the fundamentalist<\/em>. It\u2019s played this way:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Everybody plays with their eyes open (the better to seem sincere and disingenuous).<\/li>\n
  2. The root philosophy of fundamentalism is described as having been taught to the player at some point in his training (whether accurately stated or no, it makes no difference).<\/li>\n
  3. An error of some fundamentalist(s) is shown to contradict the root philosophy of fundamentalism, as described.<\/li>\n
  4. Fundamentalists and fundamentalism is branded as being hypocritical and inconsistent.<\/li>\n
  5. A cacophony of ‘Amens’ and ‘Spot Ons’ follow in the blogosphere, the voices of an aggrieved multitude, citing this cause as being responsible for turning off and turning away a cast of thousands.<\/li>\n
  6. A comparison is sometimes made of evangelicals who don\u2019t share that particular error, sung to the sound of the background chorus, ‘O, to be like thee’.<\/li>\n
  7. All thus ‘pinned’ fundamentalists are expected to hang their heads in collective shame, resolving to be henceforward more like the sainted evangelicals whose errors are few and heights of God-centeredness are sublime.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The game is on right now at a blog post near you.<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    One instance of it that I recently read began something like this: fundamentalists teach that we are to separate from error, but then fundamentalists are guilty of sharing platforms or preaching with people who are guilty of certain errors. This hypocrisy is so disgusting to the pure minded that it is a major cause of leaving fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

    However, we should be clear about what fundamentalism is and is not. Fundamentalism isn\u2019t an organization. Fundamentalism isn\u2019t a movement and, it could be argued, never has been one<\/em>. Fundamentalism is a position or state of mind or philosophy taken by Bible-believing Christians in active opposition to certain<\/em> but not all<\/em> error.<\/p>\n

    If fundamentalists were to maintain that their philosophy demanded active opposition to all error, there would be no possibility of any cooperative effort between any Christians. It would be quite likely that there couldn\u2019t even be a sufficient unanimity for any local church to successfully maintain itself.<\/p>\n

    On the contrary, fundamentalism is a philosophy that insists on active opposition (up to and including full separation) against certain theological errors. The position has been summed up quite well elsewhere, a fairly recent example can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    When pointing out the alleged inconsistencies of fundamentalists, one would have to determine first of all whether the errors tolerated rise to a denial of \u201cessential doctrines of the faith\u201d or whether they are just doctrines the observer really really doesn\u2019t like. If they are in fact denials of essentials of the faith, then the charge might stick.<\/p>\n

    But That\u2019s Not All\u2026<\/h3>\n

    Even the presence of real inconsistency or hypocrisy on the part of fundamentalists, however, can\u2019t possibly be a legitimate reason for someone to \u2018leave\u2019 fundamentalism.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s why:<\/p>\n

    If I am right in describing fundamentalism as a mindset or attitude or philosophy, then the errors of other fundamentalists don\u2019t matter<\/em>. They don\u2019t matter, at least, to my own persistence in fundamentalism or my activity as a fundamentalist.<\/p>\n

    So some fellow (claiming to be a fundamentalist) cooperates with or actually participates in something I consider to be an error \u2013 so what? What difference does someone else\u2019s error make to my own philosophy or position? It may have an effect on my relationship with that fellow. In fact, I may well distance myself from him to a great degree. But my personal philosophy remains unchanged.<\/p>\n

    Instead, what we see is the game of \u2018pin the tail on the fundamentalist\u2019 being played. The participants say, \u2018Yeah, it\u2019s stuff like that that led me out of fundamentalism\u2019 or \u2018move me to leave fundamentalism\u2019. So\u2026 they have pinned us, and they have left\u2026 left to what?<\/p>\n

    Well, in large measure the \u2018leaving\u2019 is to go to a branch of evangelicalism which is rife with cooperation with all kinds of error.<\/p>\n

    What?<\/p>\n

    This is the rationale: Fundamentalists are hypocrites at separating from error, so I\u2019ll separate from them and join the guys who have very little compunction against separation from error. In fact, to them, separation is a dirty word.<\/p>\n

    Yeah, that\u2019ll show them!<\/p>\n

    Instead, I suggest that those who \u2018leave\u2019 fundamentalism are doing so because they never were fundamentalists in the first place. If they were, they would simply stay in (whatever \u2018in\u2019 is) and do their part to make fundamentalism better. And they wouldn\u2019t get bitter about it.<\/p>\n

    Instead, we have a crowd of angry bitter people carping and criticising and claiming the high moral ground.<\/p>\n

    Oh well. I\u2019m a fundamentalist. And I guess I\u2019m just pinned \u2013 maybe they missed the tail and hit me in the head and I can\u2019t think straight.<\/p>\n

    \"don_sig2\"<\/p>\n

    UPDATE:<\/strong><\/span> My response to the last five comments were delayed due to illness so I have put my responses in a follow-up post here<\/a>. Comments will be closed for this post, if anyone cares to continue the discussion, please do so in the comments to the follow-up post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ve observed a phenomenon in the erstwhile fundamentalist blogosphere. It\u2019s called the game of pin the tail on the fundamentalist. It\u2019s played this way: Everybody plays with their eyes open (the better to seem sincere and disingenuous). The root philosophy of fundamentalism is described as having been taught to the player at some point in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[37,71],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2fYWj-pz","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1590,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585\/revisions\/1590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oxgoad.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}