The Cost of Our Cultural "Engagement" II

Liberal Fearmongering, Fundamentalist Upbringings, and the Word of God

Why do liberals love to see fundamentalist children turn against their parents? Should we seek to imitate fundamentalists in raising our own children? Can we critique fundamentalism whilst opposing liberal worldliness and evangelical compromise?

Liberals utterly despise fundamentalism. Not only do they despise it, they fear it. This is why liberals—whether secular or “Christian”—routinely depict fundamentalists as radical dystopian tyrants, hellbent on coercion and abuse.

A Fearmonger’s Tale

Fundamentalism is seen as an alien imposition of cruel arbitrary rules upon the sweet sanctity of human individuals being free to live in sync with their heartfelt passions. That’s why, whenever there are examples, say, of large homeschooling Christian families falling apart—e.g. the Duggars or the Westboro Baptists—they are quick to both spectacularise and catastrophise it.

Comparisons abound, for example, with Margaret Atwood’s dystopian nightmare, The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are forced to be impregnated against their will within a nightmarish “Christian” theocracy.

You might wonder why, in these times of all times, such imaginative comparisons are so frequently made, and why the TV series of that book has been so wildly popular over the last decade? You might think that in a time of rabid church decline, anti-Christian bias, degenerative sexual morality, gender confusion, mass family erosion and relative population collapse in the West, the greatest fear in the average Guardian reader’s imagination would be something other than a coercive Christian state?

The reason of course, is that such propagandised visions serve to scare people against attempting to do anything about those clear and present dangers actually ravaging our society with any kind of consistency. While the worst cases of fundamentalist implosion usually involve quite obvious and overt aberrations from Christian orthodoxy, liberals are quick to draw not-so-subtle systemic connections to any similar-sounding conservative Christian beliefs, particularly regarding a Biblical view of the family.

On the one hand, this provides their own distorted worldview with a semblance of self-justification. But as a “happy” byproduct it also serves to scare Christians about the implications of their beliefs by spotlighting the trajectories of the very worst examples. In tandem with the imbibed secularism which infects the average western Christian’s worldview, such fearmongering tales successfully intimidate many such Christians from making the kind of radical Biblical life choices which just might make a significant difference to society over the long haul.

Consider these words from the Apostle Paul, and whether they more accurately describe the imagined dystopia of the liberal’s aforementioned nightmare, or the present dystopia in which we are actually living:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people.” (2Tim. 3:1-5)

Note here not only the erosion of parental authority and moral decay, but also the unashamed call to “avoid” those who walk in such ways. The fundamentalists did not invent the concept of tactically avoiding people whom they believed would not be good for them or their children. God did.

Now, this doesn’t mean a Christian cannot go wrong in how they might “apply” this emphasis on avoidance, of course. But the point is that most Christians probably act as though verses like this are not even in the Bible at all. They prefer instead to think that we should never seek to avoid anybody at all (unless, perhaps, they are fundamentalists).

The liberal assumes that the problem with fundamentalism is an overly stubborn commitment to Biblical authority and with overly high walls which shut off the influx of the surrounding culture (i.e. they are narrow-minded and cultish). But most of the time where we see fundamentalists go wrong, it is not because they were “too Biblical” but because they were not Biblical enough; and it is not because they were overly disengaged from the world, but because they were overly indebted to other kinds of worldliness.