Although there are exceptions, fundamentalist churches are predominantly full of (and I’m generalizing here) middle aged white people who like to watch reruns of the Lawrence Welk show. This lack of diversity comes as no surprise given the uneasy history of fundies with race relations. If you managed to get all the way through Christian high school and Bible college without having ever been taught why Martin Luther King Jr. was important in American history, you might have been a fundamentalist. After all, nothing bad ever happened in America prior to 1963, so whatever he did couldn’t have been that necessary.

Although it is less frequent nowadays, there are still some fundamentalist institutions that are overtly racist in their practices. For example, Maranatha Baptist Mission still carries in its Purposes, Precepts, Policies, and Practices booklet a prohibition both against interracial marriage and interracial adoption. There’s a sick irony in sending out international missionaries to bring the peoples of the world into the family of God while forbidding them to bring any into their own family that aren’t the right skin color. (Pardon me while I beat this drum again, but Pensacola Christian College has supported missionaries from MBM and had its President to speak in their services while this policy was in place. Mainstream? Hardly.)

More popular in the last decade, however, is a subtler more insidious ethnocentric approach to bigotry. It shows up in things like blaming Africa for the ‘demonic’ forces of rock music and condemning ethnic styles of dress. Although much of the racism has been forced underground by the winds of change and political expediency, the roots are often still there. Bob Jones University may now not officially prohibit interracial dating but it’s still a hotly debated topic among parts of the student body.

It stands to reason that a group of people who assign moral values to cultural norms would have issues with those who are different from themselves. Fundamentalists evidently espouse the theory that the more like Jesus a person becomes the more they will dress and act like a middle class white suburbanite. By this shall all men know that we are His disciples.

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Thanks to reader GuessWho for this classic example.

“Christians should never watch movies rated PG-13″, intones the fundamentalist.

“Why not?” asks his companion. “I don’t see any reason why this movie is so bad.”

“You’re asking the wrong question,” says the fundamentalist sternly. “Asking ‘why not?’ is the trick of rebellious children and compromisers. What you need to be asking is ‘why do you want to do it?’ — and if the answer you come up with isn’t either something super spiritual or agreed upon by at least two popular evangelists you have to admit I’m right.”

“Uh….” stammers his friend.

“I win!” yells the fundamentalist gleefully.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of this conversation, chances are you have been in the presence of a fundamentalist.

One has to wonder if a fundamentalist can also come up with super spiritual reasons for their choice of breakfast cereal. I’ll bet they can.

Thanks to Stephen for the picture

Loyal SFL reader Erin sent along today’s fundy website pick of the week: modestapparelusa.com.

I think that it goes without saying that if you’ve ever owned a maternity culotte slip, you’re probably a fundamentalist.

And yes they are available up to size 4xlarge. (I’ll leave you for a moment to ponder that.)

Since it’s also important to be modest in your own bedroom (one doesn’t want to be a stumbling block after all), the discerning fundamentalist lady can avail herself of a Blue Paisley Flannel Nightgown (only available in XL).

This item is also known as the “Gotta Headache” and is one of the few methods of birth control that fundamentalists approve of.

And what’s this I see? They’re selling copies of Your Clothes Say It For You by Elizabeth Rice Handford?

Ahhh. Suddenly the entire site begins to make a lot more sense.

If you’ve ever made $ 11,000 per year working in a ministry, while supporting a wife, three children, and a dog and then had the senior pastor you work for tell you that taking government assistance wasn’t “trusting God”…you might have been a fundamentalist.

Fundamentalist churches are generally not full of professional, high-income members. Doctors, Lawyers, and other such folks are noticeably absent from the church rolls and their tithes are noticeably absent from the church budget. As a result of this lack of funds, these churches often rely on a workforce of very poorly paid employees to take care of the ministry. Woe unto you if you’ve spent six years in school to get a Masters Degree in Education at an unaccredited fundamentalist college. At the local fundy school (the only place you’re qualified to work) that effort will probably net you church staff housing, no insurance, and less pay than you might get working at the local McDonalds.

To compound this problem, — and for reasons more political than doctrinal — many fundamentalists are deathly opposed to welfare of any kind. The claim is that if the government is helping you then they get the credit instead of God getting the credit. The idea that maybe God uses the government to help folks sometimes has evidently never dawned on them.

This lack of funds combined with an inability to seek help from any other source (not to mention threats that leaving this glorious ministry will ruin God’s will for your life), combines to create a class of indentured servitude with people who are too literally too poor to escape the cycle. Add to this the bellowing of preachers who blast their lackeys for even daring to inquire about how much money a ministry position might pay and you end up with a very sad situation indeed.

It’s all fine and good to be told that slaving away for sub-minimum wages is laying up treasure in heaven. One has to wonder if it’s inconceivable that it might be possible to get both treasure in heaven and a decent dental plan down here on earth in the meantime.

College Lakes Baptist Church in Fayetteville,NC describes themselves this way:

“The church family believes in: an unlimited atonement, a universal resistible call,resistible grace, using the King James Version of the Bible, deference to the pastor in all matters, serving at the pleasure of the pastor, a church-led government, a person with a servant’s heart who is seeking to meet spiritual needs rather than being recognized as a person with a title, traditional church music only, a wife actively involved in the ministry, and the church is anti-Calvinistic.”

Oh, but it gets better. A quick trip to their website reveals a student handbook for their Christian Academy that reads like something you’d expect to find in a volume entitled “Total Domination and You: Cult Making For Fun And Profit.”

A few excerpts:

Is your kid having a problem with the way a rule is being enforced? Forgetaboutit!

WE DO NOT TOLERATE GRIPING
If your child comes home complaining about a policy or discipline, please follow this procedure:

1. Reread the handbook; it states our policies. You can then remind the student that you both
were aware of the policy when he enrolled in the Academy.
2. Realize that your child’s reporting is emotionally biased and may not include all the
information.
3. Realize that the school has reasons for all rules and we enforce them without partiality.
4. Support and contact the school for all the facts. You may talk with the lead supervisor in
each Learning Center. Please do not seek to talk with the principal or anyone else because
discipline is left to the discretion of the supervisor

And let’s not forget to include a section on CHRISTIAN AMERICANISM!

Christian Americanism places emphasis upon the greatness of America’s heritage and the sacrifices of her heroes. America’s constitution guarantees liberties to educate in order to preserve freedom. We unashamedly teach the Biblical doctrines of self-discipline, respect for those in authority, obedience to law and their natural outgrowth, and love for what the flag originally represented.

Ready for the best part? The church description I started with was from a listing on the BJU church placement service website as part of an advertisement for an associate pastor position. Crazyland is never as far from “mainstream” as the fundies would like you to think.

Fundamentalists no longer literally keep their women barefoot and pregnant  (or at least not barefoot) but they do tend to want to keep them at home. After all, “keepers at home” is what Paul said, right? Of course, he also gave rules for how a man should treat his slaves, so there may be a wee bit of a cultural gap there. But cultural context is for liberals and feminists, amen?

After all, the Proverbs 31 woman is the perfect example of  a keeper at home. Yeah, she bought and sold goods but that was a…uh…home based business! And all that stuff about her traipsing around buying and selling real estate is…um…well, I’m sure it’s a lot more complicated in the original Hebrew and a fundamentalist pastor can set it all straight if given half a chance.

Turns out there are a lot of women doing all kinds of stuff in the Bible: Deborah, Lydia, Priscilla, Phoebe, Mary, Tryphaena, Typhosa and Persis to name a few. And other than being judges, businesswomen, deaconesses, and apostles, I’m sure none of them would ever have dreamed of putting on shoes and leaving the house.

Here’s a Grand Old Hymn submitted by loyal SFL reader Dan. Evidently the children in his church used to march around the room to this…peppy (yes, we’ll stick with that) tune. Once can only hope they did it on the 2 and 4.

The Assurance March. And by “March” they mean “Polka.”

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Do you have a Grand Old Hymn you’d like to share? Hurl it into the suggestion box.