The Blue Voice

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Fundamentalists and history

One of the more intriguing books I've come across on Christian fundamentalism is one that may seem somewhat unlikely: Catholicism and Fundamentalism: The Attack on "Romanism" by "Bible Christians" (1988) by Karl Keating. As the title suggests, it's a polemical work aimed at defending official Catholic beliefs against Protestant fundamentalist criticism.

In religious terms, he is writing popular "apologetics," or defending the faith against critics. Keating was trained as an attorney, which probably contributes to the appeal of apologetics for him. An organization he founded called Catholic Answers has a Web site where one can explore such arguments at greater length, if one is so inclined. They must have gotten online early, because their address is www.catholic.com. So if you've wondered about "Hunting the Whore of Babylon" or "Is Catholicism Pagan?" , this is the Web site for you.

On that last point, by the way, it's just not true that Catholics regularly practice nekkid pagan dancing on High Holy Days. Charming as the thought may be. It doesn't happen, I tell you! It doesn't!!

As Keating writes in his preface, he intended his book to focus "on those fundamentalists, whether blessed with notoriety or with anonymity, who try to convince Catholics to forsake Rome [i.e., the Roman Catholic Church] and on the arguments they make against Catholicism." In other words, he makes no claim to a dispassionate perspective.

"Apologetics" is considered a bit old-fashioned in religious education these days. (Though not in fundamentalist schools.) But sometimes polemics like this can bring out some important observations. I was particularly struck, for instance, at Keating's discussion of how fundamentalists approach history.

In a section where he talks about polemical Protestant fundamentalist claims about the adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Roman empire and about those "pagan" influences on Catholicsm, he writes (my emphasis):

If few fundamentalists know the history of their own religion - and distressingly few do - even fewer have any appreciation for the history of the Catholic Church. They become easy prey for purveyors of fanciful histories that claim to account for the origin and advance of Catholicism. ...

The first, which might be called the "pagan convert" theory, begins, most commonly, with a listing of Catholic "inventions". These are doctrines or practices that the Church allegedly adopted for the most part from paganism long after apostolic times. The first thing to notice is that in any list of "inventions" doctrines are mixed up with practices, fundamentalist writers apparently not understanding the difference.

Or, to put it another way, secular and "faith-based" history become intermixed with each other. "Mixed up" with each other is probably a better description.

To continue with the first kind of "history": Fundamentalist writers begin by listing "inventions", mixing doctrines and practices indiscriminately. They then assign dates of origin to them. They generally claim the "inventions" postdate the Edict of Milan, which was issued in 313 and made Christianity legal in the Roman Empire. This is the cutoff date, all the bad things in Catholicism supposedly arising after that point. In fact, the dating of the "inventions" is often grossly wrong or, where right, irrelevant to the point in question, which is: When did Catholicism begin?

There are a couple of interesting points here. One is that the ministers in fundamentalist churches often have a more narrow education than ministers in more mainstream denominations or, for that matter, in the Catholic Church.

But what caught my attention about this is the way that a careless mixture of the "faith-based" and the "reality-based" can be and often is encouraged by fundamentalist views of religion and history.

Now admittedly, this is an anecdotal observation. Keating is writing a religious polemic, not conducting a social science study. But I'm confident he's right about this phenomenon. (Here's where I'm expected to put in the qualification is that general observations like this don't apply to all evangelical Protestants or even to all fundamentalists; so I hereby officially insert the qualification.)

There is also a element of mysticism in Protestant fundamentalism. Limited, to be sure, but there. This is something that has continued from the heritage of Pietism, which is a significant influence on modern fundamentalism.

All of which can combine to encourage devout fundamentalists to swallow some highly ideological versions of history. Or "fanciful" versions, as Keating puts it.

We're likely to hear of lot of such "fanciful" history from the Christian Right during the upcoming battle over Bush's first Supreme Court nomination.

The notion that Christian Right advocates routinely assert that the Founders of the Constitution had no concept of the separation of church and state is a good example of what can emerge when a hodgepodge of religious militancy, vague and highly-ideologized notions of heritage/tradition/history allies itself to political authoritarianism.

Tags: catholic church, christian fundamentalism, christian right, karl keating

posted at 1:03:00 AM by Bruce Miller

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