The term "fundamentalist" triggers viscerally negative reactions in most Western pluralistic contexts, connoting ignorance, fanaticism, hypocrisy, and hatred. It evokes images of suicide bombers, televangelists, and crooked politicians. Ammerman’s article, The Nurture and Admonition of the Lord, explored a fundamentalist community’s approach towards rearing its children. Her portrayal of Southside absorbed me because it resembled my own Dutch Midwestern community. Reading this article challenged me to evaluate my experience against the Southside model, and to fashion a personal understanding of Christian fundamentalism from this evaluation.
My home community stresses literal interpretation of the set of basic principles outlined by the Bible. Like the children of the Southside community, I matured in a vigilantly monitored environment.
At home, my parents carefully screened my interaction with the world, whether through media, friends, family, or just day-to-day activities. They encouraged immersion in Biblical principles by including prayer and Bible reading at every family meal. My childhood games regularly featured “playing church.” I loved to read, and I can still remember feeling physically jolted when I came across “bad words” or evolutionistic references, or “bad situations” in books. The Elsie Dinsmore series thrilled me with legalistic but fervent enthusiasm for Christ. My definitions of “good” and “bad” came directly from my community, and were reassuringly black and white. We did not say “crap” or “shut up,” and we never watched movies with such swear words, or New Age ideology, or too much age-inappropriate romance. I also loved to write, and I remember struggling with whether or not to include family prayers or references to church in my stories, because even when I was in third or fourth grade, I felt that doing so somehow detracted from the integrity and value of my writing, but not doing so betrayed my religious commitments. I grew up absorbing theology, especially through my extended family, when all the aunts and uncles would congregate at my Oma and Opa’s house every Sunday or for any birthday or holiday, and talk about religion over mugs of coffee and trays of windmill cookies. Although all too frequently laced with arrogance and scandal, these arguments deeply impressed upon me the significance of religion, and of living according to the Bible.
At church, I attended services twice every day, and always had Sunday school or Catechism lessons after the morning service. I remember growing increasingly frustrated with the irrelevancy of my church’s attempts to relate to the youth, displaying a rueful attitude toward Christianity, or sending out a weak “Hey, we’re cool too!” message that seemed to only underscore that the world’s standards counted above all. I received a conflicting message at church: I need to be faithful to the Bible as the only standard—but I have to establish that that standard can measure up to the world’s standards. Pipe organs and superbowl parties still exasperate me.
After being home-schooled for first grade, I attended a Netherlands Reformed denominational school that required girls to wear dresses or skirts and to take home economics classes, and taught only the KJV. My parents chose this school in order to err on the side of caution, viewing it as the “safest” option available, but it created a great deal of confusion for me. Many of my friends regarded my family with suspicion because we owned a television, attended a church that used the NIV, wore slacks, shorts, and tank tops, and purchased Christmas trees. When my parents would explain the reasons behind these differences, I began to develop a sense of superiority. My experience at Plymouth made me something of a hybrid: legalistic, sheltered, but also oddly proud of my Christian freedoms. By the time I transferred to a fledgling high school in ninth grade, I had embraced the mindset that women should only have careers if they are unwed, and that the purpose of education for women was either as a backup plan, or to equip women to be good mothers and wives, as enriched as the flour with which they bake their wholesome homemade treats. My new high school was a breath of fresh air because of its focus on freedom in Christ. Looking back, I see that many of the lessons I learned at Zion were still extremely conservative: vote Republican, make sure you take classical courses like Latin and Logic, be wary of songs not in the Trinity Hymnal, never ever read The Message, etc. However, I also learned about the complexity of life, about bias and common grace, and I started to develop a sense of the need for discernment, for critical thinking instead of blind fidelity. Zion equipped me to think, and, most importantly, it emphasized the importance of grace in relationships.
Did my experiences fashion a narrow-minded bigot out of me? I actually struggle with that question. I have learned to flinch whenever the “gender” question is broached, to cringe away from taking a stand on anything short of “do not murder.” In many ways, I have lapsed into apathy. My convictions frequently take a back seat to my desire to be winsome and charitable—to the point that I cannot confront my loved ones when they fall into very real and destructive vices, because I am so aware of my own failings and inadequacies, and so afraid of driving them away by fundamentalist hypocrisy. And in my ambivalence and confusion, I am on the “faithful” end of most of my age group! Many of my friends have reacted against my community and adopted lifestyles that deeply grieve and baffle the older generation: drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, drug use, eating disorders, and otherwise irresponsible living. At home I cannot engage with my friends because they sense my disapproval, but I also disapprove with the way that my community handles their disobedience, because it strikes me as ungracious and unfeeling.
How do I feel about Christian fundamentalism? I find that it is courageous and well-meaning, but inconsistent and inadequate—in short, it is good but fallen, like all other brands of Christianity.
While I am so grateful for the heritage that I have been given, and the way that God has used my community to lead me to salvation, I nevertheless feel handicapped to relate to both the world and the church because of the confusion it engendered in my heart. During these three years at Covenant, my focus has shifted from an attempt to reconcile my upbringing with Covenant’s teaching, to an attempt to discover whether the Bible teaches what I believe. I am clinging to grace, and striving above all to love and know my God. In so doing, I pray that my actions are faithful to the Truth.
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