Clare’s blog, aka rantspace

This is a very important distinction, and one that’s too seldom made in general conversation about the church, as well as in my blog.  So I’m making it now, by way of clarifying what I suspect may be misunderstood by some that read here.

There are two basic divisions, theologically speaking, within the christian church.  One is liberal, the other is fundamental; that is, there are liberal beliefs and there are fundamentalist beliefs.

The best way to define fundamentalism is to give a bit of history.  Back in about 1905 in the US, a bunch of Presbyterians got together to agree on five “fundamentals” of faith.  Those fundamentals were, and are still – the inerrancy of Scripture; the divinity of Christ; the virgin birth; the substitutionary theory of atonement (in simpler words – Jesus took the punishment for our sins); and the bodily return of Christ.  However, the term fundamentalist wasn’t really used until the 1940s, when there was a split between those who believed in asserting the fundamentals from within their existing denomination, and those who believed in separating themselves from others who didn’t firmly believe the fundamentals.  Those who remained within denominations became known as evangelicals, and the separatists as fundamentalists.

Liberals, on the other hand, are much harder to define.  The reason for this is the basic characteristic of a liberal, which is that they do not assert rules about what must be believed in order to be defined as christian.  Instead, they would probably prefer to talk about beliefs that identify a faith as christian, the most basic of which is a belief in Christ.  But not simply a belief that Jesus existed (which is fairly universally accepted, these days), but that in encountering Jesus you are encountering God.*  And let me make it quite clear, at this point, that that is not the same as believing that Jesus IS God.  But beyond that identifying belief, liberals would argue that a wide range of interpretations of the bible are possible, and that no-one has a right to label someone else a non-christian because they interpret something differently.

(Note: The fact that the word fundamentalist is now used to describe anyone asserting their belief in a fanatical way bears out the common acceptance of the distinction I am making here.  Although in a christian context, fundamentalism still also refers to belief in the fundamentals, in a wider sense fundamentalism refers to an aggressive and uncompromising approach to communicating beliefs, rather than to the particular beliefs themselves.)

These days, most major denominations comprise both fundamentalists and liberals.  The Sydney diocese of the Anglican church, for example, is fundamentalist.  Much of the rest of the Anglican church in Australia is more liberal.  The Uniting Church allows for a wide range of beliefs, so many members have liberal beliefs, but some congregations are closer to fundamentalism.  Cardinal Pell could safely be labelled a fundamentalist, judging from his public pronouncements.  Many other Catholics are not.  And this internal difference in perspective and attitude to belief is, in many cases, at the heart of intra-denominational disputes about homosexuality, the ordination of women, abortion, etc.

However, where all this related to me blogging is that I often refer to “the church” – mostly in disparaging terms   And I think it’s important to put on record that in these cases I am specifically referring to the fundamentalist end of the church spectrum.  Because to me it is not christianity, per se, that is dangerous, but the fundamentalist component of it.  And the same goes for any other religion – a faith that allows others to hold a different faith is harmless; a faith that insists that everyone should believe the same as they do, and is prepared to exert pressure (eg. claiming that if you don’t believe you’ll go to hell) or force (terrorist attacks, the Inquisition) to convince people to convert is profoundly dangerous and abusive.

Footnote:
* I am grateful to this site for this way of expressing it.

So far I’ve been added to at least two other blogrolls that I know of. And I feel that common courtesy ought to return the favour. But I’m conscious that this blog is part of a wider website which is accessed primarily by clergy sexual abuse victims. Many of them are easily triggered by church-related and/or sex-related references, and I have always aimed to keep my site as a safe space for them, where anything likely to be triggering has a warning attached to it. It is in that spirit I have to refrain from including on the blogroll some blogs I otherwise would, so if yours is one of them, my apologies – it has nothing to do with my level of respect and interest in your blog.

Despite my apparent boldness in putting up my website (www.clergyabuseaustralia.org), with my story, I’m really quite protective of my privacy. Blogging has seemed to me for a long time to be wilfully relinquishing that privacy, and hence I’ve avoided it, but now I’ve figured it can be an avenue to release the frustrations I feel about how blind people still are to the church’s power and intent to manipulate and control. So herewith begins my small attempt to stem the tide, and make people think.

And as soon as I find out how to fix that damn title up there, so it says what I want it to say, I will!!