your autobiographical comments explain a lot, and I mean that positively. If I relate some of my own, they might explain a few things as well.

I grew up in a nice liberal Methodist setting in Wisconsin, in which, during Sunday school, in the 3rd or 4th grade, we were introduced to “J” and such. It’s about the only thing I specifically remember: this picture of “J” striding across the Judean countryside. He was, I think, understood to be a member of the Solomonic Enlightenment – you know what I’m talking about. Great stuff.

I was also taught that science and faith were like two lights on the same pole. Well, I knew it wasn’t quite that simple, because I grew up reading Stephen Jay Gould. But Gould is a Darwinian with a deep respect for faith. He raises questions, but doesn’t shoot anyone down.

Later, upon having a born-again kind of experience, and charismatic experiences on top of that, I noticed that I was not supposed to have the notions I did about the Bible as a historical document. I tried, off and on, to think like an American evangelical is supposed to, you know, get all worked up in a lather about an apparent contradiction in scripture, and not give up until I had some supposedly plausible solution to the problem. But it seemed like a prison-house to me.

On the other hand, when I began reading Augustine, or Barth, or Bonhoeffer, or Luther or Calvin or Aquinas on scripture, I breathed an air of freedom and joy. They speak of scripture in very exalted terms. They also use inerrancy and infallibility language in reference to scripture. But it doesn’t have a prison-house feel to it. Do you follow me?

I would probably describe my definition as more clinical than etical. I think it accurately describes the various kinds of fundamentalists out there, whatever their larger religious tradition. In that sense, it is etical, since one cannot simultaneously be e.g. a Christian and Muslim fundamentalist without having an aneurysms.

pistolpete,
Glad to hear of your recent release! I don’t think fundamentalists are any more simplistic than the rest of humanity. Generally speaking, we’re all out to carve a little piece of the epistemological pie for ourselves, are we not?

I look forward to your reflections on the errors of inerrancy. I would encourage you to distinguish between the use of inerrancy and infallibility language as deployed in what I call the great tradition (including a recent text like the Vatican’s Dei Verbum) and the use (to my mind, sometimes abuse) to which it has been put among those who self-identify as fundamentalists on the one hand, and those who self-identify as evangelicals on the other.

Thanks for suggesting that I might not fit into your definition of fundamentalism. We both practice the historical-critical method, date texts in more or less the same way, etc., but I stand out a bit because I’m at home with and seek to recover infallibility and inerrancy language referred to Scripture, not within the framework of the history of American evangelicalism, but within the framework of the history of theology of earlier epochs (the Fathers, rabbinic Judaism, Thomas, the Reformers).

You define fundamentalists etically (from the outside), not emically (from the inside, self-identification markers), and whenever someone does that, as I’m sure you know, an exercise in self-definition is being presented in terms of a description of the abominable “other.”

That’s just a heads up to let you know that I was trained to read a definition like yours (we find them in ancient texts all the time, don’t we?) as if it were a mirror with a reflection on it of the one who penned it plainly visible.

In terms of Christian fundamentalists, I believe Drew’s link is pretty much spot on. However, all of those issues stem from the paradigm I provide above.

Ipkalal, there are many books on this subject. One I particularly liked was THe Scandal of the Evangelical Mind by Mark Noll. Of course, his advise seems to have been too little too late what with the theological train-wreck that is Evangelicalism in the last ten years. But, it is still a good overview.