Christian Fundamentalism: Do You Understand It?


Fundamentalism, by James Barr, is a book that helped educate Charlene concerning Victor Paul Wierwille's claim of inerrancy of Scriptures and other aspects of Christian Fundamentalism.

Greetings, readers! Today, let's flash back to a few of my posts about Christian fundamentalism.

I wrote about Christian fundamentalism...

...because The Way International, the Bible-based cult I spent 17 years in, fits into that category of religious ideology. How's that? 

Belief in inerrancy makes The Way a fundamentalist sect

The main reason The Way is a fundamentalist organization/sect/cult is that The Way's founder, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985) promoted the claim that "the Bible" is inerrant. Which Bible? He didn't say, other than "the original Scriptures," which were lost or destroyed eons ago.

What's inerrancy? 

It means that Scripture in "the Bible" is without error or contradiction. In other words: "it" is perfect. Why must that be so? Because, as Wierwille said he believed, God Himself is the author of Scripture, despite the fact that men wrote what is considered as Scripture—the content between the covers of Bibles. If you're really interested in how that content was determined to be Scripture in the first place, I highly recommend books by Bart Ehrman and others who write about early Christianity.

BTW - did you know that Bibles used by Catholics and ones that Protestants use have different contents in the Old Testament? 

A few of my posts about fundamentalism are the following. You can find them on this blog, just scroll down the main page of this blog until you see the titles. Then click.

02/24/2024    Launched in L.A.: The Campaign of Christian Fundamentalism

12/29/2023    The Certain Curtain: How Fundamentalism Hooks

03/02/2024     The Word: Which Bible Is It Anyway?

Thanks for reading!

Charlene

CHARLENE L. EDGE is the author of the award-winning memoir, Undertow: My Escape from the Fundamentalism and Cult Control of The Way International (New Wings Press, LLC. 2017). She spent 17 years (1970-1987) in The Way as a leader and Biblical researcher. After escaping the cult’s headquarters in Ohio, she earned a B.A. in English from Rollins College in 1994, graduating summa cum laude, and worked for more than a decade as a technical writer and proposal writer in the software industry.

A member of the Florida Writers Association, the Authors Guild, and the International Cultic Studies Association, Edge is also a prize-winning poet. She lives in Florida with her husband, Hoyt L. Edge, Rollins College Professor Emeritus of Philosophy.                                                                     

Her latest book is From the Porch to the Page: A Guidebook for the Writing Life (New Wings Press, LLC. 2022). Both books are sold online in paperback and eBook at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers. Read Charlene's book info at: https://go.authorsguild.org/members/1424


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