Today’s challenge is to recommend a helpful resource to those who are leaving fundamentalism. Read a good book? Listened to an informative lecture series? Surfed a website that challenged your thinking? Don’t just keep it to yourself!
Here are a few that I recommend…
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden
If you want to understand fundamentalism you have to go back to the beginning and understand its historical and philosophical roots. Marsden does a bang-up job of putting the entire mess into context.
The Reason For God by Tim Keller
When leaving fundamentalism the temptation is often to swing to the extreme and leave Christianity altogether. Here a very non-fundamentalist Tim Keller makes a compelling case for why Christianity still makes sense in spite of people who may abuse it. Also check out Mere Christianity by C.S Lewis for a classic handling of the same topic.
Apologetics and Outreach lectures taught by Jerram Barrs
A fantastic class on faith and evangelism taught by a fantastic teacher. This completely changed the way I look at a Christian’s mission in the world. Load this one on your iPod and listen to it while you work or drive. You will not be sorry you did.
There are many, many more I could recommend but I’ll let you all have at it…
Anything by NT Wright or CS Lewis.
Then try some James DG Dunn for NT and John Goldingay for OT.
I was recently talking with pastor’s Wife and remember this one. I don’t remember reading about it and if someone did post it… it is definately worth repeating:
The Truth Project
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thetruthproject.org%2Fwhatistruthproject%2F&h=c6874KzGVkvVJOiJRtylWk5LcVw
Currently reading Blue Like Jazz. It’s like a balm. Simply wonderful.
That is the one I was going to suggest too. I read it a while back and while I don’t remember it now, it was exactly what I needed at the time. Like you said, a balm.
I was never in the fundamentalist camp, but the following books have been very helpful to me.
Michael D. Williams — “Far as the Curse is Found” and “This World is Not My Home”
The first is an overview of God’s Covenant work among his people. It takes the Bible in a big picture approach, and shows how it is one solid narrative/story. VERY USEFUL!
The Second takes a look at eschatology, and is quite revealing in terms of how certain dispensational views line up with the Biblical story.
Both are writter in a fair and non-attacking style.
Michael Williams is a professor at Covenant Theological Seminary in Saint Louis.
From “The Prophet”
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
…For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit,
not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you
with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that
is stable.
Kahlil Gibran
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This is beautiful.
I personally enjoy the posts over at Third Option Men. Being one of the authors, I guess I’m a bit bias, but it’s pretty legit. Oh yeah, you guys are great too 😉
All the books that you were never supposed to read.
The Origin of Species is draw-droppingly well written, contrary to all previous reports.
Das Kapital just might take you out of the republican party though.
Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
The Song of Solomon especially without all the spiritual exegesis. You will blush.
The more it was disparaged, mocked, forbidden, dissed and dismissed, the more you should seek it out.
It has been 25 years for me. I have spent a lot of years in university. I still find gaps in my education because of my fundamentalist upbringing.
I would like to add Radical by David Platt. An excellent eye-opener for all believers.
Also, Already Gone: Why your kids will quit church and what you can do to stop it by Ken Hamm and Britt Beemer This one has a few ideas I had begun to notice after 20+ years of working with children, many in Fundy and Fundy-lite settings, but written by people with the ability to communicate coherently.
“Fundamentalism and the Word of God” by J.I. Packer
http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentalism-Word-God-J-Packer/dp/0802811477
Does a good job of explaining the origin of fudy, the differences between fudyland and evangelicalism and defends modern evangelicalism (which oddly enough is what most of the original fundamentalists would be considered today)