the Didache // Tony Jones introduces “The Teaching of the Twelve”

Only within this past year, I became aware of and interested in an ancient document called the Didache.  It is an ancient manual of sorts from the early church that many scholars date to 50-70 A.D.  That date makes it concurrent with the earlier gospels and the Q source, and also predating much of Paul’s influence.  In fact, though a few scholars dispute this, the Didache seems to show no knowledge whatsoever regarding the Apostle Paul and his teachings, arguably giving us a window into the narrow sliver of pre-Pauline Christianity.  This is not to dog Paul by any means, but as a central figure in the shaping of late first century Christianity, his particular hermenutics, philosophies, scholasticism, and worldview are of interest to those of us asking this question: just how much did Paul’s particular worldview alter the course of  Christianity.  I grew up in churches where sermons where derived almost without exception from Paul’s epistles, and this became more disturbing to me as I became aware of how different “reading Jesus through the lens of Paul” is from “reading Paul through the lens of Jesus.”  Though both Jesus and Paul came out of the Pharisaic sect of Judaism, Paul was much more esoteric and spiritual-minded (as opposed to a very earthy, Jewish, and political Jesus), with Greek Stoic influence and a much keener interest in marginalizing Torah in his cosmopolitan proselytization.

I became aware of the Didache via Tony Jones.  Jones is a writer I’ve followed with much interest for a few years, and he recently completed a book on the Didache, titled The Teaching of the Twelve: Believing and Practicing the Primitive Christianity of the Ancient Didache Community.  He provided an mp3 reading of the entire text, a short 17 minutes long, which I reposted below along with a word file of the full text if you are interested.

I’ll offer some more thoughts on this key early text in following posts.  It is a practical manual for Christian community, offering directions on everything from how to do Baptism (setting the silly debate over whether sprinkling or dunking was normative in the early church- it was both), Eucharist and who can partake (and I happen to disagree with the Didache here), sexual ethics, admonishments to the wealthy or ungenerous, reiterations of general teachings from Jesus, directions on when to fast or recite the Lord’s Prayer, and what to think of itinerant teachers and how to know if a teacher is a false prophet.  Didache seems to indicate the pre-Pauline churched looked on preachers with no alternative source of income as false prophets!  *cue up the irony of salaried pastors wishing for a return to early christianity*  This is a question my wife and I have been asking myself recently and just can’t seem to settle on (whether or not I feel it is ethical to derive a salary from a ministry).  That may have to wait for a later post.

Jones argues that the Didache’s message on ethics, in contrast to the perfection goal of Paul, can be summed up as this: try your best.

Didache (audio of the full text, via Tony Jones)

The Didache text

“The Justice Project”

New book recommendation:  The Justice Project

Edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber, is a eye-opening follow-up to The Emergent Manifesto of Hope.  It continues the theme of approaching a topic, Justice, from an array of voices.  While there were notables such as Tony Jones, Doug Pagitt, Peggy Campolo, and Lynne Hybels, the book mostly consisted of names I’d never heard of, activists working to challenge the status quo from their niches

It was that broad range of experiences that drew me in.  A chapter by Peggy Campolo challenged me with a story of a gay-affirming church here in Arkansas, as well as challenging the typical notion of what “Biblical family values” really are.  Her son Bart explained why campaign finance reform might just be the most important political “Justice” issue out there.  One writer told of her experience in a barely post-Civil Rights black church, which looked up to MLK, Jr. they way we look up to Jesus, and this backed up nicely to stories from South Africa where white anti-Apartheid advocates feared the suspicious, “accidentally” fatal car incidents with cops.  Then a description of Just Conservatism and Just Liberalism.  Samir Selmanovic, author of the newly released It’s Really All About God: Reflections of a Muslim Atheist Jewish Christian has a provocative piece on decolonizing God’s name.

Particular sections where particularly biting.  The entire book was absolutely replete with Scripture.  An early chapter asks if capitalism can be just.  Has there ever been an economic system that paradoxically produced more good while at the same time producing such imbalance of wealth?  A definition of justice is in order, given that we have to decide whether Justice is distributive or redistributive; is Justice starting where we all are and going from there, or is it inherently redistributing and hence imbalanced against those who start off with more.  The West has traditionally ran with the former while the Tanak inarguably aims at the latter.  The question is whether or not a capitalistic system which, while creating a great deal of good, inevitably creates inequality is a redemptive system.  That takes it pretty far, maybe beyond what I am comfortable with, but it does strike me as true that there will be no room for any inequality in God’s economy.

Then cut to a discussion on immigration reform in which a Latino writer recounts a discussion with a friend.  One asks the other if he also carries his ID with him in his sock whenever he leaves the house so much as just to jog.  It’s a world I cannot imagine, where naturalized citizens of the US live in fear of illegal deportation because of the stories they heard about the unlucky neighbor who forgot his drivers license when jogging.  That neighbor is picked up, presumed illegal, detained and/or deported away from his family.  The author barely has to imply the Scriptures that call for lavish welcoming of the squatter immigrants among us.  It challenged me because I know we need serious immigration reform and laws to guide us.  But I also know that Scripture holds up this ideal for sheltering the alien that many of us consider simply too idealistic.  Maybe it is, but it is Just.

Just ecology.  Just land.  Just business.  Justice in the slums.  Justice in the suburbs.  Just parenting.  Just Trade.  Just church-planting.  Justice in religion.  Justice in racial issues. Just elections.  Just family values.  Prophetic Justice.

This is one of those books that has perspectives that anyone but the most hardened ideologue will have their heart melted by.  I’m really encouraged to see the awakening of much of the church to the Biblical primacy of Justice as integral to the Gospel.  The church’s Justice awakening has gained such a tide that there is even now a resistance to it by Christians who feel we should drop such emphasis on Justice and “get back to Jesus.” The Justice Project is one of those books that reminds me why that perspective isn’t much good news at all.  It’s got a perspective to unsettle, teach, encourage, anger, and give hope to anyone.

Nonviolence: 25 lessons from the history of a dangerous idea

Mark Kurlansky’s magnum opus Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea has been on my reading list for two years now, but Barnes and Noble has continually thwarted me. In other news, I applied for my first real library card the other day.  Put those two things together, and I finally got to cram my head full of information on the history of this outrageously successful idea.

The book encompasses a wide range of world histories and religious text, but the bulk of it is focused on EuroChristian and American history (highlighting the constant internal battle of violence vs. nonviolence).  It is said the victors tell (or revise) the story of history, and since the victors are generally the ones with lots of guns, the outrageous success of nonviolence whenever it is tried (almost without failure) is easily put aside.  If you are interested in the history of an idea that is generally labeled dangerous, unpatriotic, foolish, and unmanly, I highly recommend this book.

And if you’ve ever heard about how Christianity was 100% nonviolent and opposed to all things warfare in its early days, and you wonder how we got here from there, this book is an excellent case study.

The Twenty Five Lessons

*Kurlansky’s own words in italics

1.  There is no proactive word for nonviolence.  Not in any language or culture or religion.  The idea is untried enough that there has not been a need for a positive word that is not the mere negation of another that is often used (-violence).

2.  Nations that build military forces as deterrents will eventually use them.

3.  Practitioners of nonviolence are seen as enemies of the state.

4.  Once a state takes over a religion, the religion loses its nonviolent teachings.

5.  A rebel can be defanged and co-opted by making him a saint after he is dead.  Ghandi was a nice old idealist.  Jesus was interested in saving souls.  King was a good guy for a time back when America still had racism.  Martin of Tours, sainted because of this soldiers unwillingness to fight anymore, is made into a patron saint for the US Army.  If someone were to come along who would not compromise, a rebel who insisted on taking the only moral path, rejecting violence in all its forms, such a person would seem so menacing that he would be killed, and after his death he would be canonized or deified, because a saint is less dangerous than a rebel.

6.  Somewhere behind every war there are always a few founding lies.  Historically, the most typical lies have included that the war is “defensive” or for “freedom/liberty.”  The enemy is enshrowded with rumors and conspiracies; he thinks of nothing but evil and will not stop without a violent intervention.  The enemy leaders don’t think like civilized people do.  We had no fault in the matter, of course.  But whatever it is, there are always lies.

7.  A propaganda machine promoting hatred always has a war waiting in the wings. When you see allusions to the past with vague and grandiose descriptors like “evil” or “madman,” you will soon be committed to war.

8.  People who go to war start to resemble their enemy.  It’s no secret that one wrong turn tends to justify another in our minds.  No where is this truer than when your purpose in a war zone is to break and hurt.

9.  A conflict between a violent and a nonviolent force is a moral argument.  If the violent side can provoke the nonviolent side into violence, the violent side has won. There are lots of stories in history where a nonviolent movement became fed up and took a violent turn.  They all die out remarkably fast at that point.

10.  The problem lies not in the nature of man but in the nature of power. It’s been observed that all men with power want one thing more than all else: more power.  And once power is gained by a person or a state, anything will be prepared for, done, and justified to defend that status.

11.  The longer a war lasts, the less popular it becomes. People tire of violence and become disappointed with how different and fruitless it is compared with the promises the people buy before a war.

12.  The state imagines it is impotent without a military because it cannot conceive of power without force. We are capable of some beautifully brave and powerful things, but we are so trained to think of real power as force, a strong power over people to have our way.  The state is particularly prone to this impairment.

13.  It is often not the largest but the best organized and most articulate group that prevails. In America’s memory has generally forgotten that nonviolent religious sects far outnumbered those calling for independence from Britain without violence.  But the nonviolent sects were quite silent, hence they lost the fight for violence and were forgotten by history.

14.  All debate momentarily ends with an “enforced silence” once the first shots are fired.  A great violent tragedy or first skirmish effectively marginalizes any voice calling for peace without violence.

15.  A shooting war is not necessary to overthrow an established power but is used to consolidate the revolution itself.  If a revolution can be made to include a war, the post-revolutionary power will have no problem framing violence as necessary for peace in the minds of the general public.  It is no coincidence that countries birthed without violent  revolution tend to put much less emphasis on militaries.

16.  Violence does not resolve.  It always leads to more violence.  Wars create “peace,” which is merely a veneer for an armistice lasting a few years until unresolved tensions mutate into new alliances and wars in different (usually, not always) regions.

17.  Warfare produces peace activists.  A group of veterans is a likely place to find peace activists.

18.  People motivated by fear do not act well.

19.  While it is perfectly feasible to convince a people faced with brutal repression to rise up in suicidal attack on their oppressor, it is almost impossible to convince them to meet deadly violence with nonviolent resistance. This is a significant reason why a brilliantly successful strategy of nonviolence is so rarely tried.

20.  Wars do not have to be sold to the general public if they can be carried out by an all-volunteer professional military.

21.  Once you start the business of killing, you just get “deeper and deeper,” without limits.

22.  Violence always comes with a supposedly rational explanation- which is only dismissed as irrational if the violence fails.

23.  Violence is a virus that infects and takes over. Seeing the continual failure of violence to establish peace has not lead to less violence; it has lead to more.  In the past 6,000 year, there have been approximately 50 years untainted by war, and the trend is growing.

24.  The miracle is that despite all of society’s promotion of warfare, most soldiers find warfare to be a wrenching departure from their own moral values.

25.  The hard work of beginning a movement to end war has already been done.

On the immorality of total pacifism and the superiority of active and creative nonviolence, one unmanly, foolish activist once said:

“The kind of pacifism that does not actively combat the war preparations of the governments is powerless and will always stay powerless.  Would that the conscience and common sense of the people awaken!”

-Albert Einstein

It reminds me of prophets that dreaming of a day when a just people would beat their swords into plowshares as we realized that redemptive violence becomes an illusory myth in time, that a people who lives by the sword will die by the sword, and that it is far more disarming to love enemies than it is to mirror them!

the future of faith: Globalization vs. fundamentalism, Yoda vs. al Qaida

“Give us this day our daily faith, but deliver us from beliefs.”

-Aldous Huxley, Island

Opening his last chapter of The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox offers this eccentric quote from Huxley’s sketch on the future of religion in a science world.  It is overstated to be sure, but the quote captures something that, like it or not, we are seeing in the world of religions today.  The growing emphases on Spirit and Justice are disrupting the preeminence which dogmatic belief has held on the religious landscape, especially in the last century.

—-

Part 1: Creeds crafting orthodoxy and the Gospel of Thomas

Part 2: 20th Century American Fundamentalism

Globalization: Humility, or pluralism and fundamentalism

Globalization breeds crisis of faith as contact with the Other suggests we may not understand as much as we previously thought.  A mature reaction is humility and a desire to dialogue and learn.  But more commonly a reaction of ambiguous syncretism or reactionary dogmatic fundamentalism is taken instead.  This is the history of the late 20^th century, as earlier 20^th century trends of theological liberalism and fundamentalism reached a crux to the point that people took sides without realizing they were even doing so..

To explain this, Cox highlights the remarkable resurgence in Islam over the last century.  There are a variety of explanations for this trend: the rise of education and low job market in the middle east, the world’s oil addiction, the failure of either socialism or free market capitalism to satisfy needs.  But the most likely reason, Cox argues, is the way in which change (i.e. globalization) breeds in people a need for stability (i.e. tradition, religion).  To take it a step further, Islam has always had a care for the poor as a central pillar, and so the growing humanitarian obsession merged well with a religio-political system that required the poor to to be taken care of in order to reach paradise.

The rise of lay leadership, to the hierarchy’s chagrin

On top of this, we see a phenomenon in Islam that has congruent strains in every major religion: the rise of the lay semi-clergy.  Notably, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism are showing trends toward less ordination, less officiation, and more work outside the bounds of the dominant system.  In American Christianity, we see this in para-church ministries such as Young Life, the Passion conferences, the Salvation Army, or churches planted without denominational support or seminary-schooled clergy.  There is no longer an assumed need for official sanction.  The reaction from the religious systems of the world loosing control is violent.  A brand new Buddhist temple, beautifully constructed into the side of Mt. Fugi is destroyed because it houses a lay sect.  Christian priests are excommunicated.  Muslim’s have been killed for stepping outside the watch of the imams.

Education breeds doubt and atheism

Cox goes on to describe a far more hidden fact, a truth that philosophers and theologians have known since Plato but that few choose to articulate: people want a solid, unquestionable narrative with which to frame life and ethics.  Faith does not do well if its subscribers do not feel absolutely sure of their fundamentals.  Even in the highly functional societies of northern Europe need a common, almost religious, framing ethic regardless of the success of atheism.  In the Bible churches of the US south, we see an example of this in the way that pastors are reluctant to teach their congregations of the contradictions and problems with Biblical inerrancy that they learned in seminary.  People hate that sense of not being sure.

History inarguably shows that a society’s rise of education corresponds to a rise in atheism.  Even when atheism does not dominate, a rise in intellect still threatens the clergy-class because the lay become aware of problems in the faith.  People learn, and then they doubt.  There doubts can no longer be assuaged with pompous assurances from a cleric, because the doubter can google the question on his mind and know more about it in a short 10 minutes than the cleric learned in 5 years of grad school.  So at best, education threatens the religious establishment, if not religion itself.

Crisis point: liberalism leads to fundamentalism leads to emergence

The last trend Cox sees in the future of faith is the sharpening and marginalization of fundamentalism.  To look at this, Cox highlights al Qaida, a group that emerged in response to what it saw as the secularization of governments founded in Islam.  Intelligence analysts tell us that al Qaida’s goal is not first and foremost to hurt America and non-Muslim states.  Al Qaida wants Islamic renewal, and after witnessing the trend of impassioned young Muslims rising whenever a foreign state intervenes in domestic affairs, al Qaida saw an opportunity to coax America to attack.  Hence 9/11; we each needed the other to attack.  For a few years, their desire for the US to attack worked well and surged their ranks.  Fundamentalist movements are well equipped to draw true believers.  But the plan backfired, as fundamentalist tactics warped by a good guys vs. bad guys worldview tend to do, and by 2005, we saw al Qaida’s plummeting esteem in the Muslim world.  The became the laughable sideliners, angrily fighting a loosing battle.  An American national intelligence agency reported in 2008 that al Qaida was being alienated from the broader Muslim world due to its “indiscriminate killing and inattention to the practical problems of poverty, unemployment, and education.”

Cox makes a startling comparison to Islam’s extremist wing to what he says is the American Christian version: the Religious Right’s desire for a “Christian nation.”  In Africa, it comes in the form of bishops splitting communions over women and gay clergy.  In Israel, it is the formation of a religious “Torah State.”  In India, the Barata Janata party wants to “Hinduize” India.  It is a consistent fundamentalist reaction we see in every major religion to discomfort with globalization.  At some point, globalization and growing literacy/education forces a community to a crisis point at which they will choose either mechanistic and reactionary fundamentalism, or a rupture into faith beyond the traditional bounds of beliefs they have known.  My fear for the Church is that so many choose fundamentalism because they mistakenly feel doing so is loyal to Jesus and the Bible.  It is a very deceptive myth that shrouds fear and misinformation as loyalty.

Jedi Prophet Yoda

The great sage Yoda once said, “Fear is the path to the Dark Side.  Fear leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate… leads to suffering. “

There is much fear disguising itself as loyalty in all the fundamentalist movements.  It thrives on misinformation and an unwillingness to learn from anyone outside its own camp.  And it is a losing battle.  Fundamentalism will never die, but it will continue to be marginalized, screaming from the sidelines that somebody else stole their things and they want them back.

The Future of Faith

In the end Cox is very hopeful for the future of faith, as am I.  A growing emphasis on Spirit and Justice is on the rise, and fundamentalism is on the decline.  Faith, with its loyal prophets of education and atheism, are growing strong.  Just as creeds emerged from the spheres of authority over a vast body that could have cared less, we see less emphasis on lists of beliefs for inclusion (and theologians like myself are far more interested in a wider sphere of learning).  There is less hierarchy, patriarchy, and dogmatism.  Faiths are rediscovering their founder’s philosophies.  The Church is rediscovering “Gospel” as Jesus defined it (“the Kingdom of God is at hand”) rather than the way 20^th century fundamentalism defined it (“believe these things and you will get to heaven”).  As Rabbi Gamaliel once urged the Sanhedrin to cease oppressing an emerging Jewish sect called “the Way of Jesus” because if it was from God it could not be stopped, I am convinced this new turn of the Spirit and Justice will not be stopped.  It will be excommunicated, slandered, oppressed, and martyred, but it will not be stopped.

a brief survey of American Fundamentalism (“the Future of Faith” by Harvey Cox, part 2)

Fundamentalists can be scary. If you spook them, they will lash out at you and then tell you god told them to do it. You have to be nice to then and not show interest in science while they convert you. And nothing spooks them more than finding out they aren’t quite the original faith that they fashion themselves to be. They are every bit legit, as sure as Evolution is a lie of Satan, and they will tell you so.

In The Future of Faith, Harvey Cox is not afraid to take on Christianity’s chief revisionists: American Fundamentalists.

Seriously, by “Fundamentalists,” I don’t just mean someone who is ultra-conservative, anti-thinking, and pro-blowing-stuff-up. We all know that’s true for some of them, but really, I use the term “Fundamentalist” here in the technical sense that its own members in the past defined themselves as, referring to a list of non-negotiable beliefs as well as a mindset that is often implied by such an outlook. I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense. I’ve attended and served in several Evangelical churches, and while Fundamentalism may be something I no longer identify with personally, it is the mother of my faith; and in that sense I owe Fundamentalism my very faith. So it is a part of my faith’s past that I hold lovingly.

The History of Fundamentalists… who seldom know they are Fundamentalists

The Christian Fundamentalist movement can trace its roots to late 19^th and early 20^th century counter-reformations that emerged in response to theological liberalism at the time. Scholarship, as well as trendy notions that Christianity would dissolve into a single command (Love) and no more, upset the religious commons and they began to respond with a high dependence on safe beliefs. In 1910, a movement indignant at what they saw as the syncretism of accommodation began to publish a pamphlet called The Fundamentals, and widely circulated this pamphlet. They gallantly took the name Fundamentalists for themselves, using it not as a negative term, but instead with intent to show fidelity to the Faith. The Five Fundamentals chosen were 1) the divine inspiration and total inerrancy of the Bible, 2) the Virgin Birth of Christ, 3) the penal substitutionary atonement of Christ, 4) the bodily resurrection of Christ, and 5) the imminent second coming of Christ in glory. Each was picked do to particular battle being waged at the time with the academy. So inherent to the birth of Fundamentalism, as inflammatory as this may seem, is a sort of anti-intellectualism which the movement was birthed in response as. History, science, textual criticism, and the academy that pushed these things, all became suspect to the fundamentalist. And Cox notes significantly, not one of those imperative Fundamentals had anything at all to do with the life and teaching of Christ.

A mere fifty years before (mid 19^th century) had seen the rise of language such as “accept Christ as your personal Savior” in popular terminology. And now with the paramount importance of (these 5) beliefs over actions, Fundamentalism was a functional and coherent converting machine, though dooming itself to have little to say on the life and teaching of Christ.

They sought to “get back to the teachings of the early church,” all the while loathing the scholarship trying to shed light on the variant and amorphous teachings of the early church. But a revisionist history will serve a group quite well so long as the collective operates by the narrative. Each fundamental was a response to liberalism: inerrancy countered growing application of historical research and literary methods; virgin birth and resurrection countered Christ being painted as a mere moral exemplar; immanent second coming was meant to cease ideas that man was coming closer to bringing the Kingdom of God to earth. The second coming fundamental inaugurated the 20^th century American church’s obsession with novel and localized (both in time and history) interpretation of isolated texts in Daniel and Ezekiel, combined with Revelation, into a belief that we are on the precipice of the Apocalypse. It’s a popular misunderstanding of prophecy and eschatology. This belief in a Rapture and coming 7 year Tribulation represents well the way in which a revisionist history (and worldview resistant to others) can permeate a subculture to the point that believers presume this is only the conservative, orthodox belief and that anything contrary is new. But this was just as fundamental as the rest.

Harvey Cox makes a compelling case that while non-fundamentalist sects of religions have made great strides in interfaith dialogue (always a good thing), this has often come at the expense of intrafaith dialogue. As it is suspect of syncretism at any inter/intrafaith dialogue which does not aim at conversion, Fundamentalism has been similarly cut off from conversation with the broader church, to the detriment of all. This dichotomy has created on one side an elitist Christianity unwilling to take Fundamentalists seriously, and on the other a Fundamentalist Christianity which sees itself as a victim struggling against the forces of evil (though evil may come under the façade of a more liberal Christian) in its endless battle to get back to the good ole’ days of pure belief (which are themselves a myth).

In his chapter entitled “Get Them into the Lifeboat,” Cox walks us through his own phase as a fundamentalist. It was a moment of nostalgia for me. I grew up Southern Baptist until my family moved to a non-denominational church when I was 13. And though I was vaguely aware that there were specific dates at which the Baptist or Non-Denom movements started, we tacitly just knew that we had the “real” faith, the one that had been around since the very beginning. Cox had a similar stint with Fundamentalism, exposed through a college campus ministry, doing door-to-door evangelism, and getting people saved. It began to loose sway for him, much as it did for me, as he grew in awareness of textual criticism, the problematic history of Christianity and the text, and the general threat that questioning seemed to pose. The threat taken at honest, seeking questions was the greatest single destabilize in my own fundamentalism.

With these fundamentals nailed down for the true believer, Cox quotes the great evangelist Dwight Moody who said, “the Lord told me, ‘Moody, just get as many into the lifeboat as you can.’” American Fundamentalism was persuasive and argumentative from its birth, and has continued so on, especially given its preeminence placed on particular items of beliefs to be decided on. But the problems with the Bible, over which it separated with Mainline Christianity over, still arose. If the bible was inerrant, which version? Was it the very words, the thoughts, or just the overall concept? And which Bible? Though the Bible has never gone more than a few hundred years without being added or subtracted from, this did not concern an entirely Protestant sect until the findings at Nag Hammadi, the growing awareness of other ancient gospels and apocalypses, or the simple fact that the old manuscripts we have don’t match. What do you do with Mark if it ends 20 different ways depending on which manuscript you grabbed today? And are we then making ourselves a “Paper Pope,” which, although inconsistent to everyone around us, we see as inerrant?

Many more problems were to come, not the least of which was Fundamentalism’s, along with its close cousin Evangelicalism, growing estrangement from the culture at large. The gap was wide enough that this was considered a good thing.

Though the particular fundamentals have changed focus somewhat, they are still remarkably similar a century later. The worldview has not changed much, and so powerful is the idea that we are the norm and just getting back to original Christianity that most fundamentalists seem to be unaware that they are, in fact, fundamentalists. Again, I don’t mean this term to be taken in any derogatory sense, but I do think it would be better for dialogue inside the church if fundamentalists could recognize themselves as every bit as new as the liberals on the other side. Fundamentalists are not recovering the early church, nor are they recovering orthodoxy. It is not there to be recovered. Instead, they are a later movement that appeals to a certain mindset. The unquestioning, unceasing faithfulness of the fundamentalist is admirable. But it is still a 20^th century North American theological movement.

In combating theological liberalism, there is a sense in which Fundamentalists accidentally and unwittingly created *wince* … a newer liberalism. But don’t point that out to them.

Cox closes with this bit:

“Having once experienced at least a hint of the vigor that drives Christian fundamentalists, I am always fascinated by their movements and still feel a touch of empathy with them. I cannot help but admire their commitment and dive. I still find myself at times humming the soaring hymns I learned with them. Still, I also know how much effort it requires to be a fundamentalist. It can get tiring. You must constantly fight not only the skepticism of those around you, but the doubts that arise within yourself. Mainly fundamentalists evoke from me a sense of sadness. Their pathos is that they expend such energy on such a losing cause.”