Liberal Fundamentalism
Most of my life I have been around Christian Fundamentalism. In my youth I did not really understand it. In my early adulthood I was fairly zealously a part of it. In recent years I have moved to the edge of the movement with only a step or two to exit. There are many good things in the movement, but I think they have at the same time earned some of the resentment hurled at them. As I analyze some of the less desirable features of "Fundies", I am seeing a closer and closer resemblance between the liberal movement and the dark side of Fundamentalism.
A detailed writing on the subject would be too long and get more into matters of faith than I choose to in this forum. So I will highlight a couple areas. One involves how they are viewed while the other how they view others. Both groups tend to be very judgmental of others. They are constantly analyzing the actions and words of people and construing (often misconstruing) what is going on in the inner person. The Fundie is often viewed as taking on a "Mrs. Gladys Kravitz" approach to viewing others: snooping, judging and jumping to conclusions. They act as if they know what is going on inside you based on whatever they think they observe. (Mind you I am not talking about all of them. Enough are this way to have given the rest a bad rap, though) Liberals in the same way are constantly judging others with their politically correct yardstick. They make judgments of racism and sexism where it does not exist - claiming it is so deep rooted even the person does not know himself enough to know he is "this way". Then if you do not subscribe to their liberal doctrines of socialism, they make accusations that you do not care about people, especially minorities and the poor.
In the area of how they are viewed, people often throw accusations of hypocrisy and insincerity at Fundamentalists. If they really believed what they "preach" they would be acting differently - toward God and toward their fellow man. I think the same think can be thrown at liberals. If they really believed what they "preached" they would live their lives differently. Two excellent examples are man made catastrophic global warming and taxes.
If liberals truly believed that the earth is in grave danger due to man's emissions, they would drastically reduce their lifestyle - and not with the discredited carbon offsets either. They are trying to push the government into forcing emission reductions across the board for everybody. If they really believed what they preach they would not wait until the government enforces such reductions. They would take drastic measures now. Some currently do, but there are many more (especially with celebrity status) who only do so when enforced by government.
Similarly in taxation, many liberals think that our fiscal problems are caused by being under-taxed. This notion is ludicrous. All one has to do is look around: every person with a job, every item for sale, every property, every service and every luxury is an opportunity for taxation. All are taxed and often on multiple levels of taxation. There is a ton of money coming in. Liberals then point out how much the wealthy have and that such wealth is too obscene while others have little or nothing. So they push and they vocalize for more and more taxation. More taxation for all and especially more taxation for the wealthy. They preach this is the right thing to do because they can then take the money and help others without. If they really believed what they preached, they would voluntarily pay more taxes. It is so easy - simply figure your tax liability and when writing the check ADD to it. Instead they want to wait until laws are passed before they will part with more of their money. Instead they scrape and claw for every tax loophole and deduction they can find to keep their tax burden even lower.
Face it liberals - many of you show nothing but contempt and hatred for Christian Fundamentalists. You disrespect them with your comments on TV. You use Fundies as material for your comedy. You buck against this group. However, as I have shown you are very much alike in the areas I have pointed out: how you view others and how you are viewed. I'm sure this makes your day.
A detailed writing on the subject would be too long and get more into matters of faith than I choose to in this forum. So I will highlight a couple areas. One involves how they are viewed while the other how they view others. Both groups tend to be very judgmental of others. They are constantly analyzing the actions and words of people and construing (often misconstruing) what is going on in the inner person. The Fundie is often viewed as taking on a "Mrs. Gladys Kravitz" approach to viewing others: snooping, judging and jumping to conclusions. They act as if they know what is going on inside you based on whatever they think they observe. (Mind you I am not talking about all of them. Enough are this way to have given the rest a bad rap, though) Liberals in the same way are constantly judging others with their politically correct yardstick. They make judgments of racism and sexism where it does not exist - claiming it is so deep rooted even the person does not know himself enough to know he is "this way". Then if you do not subscribe to their liberal doctrines of socialism, they make accusations that you do not care about people, especially minorities and the poor.
In the area of how they are viewed, people often throw accusations of hypocrisy and insincerity at Fundamentalists. If they really believed what they "preach" they would be acting differently - toward God and toward their fellow man. I think the same think can be thrown at liberals. If they really believed what they "preached" they would live their lives differently. Two excellent examples are man made catastrophic global warming and taxes.
If liberals truly believed that the earth is in grave danger due to man's emissions, they would drastically reduce their lifestyle - and not with the discredited carbon offsets either. They are trying to push the government into forcing emission reductions across the board for everybody. If they really believed what they preach they would not wait until the government enforces such reductions. They would take drastic measures now. Some currently do, but there are many more (especially with celebrity status) who only do so when enforced by government.
Similarly in taxation, many liberals think that our fiscal problems are caused by being under-taxed. This notion is ludicrous. All one has to do is look around: every person with a job, every item for sale, every property, every service and every luxury is an opportunity for taxation. All are taxed and often on multiple levels of taxation. There is a ton of money coming in. Liberals then point out how much the wealthy have and that such wealth is too obscene while others have little or nothing. So they push and they vocalize for more and more taxation. More taxation for all and especially more taxation for the wealthy. They preach this is the right thing to do because they can then take the money and help others without. If they really believed what they preached, they would voluntarily pay more taxes. It is so easy - simply figure your tax liability and when writing the check ADD to it. Instead they want to wait until laws are passed before they will part with more of their money. Instead they scrape and claw for every tax loophole and deduction they can find to keep their tax burden even lower.
Face it liberals - many of you show nothing but contempt and hatred for Christian Fundamentalists. You disrespect them with your comments on TV. You use Fundies as material for your comedy. You buck against this group. However, as I have shown you are very much alike in the areas I have pointed out: how you view others and how you are viewed. I'm sure this makes your day.
Labels: Christian Fundamentalism, Gladys Kravitz, Global Warming, Liberal Fundamentalism, Taxation
posted by All_I_Can_Stands @ 8:31 PM
2 Comments:
At 8:50 PM,
Incognito said…
Very interesting post AICS! I would tend to agree with you. When you have people like Dobson claiming Fred Thompson is not a Christian because he is not evangelical is reprehensible. How dare he judge the Faith of another man. And I would take it a step further... some of them, both extreme liberals and ultra fundamentalist Christians are not much better than the radical Islamists, when it comes to intolerance etc, and claiming to be the only way.
At 10:23 AM,
All_I_Can_Stands said…
Incognito,
I have not really followed Dobson very closely. While I do not think his comments on Thompson were purposefully malicious, it does show a pervading subconscious aura of judgmentalism and superiority that pervades the conservative Christian movement.
That said, I find it humorous that the Fundamentalist group I have been associated with likely does not view Dobson as a Fundamentalist. Of course public discourse has hijacked the term "Fundamentalism". I think this could have been avoided if when the Fundamentalist movement began, they had picked a different name. Unfortunately it was too generic and easily hijacked.
I understand your feelings about ultra Fundamentalists. I don't think many would resort to violence, though. I also have no problem with a given faith claiming they are the only way. Why would they think otherwise? It is nearly universal that religions think they have a corner on the truth. It makes more sense to me that there is one truth than that there are many truths. It makes especial sense that a Christian follow the Bible and the Bible claims it's teachings are the only way. The problem comes when there are areas of the Bible that are interpreted different ways and difficult passages are interpreted with certainty and dogma. While I think most of the Bible is easy to understand, there are a few areas that I have studied for years and still scratch my head over.
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