Curious Christian

I must be into pet hates this week. Here’s another one. The word “fundamentalist,” for it has been so abused over recent decades that any decent meaning it once had has well and truly been leached out of it.

Once upon a time a fundamentalist meant someone who championed the fundamentals of Christianity. But in intervening decades it has been applied to Muslim terrorists and market economists and just about anyone else with an aggressive theology or ideology. So much so that it is now little more than a pejorative term, a religious swear word. I mean, reaaaally, why don’t we just drop the pretense and start calling religious people we don’t like [insert expletive of choice] instead; at least that’s more intellectually honest, for that’s what we really mean isn’t it!

And you know what’s really ironic? It’s that those we label Christian fundamentalists really aren’t so focused on the fundamentals of Christianity any more. Listen to them, they’re not focused on the gospel; they’re all focused on homosexuality and the rapture and prosperity theology and whether Adam had a navel all sorts of other stuff. Hardly fundamental!

Now if we want a more technical term I think it is far better to speak of “militant reactionaries” than “fundamentalists,” for organized militancy in reaction against secularism does seem to be the one common denominator between these belligerent movements. And at the very least it saves us from having to invent such oxymoronic terms as “fundamentalist” liberals to speak of belligerent lefties.

So, we can then speak of militant Christianity, militant Islam, militant Hinduism, militant Atheism, with a little more sense.

And you know, I think the “militant” tag is particularly apt when we come back to look at reactionary Christians more closely, for they are really, really fond of military language and metaphors, have you noticed? One of the easiest ways to tell militant conservatives (i.e. fundamentalists) apart from non-militant conservatives (i.e. evangelicals) is the frequency with which they resort to warfare words. Militant Christians speak of “spiritual warfare” and “the full armor of God” and “crusades” and being “washed in the blood” and “prayer cover” (like it’s “air cover”) far more frequently than non-militant Christians. They just lurv fightin words.