Understanding Christian Fundamentalism

Making The Urantia Book Relevant to Christian Fundamentalists

by Harry McMullan, III

Rather than implicitly repudiating the authority of the Bible, we need to be able to show that the Urantia Book is a logical continuation of the same God's revelation of Himself to us, carried one step farther.

What is Christian Fundamentalism?

Between 1900 and 1920, strong intellectual and scholarly elements within several "mainline" US Protestant denominations repeatedly met in an attempt to set forth which beliefs were central to Christianity and essential for salvation. These scholars from the Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian and Lutheran churches represented a conservative reaction to the liberal, relativistic and modernistic trends in their respective churches. This unofficial group became known as the Fundamentalists. Philosophically one can trace their roots to certain movements in eighteenth century England, such as the Methodist splitting-away from Anglicanism.

This academically oriented group was almost wholly different from what we call "fundamentalists" today. Today's fundamentalists evolved out of those groups which were suspicious of education, particularly "higher criticism of the Bible" -- studies which trace certain sources of the Bible and thereby infer a human origin to it.

So although they share certain beliefs, the original fundamentalists are otherwise a totally different group than the ones we call fundamentalists today.

You might be surprised by the fundamental beliefs that this original group came to agree upon. Remember, these were the most important doctrines of Christianity as they saw it. The list had variously five to seven parts--here are six of them.

1. The literal inerrancy of the Scriptures
2. The second coming of Jesus Christ
3. The virgin birth (not the Immaculate Conception)
4. The physical resurrection of the body
5. The substitutionary atonement
6. The total depravity of man - original sin

While these five beliefs constitute the historic founding of fundamentalism, to understand them only marginally helps in understanding fundamentalism. It's adherents have a living first-hand, genuine religion, and as individuals they are serving, loving, devoted and loyal. Fundamentalism is by far the most dynamic religious movement in the United States and even in the world today, excluding a resurgent Islam on the grounds of its high Arab nationalist content. The missionaries of fundamentalism are on every continent in every nation. They have smuggled Bibles into Eastern Europe, to Red Chinese prisons, to Siberian Gulags. They are in remote Amazon camps, on Sproul Plaza, and on Times Square.

Since the reformation in the sixteenth century the spiritual debate among Protestants has largely been framed by the question of whether the Scriptures should be believed, and if so, what do they say about God and man? The materialists' effort has been to establish the human origins of the Bible, thereby (supposedly) disproving the validity of the life of faith. Reformers such as Martin Luther and John Wesley called people back to faith through an appeal to the Scriptures. Faith became synonymous with a belief in the Bible, which became the universal ground of authority.

As the revolt against the Catholic Church spread through northern Europe, and new denominations sprang up, the Scriptures became the standard of authority in the absence of papal decrees. The Roman Catholic Church had founded its claim of spiritual authority on the 'keys of Peter", the twin grounds of Scripture and the tradition of apostolic succession. For the Roman Catholics the Scriptural basis of their religion was not a serious philosophic problem. Their own councils had canonized the Scripture to begin with from among the many documents available, and if they had that authority once, why could they not exercise it again? The Catholic claim of authority, then, was God acting through their church throughout history. The Protestants obviously could not accept this line of reasoning and consistently justify remaining outside the Catholic communion.

Therefore the Protestant underpinning and standard of moral authority came to rest solely on 1) a direct understanding of God's will through the Scripture without priests and 2) the revelation of God directly to the individual. Therefore, deprived of tradition, the Protestant substituted the inerrancy of Scripture as the generally accepted standard of spiritual truth.

When higher criticism within Protestantism began to point to human origins of the scripture, the fundamentalist reasserted literal divine inspiration of the Word of God. In fact, all of this is inconsistent, since the Protestant believing in scriptural inerrancy must say that at a particular point the Catholic church lost its inspiration-after Nicea & Chalcedon.

All the prophets of Israel appealed to Scripture, including John the Baptist and Jesus. Jesus said that he did not come denouncing Moses and the prophets; that he did not come to destroy, but to fulfill. Jesus was willing to present himself as a fulfillment of Scripture, and we need to be able to justify the Urantia Book, or at least attempt to explain it, in those same terms.

This, in my view, is what the author of Paper 1 does with his numerous quotes of Scripture—he makes the bridge between the old and the new. Jesus' teaching was full of quotes and stories from Scripture. He confronted the same attitude toward the Scripture that fundamentalists have today, and he handled it by selective use of the best Scriptures, with which we are told he was unusually conversant.

How should Urantia Book readers relate to Christian Fundamentalism?

In dealing with fundamentalists, the two most important things for Urantia Book readers are knowledge and appreciation. By knowledge I refer to knowledge of the Bible, which in our lifetimes will continue to be the most widely accepted body of spiritual truth on this planet. A very unfortunate trait one sees among us is the tendency to disparage and poke fun at the Bible, a tendency which is totally contrary to the spirit and teachings of the Urantia Book, a tendency which is seen, I might add, only among those who have little or no familiarity with the Bible. Those who have spent the time and effort in studying the Scriptures, instead of bemoaning the flaws, more often are amazed and thrilled with its teachings and beauty of expression.

One major shortcoming of the Bible, however, is the portrayal of Jesus the man. Many of you have perhaps seen the movie about Jesus by Franco Zefferelli, based primarily on the Gospel according to Matthew. I enjoyed the scenery, but was quite offended by the portraiture of Jesus—austere, cold, harsh and humorless. But if one reads the gospels without preconceptions, that is in fact the Jesus who is portrayed. Because of this it is astonishing to me how the fundamentalists have converted the Jesus of the Gospels into the Jesus they worship. The average fundamentalist sees Jesus just as we see him: strong, affectionate, loving, merciful, and imaginative. Since he is like that, we see evidence of the Spirit's teaching in the fundamentalist movement. The fundamentalist has a very clear-cut view of Jesus. He has no doubt that he is a person, and he relates to him like a person. This spiritual communion with the person of God is what gives fundamentalism its superior vitality compared to most all of the world's other religions.

As Urantia Book readers, we need to be more appreciative of the fundamentalists as the largest body of enthusiastic, loving, devoted, serving, loyal, God-believing, faith-led people in the world today, the ideals of whose lives are Jesusonian, theological differences notwithstanding. Their key success and strength has been in conveying the truth that the believer is a child of the living God, and is loved and constantly cared for by a God he can personally know and love.

It is peculiar to me that while Urantia Book readers are always willing to give eastern religions the benefit of the doubt, always seeking for a common ground of understanding, as is proper, they are so often unwilling to extend that same consideration to the fundamentalist Christian. There is often an attitude of implicit superiority and condescension which treats their theological peculiarities as dimwitted. Toward eastern religions, the typical attitude is to seek to find truth, while toward the fundamentalist Christian, it too often is to find fault. If we can't love and sympathize with the fundamentalist whom we can see, how can we expect to love and sympathize with the Zoroastrian whom we can't see?

In discussions with fundamentalists, only three things I know of will create a favorable response.

1. First, an appeal to the Spirit, such as Jesus taught, is good anywhere, anytime.
2. Secondly, quotes from the Scriptures.
3. Thirdly, reasonings based on the Scriptures.

But Urantia Book readers, of all people, should exercise extreme caution in the choice of discussion topics. Such factual matters as whether Jesus is Immanuel, or the subject of the Virgin Birth, have intellectual and philosophical significance, but not spiritual. We should save our areas of disagreement for the subjects that really matter and which have spiritual rather than theological or ideological implications.

The Urantia Book teaches that Jesus rarely corrected misconceptions, except where they impinged on an understanding of the character of God. This rule should also guide us. Why debate about Adam and Eve? We weren't there, and even though the Urantia Book account is logical and internally self-consistent, we do not know from personal knowledge what really went on. We believe what we believe because we read about it in a book, and this puts us on equal ground with the fundamentalist. The Master taught that a person should be brought into the temple before he is shown the glories of the temple, and the details of the Urantia Book cosmology might as well wait until the prospective convert becomes a reader. In the absence of being a reader he wouldn't believe them anyway.

The importance of North American Urantia Book readers cultivating an understanding of Christianity—Catholicism and Protestantism—can hardly be overstated. I submit that while many Urantia Book readers might think they understand Christianity, in fact, it is very poorly understood and appreciated among us. It is an accepted belief that we should all strive to understand the world's great religions, and Christianity is not only one of them, but the one closest to us. If we intend to spend our lives in this country or Canada, we will meet 100 Catholics, Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians for every Confucian, Taoist or Hindu. If our motive is to become effective laborers in this corner of God's vineyard, we should try particularly hard to understand those with whom we come into daily contact.

The use of Scripture quotes to refute positions of the Christian or fundamentalist religion should be used with extreme care, scripture being many peoples' basis for the practical living of their life of faith. Like Jesus talking to Teherma, we must take care always to add to what the person already has. Moreover, memorizing a few key Scripture quotes is no substitute for repeatedly and thoughtfully seeking the inner meaning and context of what is said.