I had the opportunity yesterday to engage an evangelical-fundamentalist
Christian on the topic of the blog I posted on Yudhishthira and Jesus. I was immediately
reminded of a number of things that I thought I’d share.
First and most importantly, I acknowledge that debating is a part of academia. I
do it when I’m answering questions in class or on papers at conferences. But in
an uncontrolled forum like Facebook, every argument has an opportunity to
become derailed rather quickly. There are usually no moderators. And it almost always turns into a 2 on 1 or even 4 on 1 match. This is why I don’t
like Facebook debating, and all of this has happened to me as well. I’ve
learned from experience, usually the hard way, that on a public forum where
others are watching, the debaters are aware of the public scrutiny they are
under and the act of saving face can become more important than the debate.
Debating a seminary-trained evangelical-fundamentalist on
the reality of pluralism presents rare opportunities but potential problems
as well. Here is a list of seven observations from yesterday’s exchange.
1.
Most evangelical-fundamentalists, despite their
training in logic or philosophy, do not understand pluralism, much less other
world religions, which I contend in the former, is a much more rigorous
discipline than its fundamentalist caricature portrays. Pluralism is largely an inchoate academic discipline (not even recognized by most universities or seminaries to engender the title "discipline") and often characterized therefore as a threat by conservatives. Because it is continually developing, it remains a moving target. Folks like Francis Clooney, S. Mark Helm, and Paul Knitter have continued to process its meaning. This became real to me when, after being shown a one-sentence definition of
pluralism, I was asked to affirm or deny this definition, to which I replied,
it’s a broad topic. In response, I asked this individual to define Christianity
the same way. No response.
What I can say is that someone interested
in pluralism or in refuting pluralism should not only understand his tradition,
but the traditions of other religions. After all, pluralism is the study of religions. To avoid talking into the vacuum,
those evangelical-fundamentalists who are unfamiliar with alien religions will almost always deflect to Christianity. So long as the subject of Christianity is in
some way in the discussion, there is an open-door opportunity for
them to say something.
2.
Evangelical-fundamentalist thinkers will attempt
to focus their salvo on rhetoric. One may think this level of sophistication an
oddity for academically trained fundamentalists, but oftentimes it’s a
brilliant strategy. If he can identify a rhetorical structure in your argument
his focus becomes on how you are saying
something, not what you are saying. No doubt this is important sometimes, for
example, in identifying “logical fallacies,” but other times, it is nothing
more than a distraction, meant to stall any real opportunity for engagement. So
when an evangelical-fundamentalist tells you that you’ve committed a nonsequiter,
for example, what could have been done instead would have been to have asked
for more clarification. I ran into this rhetorical game yesterday where I was
accused of using abductive reasoning because I used the phrase “and so on.” My point
was simply not to belabor my point, that
there was much more I could list but for fear of the conversation getting away
from us (as it eventually did) I tried to reign it in.
3.
Evangelicals of the Fundamentalist stripe know
the negative connotations that come with that title and so they avoid it by
suggesting that Fundamentalist does not mean today what it meant in yesteryear,
and they like to identify themselves as classical Fundamentalists. It reminds
me of those identified as Existentialists in the last century, most of whom
denied the title. In fact,
Fundamentalism is not that old. George Marsden, an expert in religious
movements in American, identifies Fundamentalism as a movement that came into
being at the Niagara Conference at the turn of the last century where biblical
inerrancy became an issue. My opponent, despite creating the perception that
there were two Fundamentalisms, admitted later that he followed the Chicago
Conference, another turn of the century venture to defend inerrancy. Not much
has changed in Fundamentalism between then and now, especially if one simply
looks at the platforms and ideologies.
4.
This was a first for me: This particular Fundamentalist who claimed
that all apparent biblical inconsistencies can be resolved claimed that the
biblical narratives are not subject to the same kind of comparative scrutiny
that a pluralist would make when attempting to demonstrate similarities in cross-religious
comparisons because the former rise to a different level. My blog posting and
project in particular, depends largely, on looking for continuities both on a
microcosmic (within Christianity and its various documents) and macrocosmic (at
different religions) level. If by this
he meant there is a different standard applied to microcosmic, or what biblical
scholars call intertextuality, then I am unaware of this standard and he
continued to avoid answering the question. As far as I’m concerned, this was
the most crucial part of my blog, and the thing he wanted to talk least about.
5.
Fundamentalists know they are under attack for
their rigid appeals to biblical inerrancy. If this foundation is eroded, the
natural conclusion is that the God who spoke to them did not provide for any
special call to salvation. Their appeal to biblical inerrancy is indefensible
because they appeal to an imaginary set of pure and unadulterated New Testament
books that provided the foundation for all the copies we have today, though
each one is corrupted. But one might consider the supernaturalistic explanation
of this wild appeal by asking a supernatural question: If God had the power to
inspire the books of the Bible, why did he not have the power to preserve them?
Was it not important to Him? To echo Bart Erhmann, in the years I’ve been doing
this, I’ve never heard a good response to this question, and as anticipated, my
opponent also ignored the question.
Because Evangelical-Fundamentalists believe
Christianity is the lens through which one sees the religious world,
challenging them on the efficiency of their scriptures must be tantamount to
any conversation. Do not let them off the hook, though they will likely ignore
this challenge and instead want to focus on rhetorical arguments, even while
the internal consistency of the scriptures upon which their religion is based
crumbles. Not once in the debate yesterday did my opponent wish to address the
problems of a divine revelation called Christianity that is riddled with
problems in its own texts.
6.
Fundamentalists will often reject the idea that
community is the source of interpretation. It’s a rather silly argument,
because on the one hand fundamentalists congregate with people of their own
caliber and background. This is not necessarily true for a pluralist who spends
his time with people of various religious backgrounds and is no doubt
influenced by those interactions. A fundamentalist MUST reject community and
claim he is not a product of his environment, otherwise, he runs the risk of
diminishing the importance of divine revelation, that there is a way of truth given
to him specifically and individually and that he’s not simply inheriting some
doctrines or codes of conduct passed down by his congregations. Most often the emphasis on individuality rather than community also shows where his soteriological allegiances are. In this case, I could tell my debate partner came out of a Protestant understanding (though again, he would never admit being shaped by his community). So when he
brings out interpretations of the bible to you, it is a tacit acknowledgement
that all of this comes from divine inspiration. Again, the problems here are
legion, but the logical inconsistent of debating points in the same way the
group of people you keep company with, down to particular emphases, while claiming
it all comes from God, means that where there is dissent on a particular
doctrine or biblical interpretation, one can only assume that 1) somebody fell
out of step and is in disobedience to the spirit of God or 2) God does not use
divine inspiration to inspire people to read the scriptures. But how does
anyone prove that a person is in disobedience to God? Well, doing what every
social group does, taking up sides, bolstering the majority against a minority,
and then claiming their interpretation is from God! While every political and
social group in the world does this, for fundamentalists, the act is always
superintended by God. It’s an argument that is indefensible, unquantifiable,
and immeasurable. But yet, they’ll refuse to acknowledge their own part in any interpretation
and lay that burden on God. Thus, by default, they should be laying the blame
on God for dissent as well, but then this would violate another of their
doctrines, the goodness of God. So doctrine runs into doctrine runs into
doctrine…and so on!
7.
Most importantly, do not engage in silly
Facebook debates with fundamentalists. They never resolve anything, there’s always too much to say,
and too little space to do it in. If you get pulled into something like it, you
can usually tell in the first couple of exchanges if the person is interested
in listening or debating to make his point. And if you suspect you've come to a place where you are not listening, then “know thyself” and gracefully bow out.
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