I start chemo today, so of course this is what I'm thinking about:
I'm stringing together some ideas from John O'Donohue and Parker Palmer which are helping me see the heart of fundamentalism, and realize that this sort of stream can take many forms.
In speaking about the richness of language and how it gives voice to a culture and people's rich history, O'Donohue says this: "When strangers intrude and take over what is not their own, everything in the place reminds them that they do not belong there. Their guilt and unease can be assuaged by making the take-over as clean and thorough as possible. They must control everything. This is what a colonizer does. Our Irish language was targeted in this way. “
I think of how much of the history of evangelism reflects the same effects as colonialism.
And, "Given the sense of homelessness in modern life, there is anxiety and fear and a tendency to prescribe a style of belonging that has no self-criticism and wants to corral longing in fixed, empirical frames. This is fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is false longing and forced belonging. Unable to read or decipher the labyrinth of absence, the homeless mind often reverts to nostalgia. It begins to imagine that our present dilemma, rather than being a new threshold of possibility, is in fact a disastrous fall from an ideal past. Fundamentalism laments the absence of the time when everything was as it should be. Family values, perfect morality and a pure faith existed without the chagrin of question, critique, or the horror of such notorious practices as alternative lifestyles or morality. Such perfection of course never existed. (Note: This reminds me of how I used to say our church relished the 1850's and the 1950's. That was the golden age...unless you were a woman or a black person.) Neither experience nor culture has ever been monolithic. Fundamentalism is based on faulty and fear-filled perception. It constructs a fake absence, the absence of something that never in fact existed in the first place. It then uses this fake to demand a future constructed on a false ideal. Fundamentalism pretends to have found an absolute access point to the inner mind of the mystery. Such certainty cannot sustain itself in real conversation that is critical or questioning."
Isn't that something? Nostalgia for a life that never existed? Lamenting the loss of a world that never was? Isn't that like every moral sermon you ever heard?
Christianity doesn't do that. Instead, it is homesick, or homeless now because it is longing for a world that "will be". It isn't missing a time that was and was lost, it is waiting for a promised time (Parousia?), that is now but not yet. One is a sorrow with dismay. The other is a sorrow with hope.
People who live on the borders are gazing toward the future, on the "threshold of possibility". But to the fundamentalist, they are somehow seen as the ones who have brought an end to the past ideal, and they are dangerous.
"Fundamentalism does not converse or explore. It presents truth. It is essentially noncognitive. This false certainty can only endure through the belief that everyone else is wrong. So it is not surprising that such fundamentalism desires power in order to implement its vision and force the others to do as prescribed. Fundamentalism is dangerous and destructive. There is neither acceptance nor generosity in it differences with the world. It presumes it knows the truth that everyone should follow....Blind loyalty replaces critical belonging. Creative and mystical individuals within an institution become caricatured as the enemy; they become marginalised or driven out."
"A community which is driven by power or too great a flurry of activity and talk will never achieve much more than superficial belonging. The attempt to force community usually drives the more creative and independent people away."
And then here are some ideas from Parker Palmer about the culture of an organization. He is speaking about the shadows that cast themselves over a group, especially leaders. Insecurity which devalues the position of others to gain more self worth, the idea that the universe is a battleground forcing us to live competitively, functional atheism which leads us to impose our will on others, and then this:
"A fourth shadow within and among us is fear, especially our fear of the natural chaos of life. Many of us are deeply devoted to eliminating all remnants of chaos from the world. We want to organize and orchestrate things so thoroughly that messiness will never bubble up around us and threaten to overwhelm us (for messiness read dissent, innovation, challenge, and change). This shadow is projected as rigidity of rules and procedures, creating an ethos that is imprisoning rather than empowering. (Then, of course, the mess we must deal with the prisoners trying to break out!)"
"And the final shadow is the fear of death itself. Leaders who participate in this denial often demand that the people around them keep resuscitating things that are no longer alive. Projects and programs that should have been unplugged long ago are kept on life support to accommodate the insecurities of a leader (or leaders) who do not want anything to die."