Christianity's Biggest Threat

We tried to go after a pretty big topic on the radio show this past Monday--"What is the biggest threat to Christianity?" A few interesting answers were thrown on the table, including disillusionment with religion and religion continuing to come to terms with modern ways of thinking.

I never really explained what I think is the biggest threat to Christianity: fundamentalism. One former Southern Baptist had this to say: "The inclination to conserve the creativities of the past can become such a compelling obsession that nothing new can ever pop into our heads. One of the tragedies of fundamentalism, religious or political or social, is that it is a joyless, argumentative, dogmatic, quarrelsome, fighting neurosis that squelches freedom and quenches creativity. The Devil of fundamentalism scowls and frowns and complains and opposes and bickers and moans and maneuvers and manipulates and schemes and plots but seems incapable of achieving the freedom to enjoy a hearty laugh. Revealed religion, we bear in mind, calls for creativity as well as conservation" (quoted in The Christian Century).

Fundamentalism claims that every word of scripture is inerrant and comes from God. In my view, this approach to the Bible raises its words to the role of divinity themselves. I believe that scripture springs from humanity's struggle to search for God and the expression of an understanding of God. To speak of the Bible as the inerrant Word of God is nothing else than idolatry--an idolatry of the Bible, in which the words of scripture take the place of God.

Our denomination (the United Church of Christ) has put on an entire evangelism campaign based on the slogan "God is still speaking." To make this claim means that God's words are more than just what scripture records. It means that God did not stop speaking sometime in the century after Jesus' crucifixion, but continues to seek us out now, just as the Spirit of God's voice sought out the biblical authors in ancient times. Sometimes we get it wrong today, and sometimes they got it wrong back then, too. Our God is a living God; to limit the message of God to words written down by ancient writers turns God into a dead deity, speaking words conditioned by a culture that no longer makes sense to most of us.

It is no news that fundamentalism leads to intolerance, extremism, hatred, fear, and even war. For me, there is simply no way of reconciling this way of reading scripture with the message of the God we find in Jesus Christ who reminded us to love our neighbors as ourselves.

-Pastor Chris