Holy Relationship, No Holy Feud
Posted January 24th, 2010
Around 1910, a group of Presbyterian scholars at the Princeton Seminary sought to challenge what they saw as the modernizing tendency of some of the other seminary faculty. Their writings were gathered in a massive twelve-volume series called The Fundamentals. Thus, and ever since, Christian fundamentalism was born.
Surely, you and I understand the motivation behind those who call themselves fundamentalists, at least historically. They desired to reinstate a clear and unambiguous emphasis that Christ’s miracles were real, for instance, or that scripture is not in error because it is revealed by the Holy Spirit.
It’s sometimes funny and altogether sad that we will often rather fight from our respective, defensive positions, and lob bombs at the other camp, rather than seek conciliation, no less than when our religious claims are at stake. Ever since the early 20th century, there has been an indelible gulf in Christianity – between stark conservative fundamentalists, on the one hand, who claim that the bible cannot be interpreted but only received and followed, period; and liberal modernists, on the other, who assert that the bible contradicts itself on any number of points and, as such, it should either be left behind or re-made to fit a new era of human thought.
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