Letters to the Editor
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@slackie and fran
Slackie writes: "I guess that's the appeal of orthodoxy ...."
What's interesting to me is that American-style fundamentalism has very little to do with what was Christian orthodoxy for most of history and what still is orthodoxy for most of the world's Christians. There's very little tendancy toward literalistic readings of Genesis until about the 16th century. There is, of course, practically no Jewish tradition of reading the creation story literally, and the wiser Christians have kept that in mind.
Even in the most deeply Protestant cultures, which are intellectually friendly to biblical literalism, there's very little that compares to American-style fundamentalism. I think there's just something oddly entrepreneurial in our national character that leads us to invent wacky new religions (Mormonism, Scientology, the "spiritualism" of your local crystal-therapy/green tea enema/aromayoga center) or zany variations on existing religions (Branch Davidians, "Foursquare" churches, Jews for Jesus, &c.) Meaning no unkindness to the many goodhearted people who hold those beliefs, or to the young-Earth fundamentalists, either, there always seems to me to be a faint echo of P.T. Barnum in their congregations.