Christian Fundamentalism: Do You Understand It?

 

Fundamentalism, by James Barr, is 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.

Note: The featured photo is of an outstanding book about fundamentalism, by James Barr. Studying it soon after I left The Way helped me understand my experiences in the cult, especially in the Biblical research department, which I tell you all about near the end of my memoir, Undertow.

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? The main reason 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 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? Forgive me, I digress...that's a topic for another day.

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

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


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