Escaping the fundamentalists

I feel like I have spent much of my life running from one group of fundamentalists or another.

In my young days, it was my church upbringing. I do not disparage my little gospel hall's emphasis on gospel preaching and devotion to scripture. And I feel that I experienced some kind of emergence (call it conversion if you like) from one state of being to another during those years. Prior to this foundational change my points of reference were my parents, my school, and while I was not particularly aware of it, my culture. After that change, the Lord's opinion became part of the mix, and the Bible and prayer started to have some real meaning--as much meaning as they can have to a naive and sheltered eleven year old.

But any kind of growth in mature spirituality was stunted by other factors--a very narrow view of the teachings of the Bible, an even narrower understanding of the implications of the faith for one's culture, and a constant focus on personal lifestyle choices as being a prime indicator of spiritual growth. A legalistic understanding of Christianity stood one in far better stead than a questioning, experimenting, and learning approach.

Having completed the MBA and launched off into the business world, I found myself swimming in another fundamentalist pool, that of Canadian capitalism. There was an unspoken (and occasionally spoken) assumption that one would do what made one a good employee at work (no matter how repugnant this might be personally), and to save one's personal morality for private life.

A move to Chicago to attend school gave me another experience with The One Best Way. My American colleagues (who seemed to be hampered by an almost complete ignorance of the rest of the world) could not imagine why I would not prefer to up stakes and move there permanently.

[Quite frankly, I think that I could move permanently to the Oregon Coast, but I digress.]

But I've found this same closed universe mentality in nearly every field of endeavour into which I've ventured. Academics with whom I have spent a good deal of my life seem virtually oblivious to the world outside the ivory tower, where there be Philistines. They have some glimmering of it, depending on their area of specialty, but don't seem to see that something could be learned from it that might change the academic worldview.

Then there are those guardians of our secular souls (if one can use the term soul at all in this context), the politically correct. My heavens (oops, there I go again)--my word, there is fundamentalism!

What has been characteristic of all of these little prisons that I have inhabited in my life are:
1. A dominating and unquestioned worldview.
2. A strong emphasis on rules of behaviour, although these vary completely from context to context.
3. A suspicious and denigrating view of outsiders.
4. An inability to accept criticism.
5. A complete inability or unwillingness to take an arm's length look at their little world with a view to possibly improving it, or even abandoning it.

All that I have ever wanted to do is to think through how things are done, and why things are viewed the way they are, and what might be the best use of resources, and what ought to be the goals of any activity, from a biblical worldview perspective.

For me the Christian faith comprises a set of eternal principles based on the character and will of God, that can be applied very creatively and flexibly to one's place and time; e.g., the family unit, one's view of the place of material life, how one is to steward God's creation, and above all, what are the implications of the sanctity of life.

Now here I am in the pro-life movement, and I find once again that there are fundamentals that are not open to question, at least according to the guardians of the truth. One appears to be that Catholicism rules. Now I share about 90% of my theological beliefs with Catholicism. But that "aberrant" 10% does put me on the outside. For instance, when I attend pro-life conferences, for whatever reason the issue of contraception always seems to come up as a necessary part of the discussion. There is always a mass arranged for us to attend, but I am denied communion at it, despite the fact that I am a Christian and pro-life, because I am a Protestant.

Consider this revealing statement from my friend Suzanne Fortin:

I can see why non-Christians would not want to attend my local Campaign Life meeting. It's Christian-dominated from top to bottom-- from the location (a church) to the opening prayer, to the rhetoric used, to what assumptions people hold about who attends, etc. I can see how that can be very alienating.

On the other hand, if you open it up to people of various backgrounds, you open it up to the advocacy of things you may find objectionable. I know of a non-Christian pro-life activist who is a strong advocate of contraception. As a Catholic, I would not feel comfortable opening the floor to the woman on this issue. And I could see how such a person might feel alienated from a Christian-run meeting.

This sounds exactly like the fundamentalist Protestant criticisms of evangelist Billy Graham. The Bob Jones and John R. Rices and all of the other red neck southern evangelicals would scorn the man because he might have a priest on the platform with him, or someone from a liberal church. They would forbid their students or parishioners from attending the Graham crusades because they might hear something "wrong."

No movement is ever better served by arbitrarily cutting itself off from other points of view. No human being, no human activity, no human understanding is every fully mature, ever completely on track.

[I recognize that for Catholics their belief in the infallibility of the Pope gives them a certain confidence in their opinions on some subjects. It has brought with it, I fear, a complacency and closed mindedness that does them no good.]

My plea to the pro-life movement (at least as Ms Fortin and others define it) to not be so cocksure of your opinions. I find it harder and harder to work with you as you push your agenda on me and on others who are not identical to you. I am all for unity--but not uniformity.