The following quotes, resources, or links have either shaped or reflect my views on the subject.
“Fundamentalism, in all of its forms, undermines mature decision-making because it short-circuits personal deliberation. Prefabricated answers and solutions from some external sources remove the need to struggle for our own truth, an essential struggle, out of which an autonomous self can emerge. Prone to black-and-white, either-or thinking, fundamentalism thwarts mature faith, which, according to James Fowler’s stages of faith development, requires the embrace of paradox in the midst of complexity and mystery. Biblical fundamentalists, for example, narrowly confine God’s voice and handicap their search for divine guidance. They straitjacket the truth by making “their literalist and simplistic interpretation [of scripture] the only legitimate one,” states Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno” from The Discerning Heart: Exploring the Christian Path by Wilke Au and Noreen Cannon Au.
The Takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention: A Cautionary Tale
By the time the final break in the denomination occurred at the annual meeting of the SBC in New Orleans in 1990, the SBC was totally and publicly dominated by fundamentalists who had already made much progress in removing agency executives, seminary presidents and professors, unsupportive board members, and anyone associated with the resistance to the Fundamentalist Takeover.
Today, the SBC has been ravaged by financial and sexual abuse scandals, sagging seminary enrollment, deficits, declining membership, and political relevancy only for the MAGA-world. The public has increasingly and correctly understood the SBC to be a pliable and reliable tool of the extremist faction of the Republican Party.
The same tactics of the SBC Takeover have been employed by unscrupulous men and women to successfully capture and control more than half of America’s state legislatures and governorships, and a super-majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court They have entrenched a large number of far right appellate and federal judges, enabled a minority of representatives to dominate the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives, and much more. They work night and day to install Donald J. Trump into a second term as president of the U.S. to further the reconstruction and domination of America.
“It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it.” – Billy Graham (Parade Magazine, 1981)
https://www.libertymagazine.org/article/religious-bigotry
Additional Resources exposing how the religious and political right aligned to form the unholy marriage of church and state and the ungodly Empire of the United States which exists in contrast to the Kingdom of God that Jesus speaks of on the gospels.
- The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicalism in the Age of Extremism – Tim Alberta
- Losing our Religion – An alter call for Evangelical Americans – Russell Moore