They are not the Fundamentalists - I am

When you listen in on a lot of conversations on religion, or heck, even politics, you hear it often: "s/he is just a fundamentalist!" You hear it about the young earth creationists being fundamentalists. You hear about the people who want to obey this or that old law as being fundamentalists. Outside Christianity, you might hear about suicide bombers being fundamentalists. But that is wrong. Those groups of people are not fundamentalists; I am.

Prof. Shankar - what a legend!

Fundamentalism is about staying grounded in, or returning to, the fundamentals of an area. When I watched Shankar's video taped course "Fundamentals of Physics II" offered at Yale University originally, the title was fairly self-explanatory: here are the fundamental principles underlying physics as it exists today. Here's your classical mechanics, your thermal physics, your waves, your optics, your relativity, your quantum mechanics. These areas form the fundamentals of physics as it exists today. Amusingly, it does not cover my own area of condensed matter physics, which is no small area, but that's irrelevant to the point: these areas are at the core of physics, so the course was titled "fundamentals."

However, young earth creationism is not a fundamental component of Christianity. It is not fundamental to the Bible. Reviving some old law is not keeping the fundamentals, because that law is almost certainly not a fundamentl part of Christianity. No, no, those sometimes labelled fundamentalists should be re-thought of as peripheralists: they set aside the fundamentals to concentrate on things that are actually peripheral (if at all existant in) Christianity. You think the Scriptures dictate young earth creationism? I think you are mistaken. But if we concentrate only on that issue, we are being peripheralists, because of the seventy seven books which make up the Sacred Scriptures, such a position is insinuated in at most a handful, if at all. It is a sideline issue.

When Jesus confronted the Pharisees for emphasising the Torah's minor laws, or for invalidating the law for the sake of human traditions, Jesus was being a fundamentalist. The Pharisees were being peripheralists. This is something which Israel rich prophetic tradition had tried to tell the Israelites again and again: sure, there's a sacrificial system in place, but God desires mercy, not sacrifice, as the prophet Hosea said. Sure, there are important civic duties, but what does God demand of us? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God, says the prophet Micah. The problem with the Pharisees, at least in part, was that they could not discern the fundamental from the peripheral. They were peripheralists, not fundamentalists.

I try my best to be a fundamentalist. The fundamentals of Christianity from an ethical perspetive are the three theological virtues (faith, hope and charity, or love), of which the greatest of these is love. (cf. 1 Cor. 13) There is core principles of Catholic Social Teaching: the promotion of the dignity of the human person, the common good, subsidiarity and participation, solidarity, the preferential option for the poor, social and economic justice, the stwardship of the environment and the promotion of peace.

Of course, being a Catholic fundamentalist is not just about the radical call to love others. There are doctrines involved. Much of the fundamental doctrine of the Church is in the ancient creeds: the Nicene-Constantinople creed, for instance, which is said each Sunday at Mass. There is the Eucharist, and other sacraments.

There is Jesus. Jesus who is human and divine, "true God and true man," who was incarnate in the womb of his mother Mary. There is his teachings and preachings, his ministry, his good news. That Gospel, for which St Paul gave the first anathema if anyone dared change it, is revealed only in Jesus, the Word incarante, the Lord and Redeemer. This Gospel is that of which Pope Francis wrote:

"The Joy of the Gospel fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus. Those who accept his offer of salvation are set free from sin, sorrow, inner emptiness and loneliness." (EG 1)

These are some of the core things, these are the fundamentals of Christianity, they are core to the Church. Complaining about this word usage may sound like just a simple whine, but it has important consequences about how we think about the issue. We are lulled into the thought that, when Christians concentrte on peripheral things, but are called fundamentalists, that they are the ones taking Christianity seriously. If that is true, and what is now thought of as Christian fundamentalism really is just taking the same line as the Pharisees, then one can only be a "good Christian" by deviating from Christianity. One is only good insofar as one is not actually Christian. This is a dangerous state of affairs when the matter should be exactly the other way around: the fundamentals of Christianity are not young earth creationism or following some arcane old covenant law, so following them or not has nothing to do with fundamentalism.

All this goes to say something very simple: that Christian fundamentalism is, I think, good. It is a problem, however, when one confuses the fundamental for the peripheral. That which was meant to be at best a tiny corner, became the centerpiece. No wonder the whole lot was ruined.