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Since this is the place for scholarly stuff, pasted below are a few paragraphs, on the topic, from one of our current leading Biblical scholars. Please consider, enjoy and comment:

Driven by these defeats, fundamentalism retreated from mainline churches into rural and small town America, especially but not exclusively in the South, and developed denominations that featured congregational control with little loyalty to a national headquarters. Building their own seminaries the more sophisticated of them sought to escape the image of fundamentalism, which was in some circles identified with closed-minded ignorance, by calling themselves 'evangelicals.' Evangelical Christianity thrived in this relatively unchallenged rural or Southern atmosphere and began to dominate those regions. They built seminaries committed to teaching "fundamental Christian truth" unencumbered by either the intellectual revolution of the last 500 years or the rise in critical biblical scholarship during the last 200 years. As the main line churches became more open to new interpretations and therefore, "fuzzier" on core doctrines, the fundamentalist movement grew more isolated, more strident in its proclamations and even more anti-intellectual. This division was hidden politically for years, in part because at least in the South the tensions over the civil war and issues of race had made the South staunchly Democratic. After all the Republican Party was identified with Abraham Lincoln, Civil War defeat and "carpet baggers." That, however, began to change when the Democrats nominated a northern Roman Catholic as its presidential candidate in 1928. Later Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces and defeated the southern wing of his party, led by Strom Thurmond, in the election of 1948. Next the Supreme Court, filled with appointees from the Democratic Roosevelt-Truman era, forced the desegregation of public schools in the 1950's, and then Democrat Lyndon Johnson cajoled Congress into passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Racism has always been an ally of fundamentalism. Yesterday's victims of the literal Bible were blacks, while today's victims are homosexuals. Fundamentalism always has a victim.

The foundation of this Southern-based right wing, fundamentalist Protestant religion had been laid out between 1909 and 1915 in those Unocal distributed tracts. In time these core principles were reduced to five in number and they came to be called "The Fundamentals."

The Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of God.
Jesus was literally born of a virgin.
Substitutionary atonement is the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross.
The miracles of the New Testament are real. They literally happened.
Jesus rose physically from the grave, ascended literally into the sky and would return someday in the "second coming."

The wording of these "fundamentals" varied slightly from document to document, but the battle lines were clear. The Northern Presbyterian Church adopted these fundamentals as defining what was required to call oneself a Christian at a national gathering as early as 1910. That vote did not end the debate, however, for this church had to reaffirm them again in 1916 and in 1923.
One cannot understand present day church tensions without being aware of these roots. Every major church dispute today rises out of a conflict created when new learning calls traditional religious convictions into question. Evolution vs. Intelligent Design; birth control, abortion and women's equality; homosexuality and the Bible, all finally come down to a battle in the churches between expanding knowledge and these five core principles. Critics of every new church initiative claim that in their opposition to "modernism" they are supporting "the clear teaching of the Word of God" or fighting a "godless humanism." It is time to expose those fundamentals for what they are...

Thoughts, comments... Warm regards, Roger

Here's Terry Eagleton on fundamentalism:

The word "fundamentalism" was first used in the early years of the last century by anti-liberal US Christians, who singled out seven supposed fundamentals of their faith. The word, then, is not one of those derogatory terms that only other people use about you, like "fatso". It began life as a proud self-description. The first of the seven fundamentals was a belief in the literal truth of the Bible; and this is probably the best definition of fundamentalism there is. It is basically a textual affair. Fundamentalists are those who believe that our linguistic currency is trustworthy only if it is backed by the gold standard of the Word of Words. They see God as copperfastening human meaning. Fundamentalism means sticking strictly to the script, which in turn means being deeply fearful of the improvised, ambiguous or indeterminate.

Fundamentalists, however, fail to realise that the phrase "sacred text" is self-contradictory. Since writing is meaning that can be handled by anybody, any time, it is always profane and promiscuous. Meaning that has been written down is bound to be unhygienic. Words that could only ever mean one thing would not be words. Fundamentalism is the paranoid condition of those who do not see that roughness is not a defect of human existence, but what makes it work. For them, it is as though we have to measure Everest down to the last millimetre if we are not to be completely stumped about how high it is. It is not surprising that fundamentalism abhors sexuality and the body, since in one sense all flesh is rough, and all sex is rough trade.

The New Testament author known as Luke is presumably aware that Jesus was actually born in Galilee. But he needs to have him born in Judea, since the Messiah is to spring from the Judea-based house of David. A Messiah born in bumpkinish Galilee would be like one born in Gary, Indiana. So Luke coolly invents a Roman census, for which there is no independent evidence, which requires everyone to return to their place of birth to be registered. Since Jesus's father Joseph comes from Bethlehem in Judea, he and his wife Mary obediently trudge off to the town, where Jesus is conveniently born.

It would be hard to think up a more ludicrous way of registering the population of the entire Roman empire than having them all return to their birthplaces. Why not just register them on the spot? The result of such a madcap scheme would have been total chaos. The traffic jams would have made Ken Livingstone's job look positively cushy. And we would almost certainly have heard about this international gridlocking from rather more disinterested witnesses than Luke. Yet fundamentalists must take Luke at his word.

Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death. Matthew's gospel, in a moment of carelessness, presents Jesus as riding into Jerusalem on both a colt and an ass - in which case, for the fundamentalist, the Son of God must indeed have had one leg thrown over each.

The fundamentalist is a more diseased version of the argument-from-the-floodgates type of conservative. Once you allow one motorist to throw up out of the car window without imposing a lengthy prison sentence, then before you know where you are, every motorist will be throwing up out of the window all the time, and the roads will become impassable. It is this kind of pathological anxiety, pressed to an extreme, which drove the religious police in Mecca early last year to send fleeing schoolgirls back into their burning school because they were not wearing their robes and head dresses, and which inspires family-loving US pro-lifers eager to incinerate Iraq to gun down doctors who terminate pregnancies. To read the world literally is a kind of insanity.

Roger Morrison wrote:Thoughts, comments... Warm regards, Roger

Excellent summary. The fundamentals described simply indicate that fundamentalists believe in a fixed, literal meaning of the Biblical text (there's a reason they call it the Word of Words). As Eagleton said (see my post above), "Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death." To be a fundamentalist is to deny the inherent uncertainty of language. and instead see all meaning circumscribed by a well-defined set of scripture.

Runtu wrote:

Roger Morrison wrote:Thoughts, comments... Warm regards, Roger

Excellent summary. The fundamentals described simply indicate that fundamentalists believe in a fixed, literal meaning of the Biblical text (there's a reason they call it the Word of Words). As Eagleton said (see my post above), "Fundamentalists are really necrophiliacs, in love with a dead letter. The letter of the sacred text must be rigidly embalmed if it is to imbue life with the certitude and finality of death." To be a fundamentalist is to deny the inherent uncertainty of language. and instead see all meaning circumscribed by a well-defined set of scripture.

Thanks Runtu, seems Eagleton & Spong are in the same concert. Eagleton singing a jazzier tune.Eagleton states 7 Fundamentals, Spong 5 Pasted below:

1. The Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of God.
2. Jesus was literally born of a virgin.
3. Substitutionary atonement is the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross.
4.The miracles of the New Testament are real. They literally happened.
5.Jesus rose physically from the grave, ascended literally into the sky and would return someday in the "second coming."

What are your (or other readers) thoughts on these 5? Any you endorse; don't endorse? Seems these would be LDS accepted as well???

Where would you say Eagleton & Spong are leading us/Christianism?? Warm regards, Roger

Roger Morrison wrote:1. The Bible is the literal, inerrant Word of God.
2. Jesus was literally born of a virgin.
3. Substitutionary atonement is the meaning of Jesus' death on the cross.
4.The miracles of the New Testament are real. They literally happened.
5.Jesus rose physically from the grave, ascended literally into the sky and would return someday in the "second coming."

What are your (or other readers) thoughts on these 5? Any you endorse; don't endorse? Seems these would be LDS accepted as well???

Where would you say Eagleton & Spong are leading us/Christianism?? Warm regards, Roger

I would think that LDS would accept 2-5, but for Mormons, the Word of God is less fixed. To Mormons, the word comes through scripture (as far as it is translated correctly) but more importantly through the witness of the spirit. Hence we have church members who say that we are only obligated to follow the prophet in matters where the spirit has confirmed the truth of his counsel.

So, in an Eagletonian sense, Mormons don't quite qualify as fundamentalists because they don't believe in the primacy of printed scripture. They believe in continuing revelation, meaning that even scripture can be superseded by revelation, or at least our understanding of scripture can be. I think Mormonism implicitly rejects the fundamentalist worship of the Biblical Word.

Hi Runtu, i think you are correct. LDS 80% Fundy. Although, IF we factor in a subject such as homosexuality, we might nudge the % closer to 99.9??

Asking again my last question:

Where would you say Eagleton & Spong are leading us/Christianism?? Warm regards, Roger

I read your ref to Eagleton, in another thread. I think speaking at an LDS function? BYU??? Is he LDS? X-Mo? Roger

Roger Morrison wrote:Hi Runtu, I think you are correct. LDS 80% Fundy. Although, IF we factor in a subject such as homosexuality, we might nudge the % closer to 99.9??

Asking again my last question:

Where would you say Eagleton & Spong are leading us/Christianism?? Warm regards, Roger

I read your ref to Eagleton, in another thread. I think speaking at an LDS function? BYU??? Is he LDS? X-Mo? Roger

Oh, no, Eagleton is not LDS. He's a Marxist professor of Literary Theory from England; I think he's currently at the University of Manchester. He was invited to speak at BYU when I was in grad school, and I remember my professor saying, "How in the hell did they manage to get this past the administration? President Benson would have a heart attack if he knew a Marxist was at BYU."

It was a fascinating conference, and frankly, some of the questions posed to Eagleton from the professors were embarrassing. I remember Eugene England trying to debate communism with Eagleton and getting smacked down rather badly. After one lecture, I spoke to him for a few minutes, and he invited me to the faculty luncheon, where I sat next to him and had a wonderful time.

Oddly enough, he married Willa Murphy, a non-Mormon who graduated with me at BYU.

Roger,

I have a couple of questions for you. Am curious what your answer would be not using search engines:

1) What is the ICBI

2) What did BB Warfield, AA Hodge and Charles Hodge have in common.

3) What seminary did Machen found after being kicked out of Princeton.

4) William Wilberforce's theological views are closer to A) Fundamentalists B) Liberals like Spong

richardMdBorn wrote:Roger,

I have a couple of questions for you. Am curious what your answer would be not using search engines:

1) What is the ICBI

2) What did BB Warfield, AA Hodge and Charles Hodge have in common.

3) What seminary did Machen found after being kicked out of Princeton.

4) William Wilberforce's theological views are closer to A) Fundamentalists B) Liberals like Spong

What's the relevance of these questions to a discussion of fundamentalism?

richardMdBorn wrote:Roger,

I have a couple of questions for you. Am curious what your answer would be not using search engines:

1) What is the ICBI

2) What did BB Warfield, AA Hodge and Charles Hodge have in common.

3) What seminary did Machen found after being kicked out of Princeton.

4) William Wilberforce's theological views are closer to A) Fundamentalists B) Liberals like Spong

Hi Richard i wish you had made them multiple choice :-) However i'll do my best...

1) I was going for "Inter-continental-balistic... SO X on that one.

3) Who's "Machen" and what's "Princeton"? " X " " " .

2) They were people!! " A " " " .

4) Well, WW was an English Statesman, Philanthropist AND an Abolitionist--My kinda guy! Yours too? From here, this must be a "trick-question" you rascal you:- So, without knowing more details, i'm going to ask you to tell me. Assuming, You know more than i do--about this question :-) Do i get a "B" or "C"?? Hope i didn't disappoint You?!

But i have to ask the same question as Runtu: What's the relevance Bro? Warm regards, Roger