Category Archives: Public Life

Public Life, Standards

Signs of Maturity

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In order for a fundamentalist to demonstrate that he is growing in grace, he must not only maintain the standard but he must also continually increase the amount that he does. If the new Christian prays for ten minutes a day, within a year he’d better be praying thirty minutes, and five years later he needs to have worked up to an hour. To live the fundy life is to have the bar of sanctification continuously raised just out of reach.

The same rule applies to any other external area of the fundamentalist practice. Are you giving 10%? If you want to be holy like the rest of us it had better make it up to 15% by next year. If you’re really serious within a few decades you should be living on the 10% and giving us the rest.

What about your witnessing? Did you see one soul saved last year? Next year shoot for a dozen. Spiritual giants like your pastor see a soul saved every day before breakfast. And he does it without even leaving the house.

The fundamentalist treadmill only runs faster the longer you stay on it.

Public Life, Sermons

Attempts At Pop Culture References

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For all of their aversion to the evil in popular culture, fundamentalist preachers still somehow manage to bring it up fairly frequently in their sermons — often in unintentionally humorous ways. For whether it’s a warning against a TV show that went off the air ten years ago or rantings about the evil lyrics of “that rapper fellow, Snoopy Dog Dog,” the fundamentalist pastor rarely gets the details of his target exactly right.

In fact such is the regularity of these mistakes that one almost has to wonder if these flubs are intentional. For when the pastor is too accurate in his observations the obvious question is:  “where is he getting his information?”  Is there a designated person deemed spiritual enough to spend hours in a bunker deep below the church watching reruns of Will & Grace looking for sermon fodder? If there is no good Christian is watching, listening, or reading this the worldly filth he’s preaching against, then how does he know about it at all? We certainly know that he doesn’t keep unsaved friends around who might fill him in on what’s popular.

If you’ve ever spent 30 minutes trying not to laugh while listening to someone preach against the evil rock and roll of “The Jonah Brothers,” you might be a fundamentalist.

Public Life, Standards

Insulation

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The fundamentalist community has strong walls and high gates to protect itself against the world around it. In order that fundies may soil themselves as little as possible with the evil that lurks outside the sacred bubble, they attempt as much as possible to replicate every facet of secular life in fundamentalist hues inside this shell.

In short, the fundamentalist organization will attempt to become everything to you who are held in its dread sway. They are your church, your employer, your schools, your social sphere, your sports team, your library, your music publisher, your landlord, and oh, so much more.

This creates the happy circumstance where, to many people, leaving fundyland means not only losing your church but also your children’s education, all your family friends, your job,  and maybe even  your house. Many are those who grunt and sweat under a weary life in fundamentalism because they have no idea where they would go or how they would live if they left.

How do you get a job in the outside world if you know nobody there and your qualifications only exist inside the fundamental sphere? Would you risk consigning your children to the deviltry of public schooling if leaving your church meant that they could no longer attend the one they are in now? How do you make friends of the evil people in the cold, cruel world?

Hopefully one day you’ll find out that the pay is better, the people are nicer, and life is so much sweeter outside those walls. The only difference between a castle and a prison is whether you’re trying to keep the people out or in.

Public Life

Controlling The Flow of Information

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Fundamentalists fear a widespread and unregulated flow of information more than any other single thing. Any source that cannot be monitored, regulated, and censored must be demonized, castigated, and forbidden. Always.

In the past, maintaining power in a church or organization was a much simpler affair than it is today. Whatever a pastor said in his own church was unlikely to make it to the ears of anyone other than his congregation. He was free to rant, rave, posture and prevaricate to his heart’s content and nobody was the wiser.

The foibles and follies of churches, schools, and other ministries was kept a family secret. Anyone who talked about them would be punished. Anyone who wrote about them would be shunned. And who would listen anyway? Ex-fundamentalists didn’t exactly have their own newspaper.

Then the Internet happened.

Today if you ask the average fundamentalist their view of the internet the words “filth,” “lies,” and “gossip” will inevitably emerge in their description. The Christian’s position on the internet should be akin to a group street preaching in a red light district. Blast out your message but don’t stick around too long or look too closely.

Thankfully, today’s fundy pastors are finding it harder and harder to hide in the darkness and control the flow of information. What’s said in church on Sunday night will be on You Tube by Monday morning. A church’s high crimes and misdemeanors that would have never made it past the local papers now sail around the world in a matter of seconds.

The fierce light of public scrutiny has come to fundyland and its colleges and approved media outlets are running scared.