Why I'm no longer
a fundamentalist

I was reared as a fundamentalist, and I'm proud of it.

I've got credentials coming out my ears. At age 9, I beat out 5,000 other kids in a Bible memorization contest. At 17, I started a campus Bible study in college. I annoyed my professors by writing papers on obscure Christian subjects and asking cheeky questions in class. Even at this very late date, I could still produce a long list of things I don't do – plus a dusty boxful of oak-leaf clusters for Sunday School attendance. I'm sure you would be terribly impressed by my obvious holiness.

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But despite my former fixations on all the externals and rigamajig of devoted churchianity, I would do it all again. If I could reboot my life, I would still opt to grow up on the fundy track. (For a few years, at least.)

Why? Roots. The fundamentalist lifestyle may be weak on social and cultural involvement, but it gets you started with a solid foundation in the Bible. Which means that by 18, you're probably grounded in common sense and the greatest set of values in the world (in stark contrast to many of your peers).

That doesn't mean you'll be impervious to the assaults of liberal blather. After all, there are several million Southern Baptist Democrats – oxymorons all. But even if you don't know right from left, you will know right from wrong, and your chances of doing right will improve vastly.

My confidence in the Bible hasn't waned an ounce in all these years. But I am now what you'd call an evangelical, committed to changing the world through the Gospel and my best human efforts. And therein lies the reason for today's column.

In my slow little march toward making a difference on this planet, I've violated the tenets still held by many fundamentalists today: that the church is foredoomed to be a miserable failure and will have to be rescued from utter disaster by Christ's return; that we have no business trying to reform the world, our job being only evangelism; and that we should meekly "be subject unto the higher powers." (Reminder: When you vote, you are the higher powers.)

As my reward for filling up this space on a weekly basis, I get e-mails – with ever-helpful suggestions. Some of them are from keen-eyed fundies dutifully noting my drift into misguided efforts to reform humanity and clean up the planetary swamp. They fire off sharp rebukes for my naivete and lack of biblical perspective. Their fresh prose even includes clever phrases like, "polishing the brass on the Titanic."

But by far their most effective challenge is, "Jim, where does the New Testament say we're supposed to go out and reform society? Jesus just told us to love God, lead holy lives, and disciple the nations." Well, I must admit that apart from some general commands to be "salt and light" and so forth, there aren't a lot of specifics. No plans to unseat Caesar or combat that era's rampant infanticide, for instance.

But the early believers did those things – and more – without even a settled New Testament to tell them to. Why? Because that's what we do. We are Christians. God lives in us, and we recoil against corruption, immorality and the 1,001 faces of sin.

When a drug ring moves into town, we don't consult the Bible to see if we should do anything about it. When an abortion clinic wants to set up shop next door, we don't accept their nonsense about "choice." When politicians siphon off public money, we don't look the other way. When TV producers want to show homosexuals making love, we don't shrug our shoulders and say, "Well, it's a free country."

When a tornado destroys a city, we're among the first to show up with help. When whole tribes or nations are hit by famine, we organize to bring food. When the homeless are down and out, we are usually there with our soup kitchens and shelters.

And likewise when the New World Order and hundreds of other Illuminati retreads aspire to destroy the world by restructuring it along God-free lines, we fight them tooth and nail. It's not that we have abandoned the Lord's great commission to evangelize the world or slipped back into the 1920s "social gospel" of self-improvement. It's just what we do. We are Christians. We hate evil, and we fight it by our deepest instincts.