Watching the young ladies try to run in their long skirts is worth the price of admission on this one.
Fundamental Flaws E-Book Released!
I’m happy to announce today that my (very short) e-book Fundamental Flaws: Seven Things Independent Fundamental Baptists Get Wrong (And How to Fix Them) is now available on Amazon for Kindle reader! This book includes both familiar posts from the best of SFL plus some brand new material.
This isn’t an exhaustive tome (30 pages can only hold so much) nor is it stuffed full of citation, cross-references, and Bible verses. I’ve been asked over and over by people who have happened by this blog why I don’t spend more time pointing out the RIGHT way to do things instead of simply harping on things that are wrong with fundamentalism. In that spirit, I’ve included not only a discussion of seven problem areas in fundamentalism but also a brief statement of what I think would help fix them.
Now in the interest of getting this book into the places where it may do the most good, I’d like to make a very special offer to any current student at a Fundy U: send me a note via the contact form or e-mail books@stufffundieslike.com using your student e-mail address and I’ll shoot you back a link to a PDF download of this book which you can feel free to share with other students if you dare.
I’d like once again to thank Ted Williams who did some really great illustrations that add a lot to the book. Buy a download for yourself and then buy one for every fundy on your Christmas list. Then all that remains is to sit back and watch the fun.
Friday Challenge: Spot The Anti-Christ
Presidential election years usually give rise to increased speculation in fundamentalist circles about whom the anti-Christ (and beast and false-prophet) may be. The challenge today is to give your best guess from the current cast of politicians, celebrities, and strange people who live on your street.
Extra points are awarded if you can come up with an entire sermon outline that “proves” this person is the almost definitely the Man (or Woman) of Sin.
Christ-like Crisis Response
This call to prayer is the quintessential response of fundamentalists to times of tragedy and need. Apparently as long as you pray for the needs of someone’s soul you are absolved from having to care about their body.
Mike apparently thinks it’s what Jesus would do.
Fundamentalist, Interrupted
Today we have a guest post by Robb Ryerse, a former fundamentalist pastor who has just released a new book about his transformation away from fundamentalism. If you’d like to hear more from Robb he’ll be on the Ragamuffin Show tomorrow night at 8.
When I was in high school, some of my friends and I wanted to play some basketball in the church gym on a Sunday afternoon. I called my uncle, the chairman of the trustee board, and asked for permission. He said, “No.” Sporting events weren’t allowed at church on Sundays. I could hear his TV in the background. He was watching the game.
For two summers in college, I did a pastoral internship at my home church. One morning, our senior pastor announced that I would be attending a sacred music conference sponsored by Patch the Pirate’s Majesty Music. I was going because he thought my CCM (Steven Curtis Chapman and Steve Camp) was too worldly.
In college I dated a girl who was King James Only. Though I attended a proudly fundamentalist Bible college, we weren’t taught to exclusively use the KJV. But she did. And so, every day for the two months that we dated, I proudly carried my KJV Ryrie Study Bible to chapel. The day we broke up was the last day I opened that particular Bible.
I’ve had countless conversations with church people about all sorts of “important” issues: Whether or not smoking is a sin. Whether or not a Christian can have a tattoo. If it’s acceptable for a believer to vote for a Democrat. If Christians should boycott Disney. What is the appropriate length of a lady’s skirt.
Like so many others who grew up in fundamentalism, I’ve experienced my fair share of condemnation and craziness. And eventually, it all got to be too much. I had to leave fundamentalism.
Ultimately, however, it was not the legalistic dos and don’ts that drove me away from the fundamentalism of my upbringing. It was something much more, well, fundamental than that.
About eight years ago, I was pastoring a fundamental Baptist church where I was preparing to preach through Genesis. I knew all of the answers I had been taught – literal seven-day creationism, a literal walking-talking snake, a literal garden with a literal angel with a literal flaming sword.
And I also knew the questions that began to gnaw at me:
• Why do Genesis 1 and 2 sound like they were spoken in two different voices?
• Where did Cain’s wife come from?
• What happened to the dinosaurs?
• Doesn’t a global flood feel like a bit of an over-reaction?
• How could God be willingly tied to such a family of scoundrels?
These questions exposed that the pat answers of my fundamentalist upbringing were no longer resonating with me. If the answers I had always been told were shaky, maybe the whole system was too. This I knew with certainty – if I verbalized the doubts I was experiencing in a sermon, I would be fired.
This realization sent me spiraling into a spiritual depression, a dark night of the soul, that lasted for many months. When I eventually emerged from it, my own fundamorphosis was well underway. A fundamorphosis is the theological transformation that frees someone from fundamentalism.
My fundamorphosis has freed me to embrace grace and mystery like never before. I now have a belief system that is big enough to handle my doubt. I am very comfortable saying, “I don’t know.” I don’t feel the need to convince everyone to agree with me nor to condemn them when they don’t. I think I’m a lot more humble, honest, and hopeful. More than anything, my fundamorphosis has been about becoming something fundamentalism never encouraged. I became authentic. I am finally free to be me.
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Robb Ryerse is the author of the new book Fundamorphosis: How I Left Fundamentalism But Didn’t Lose My Faith. Available now on Amazon. He is the pastor of Vintage Fellowship (www.vintagefellowship.org) in Fayetteville AR. He blogs at www.thegrenzian.com.