THE ROOTS OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Author: By Edward Mark

Date: SUNDAY, December 21, 1997

Page: E3

Section: Books

Much of this book is a history lesson followed by a superb topical bibliography in liberal Christianity and fundamentalism for those who want to read more. Bawer is convinced that liberal intellectuals, owing to an uneasiness about religion, have failed to look closely at the growth of fundamentalism even though it increasingly affects our common and public life.

Bawer begins with the fact that Christian fundamentalism is a 20th-century phenomenon, not an ancient tradition. It began in 1895 in Niagara, N.Y., at a Bible conference that was a reaction to Darwinism and to scholars who had begun studying the Bible in its historical context. Unsettled by all that, and by 19th-century relativism, the Bible conference insisted on five fundamentals of Christian belief: the verbal inerrancy of scripture; the divinity of Jesus; the virgin birth; the substitutionary theory of atonement (the belief that Jesus' death is a substitution for the sacrifice humans should make for their sin); and a belief in Jesus' bodily resurrection and physical return. A series of books called ``The Fundamentals,'' published between 1910 and 1915, further reiterated the necessity for accepting these beliefs in order to be a true Christian. In 1920, the term ``fundamentalist'' was used for the first time, and it became well-known during the Scopes trial in 1925.

Having established the recent origins of fundamentalism, Bawer then tries to help readers who know nothing about such things to understand dispensational premillennialism. For Bawer believes that one cannot understand fundamentalism without understanding dispensationalism. Premillennialism is the belief that at some moment within time all saved Christians will experience the Rapture as they are swept up into the air to meet Jesus while everyone left on earth is experiencing the awful Tribulation. After that Jesus will reign for 1,000 years, at the end of which will come the Last Judgment.

Dispensationalism added to this the idea that history is divided into seven ``dispensations,'' each with its own set of laws. We are, according to this belief, currently living in the sixth dispensation. Dispensationalism allows fundamentalists to disregard many of the laws in Leviticus (such as those against eating shellfish or engaging in intercourse during menstruation), arguing that they are applicable solely to a former dispensation, while insisting that the law against homosexuality is still applicable in the present dispensation because Paul supposedly reiterated it in the New Testament.

Dispensationalism was the invention of John Nelson Darby, an Englishman who was born in 1800 and died the same year as Darwin (1882), but it never caught on in England. It became immensely popular in the United States, however, after the publication in 1909 of an annotated Bible called the Scofield Reference Bible, which was revised and republished in 1967. For many fundamentalist Christians the annotations propounding dispensationalism in the Scofield Bible have almost canonical power. Bawer believes that the expectation of violence which dispensationalism foresees in the period between the sixth and seventh dispensations for Jews and others who do not believe in Jesus taints fundamentalists' view of others in the present.

Bawer introduces his readers to many other figures who have shaped fundamentalist thinking, not only the well-known TV evangelist Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed, recent executive director of the Christian Coalition, but also Hal Lindsey, whose 1970 book, ``The Late Great Planet Earth,'' described the Rapture true believers would one day experience and the Great Tribulation that would face unbelievers; Frank Peretti, author of ``This Present Darkness'' (1986, with more than 2 million copies in print), which portrays Christians fighting off Satan in the guise of liberal Christianity; and James Dobson, the psychologist known as Dr. Dobson, author of many books on family life in which feminists and homosexuals are the enemy. Bawer's point is how different the teachings of these people are from the loving, compassionate teachings of Jesus.

Bawer sets out to present a liberal Christian view of faith, and he does so successfully and eloquently. His testimony to his own faith in a chapter titled ``Who Is My Neighbor?'' is original, profound, and moving. He quotes from Paul Tillich on religion, and from Huston Smith on Jesus. Bawer's extensive quotes from Harry Emerson Fosdick, the liberal Baptist minister who preached at New York's First Presbyterian Church, Park Avenue Baptist Church, and, finally, Riverside Church, and was at the center of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the 1920s, is also one of the gifts of this book. For Fosdick's arguments on behalf of liberal Christianity are thoughtful and well-spoken, and have long been out of print.

The problem with Bawer's analysis, apart from his condescending attitude toward rural and suburban Americans, is a tendency (one he shares with the fundamentalists he opposes) to divide the world into opposite camps. Just as fundamentalists separate the world into those who believe and those who do not, Bawer puts people either in the Church of Law or in the Church of Love. For Bawer, one is either legalistic or antilegalist, with little ambiguity and few shadings in between. That strict dichotomy will leave most readers uneasy. Having put law and legalism on the wrong side of the fence, he then has a difficult time finding a place for good laws and for obedience to them. He also, like many today who overuse the word ``spiritual,'' has an individualistic bias that leaves the book wanting as a social or religious critique.

``Stealing Jesus'' is what our ancestors would have called a tract, a broadside. Bawer's historical exposition is valuable, and his testimony to liberal Christian faith is strong, but they teeter on a theoretical superstructure not quite able to hold them. Nevertheless, this is an important book.