My freshman year of High School, I had a basketball coach that always said, “It’s all fundamentals men!” In pre-season practice we would spend hours ‘working on the fundamentals’ – countless drills that didn’t end in someone shooting a ball into a hoop – they seemed to drag on forever… Like the song that never ends, we spent hours dribbling through cones, passing to partners, there was never any culmination… until a moment in time when the coach would blow his whistle and say, “Ok, that’s enough fundamentals, now let’s play some basketball.”
As the season began, more and more time was spent practicing the “game of basketball” than practicing the fundamentals. It was a natural progression, once the fundamentals were understood, once the basics became as natural as breathing, then one could begin to improvise and use the fundamentals not in their natural form, but in their dynamic state. Passing became more complex because of the obstacles on the court. Dribbling became more elaborate as other hands tried to steal the ball. The fundamentals where there, in theory, but the game demanded more than theory, it demanded experimentation, reaction and application.
What happens when a one never matures past the fundamentals…? Whether they do this by choice or by culture, if they remain stoically attached only to the basics they would be labeled a fundamentalist.
Basketball is a great starting point, but I want to transition to religion… more specifically religious fundamentalism.
None would argue with the observation that we are in a time of upheavel: in economic, religious, political and social terms. In this upheaval we are seeing movement within the spectrum of belief (not just religious), some have moved closer to the center, call it bipartisanship or becoming moderate in thought and action. And others have moved in an opposite direction, a polarization of political belief, religious conviction and economic theory. Steering this conversation to the religious realm, I want to discuss what this polarization has done within the two most discussed religions of the day, namely Christianity and Islam.
Fundamentalism – a term that has consistently been used to describe the most extreme voices in Christendom and Islam. Used as an adjective and a descriptive noun one is a “fundamentalist” or a Christian Fundamentalist, or a Fundamentalist Muslim. These descriptions pull very divisive pictures from our memory banks, and also connote ugliness and hate with religious overtones.
Over the next two days I want to have a conversation with you about religious fundamentalism, I am going to try and persuade you to move beyond your basic knowledge of your specific religiosity and be curious with me… I am going to leave you with this quote from Seth Godin, and it is one that will spur this discussion forward:
A fundamentalist is a person who considers whether a fact is acceptable to his religion before he explores it. As opposed to a curious person who explores first and then considers whether or not he wants to accept the ramifications. A curious person embraces the tension between his religion and something new, wrestles with it and through it, and then decides whether to embrace the new idea or reject it.1
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1. Tribes (2008); Seth Godin, pg 63
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Interesting Sam. We are discussing Islam and Christianity in my Christian Apologetics class right now. I'll look forward to what you have to say about fundamentalism in these arenas
Hmmm, wouldn't a fundamentalism discussion necessitate a fundamental understanding first?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalism
Me personally, I don't think you can have much of a conversation when too many don’t even know the basics of the very religion of which they profess to be a disciple. How does one move past that if they never grasped it to begin with. To use your analogy, if you haven’t learned to dribble, pass and pivot, how can you even begin to function is the game?
Consider me curious, but you know me, my perspective is considerably more secular.
Interesting Sam. We are discussing Islam and Christianity in my Christian Apologetics class right now. I'll look forward to what you have to say about fundamentalism in these arenas