Many young fundamentalists head off to an approved fundamentalist college to toil and study for four years only to emerge with a degree that puts them on promising career paths such as leading a church choir or supervising a nursery three times a week.

At Pensacola Christian College You can check out the wonderful world of Music Ministries in which you to can learn to look like this when you sing. “Lift those eyebrows, people! Jesus likes them up almost into your hairline!” A similar program is offered at West Coast Baptist College but you’ll want to note that there are separate degrees for men and women. Men take Practical Theology with their music degree while women take “Christian Womanhood.” (If the women want to learn about theology it’s best to let the sweet young things wait until they are married so they can ask their husbands about it.)

If you are a woman who aspires to get married and have babies, there are programs for that too! Unlike women of years gone by who did all this without needing to take college classes, you can head off to Hyles Anderson and major in Marriage and Motherhood. Hopefully you can snag a husband too while you’re at it or that’s a whole lot of money and time wasted.

If the world of word processing and church secretarial ministry is your dream, Maybe The Crown College’s Bachelor of Biblical Studies in Business Applications will float your boat. Hopefully that Bible-based approach to using Microsoft Access is worth every shekel.

And of course, every fundamentalist college worth its salt has at least a few programs in things like Youth Ministry, Camp Ministry, Nursing Home Every Other Thursday Ministry  and so on. These specialized degrees will ensure that these promising young fundamentalist leaders of tomorrow will quickly learn to suffer for Jesus making sub-minimum wage at the ministry of their choice. Alternatively, if they apostatize and leave the ministry, there’s always an option for food service and sales positions.

If you spent four years (or six or eight) getting a degree that you’re now embarrassed to put on your secular resume, you may have been a fundamentalist.

This week is turning into a much tougher slog than I had imagined. But onward we go…

Thy Word have I hid in mine heart that I might not sin against Thee…and as a bonus I also got this cool frisbee from the AWANA store!

Scripture memorization is a key part of a young fundamentalist’s education. Whether it’s in a formal classroom setting, as part of a Sunday School program, or at the dinner table, young fundamentalists are trained to regurgitate everything from short Proverbs to entire passages. That’s good.

Even as a child grows up and leaves fundamentalism he still carries with him this treasure of knowledge. The ability to turn ones thoughts to a particular verse or passage and have it instantly within reach with all its wisdom and 1611 thunder is a grand thing to be sure. Certainly, the explanation of the passages may not always have been quite right and some great passages (predestination, anyone?) never made it into a memory verse list. Nonetheless, the emphasis on having the Scriptures as a constant companion in your heart and mind is an aid and a comfort even while the former fundy learns to appreciate them with a newly opened and enlightened understanding.

Fundamentalists do take knowing the Scriptures seriously even if genuinely interpreting them and applying them don’t always exactly follow. I can only hope that the Spirit illumines more and more of them to a truer understanding of the words they already hold in their minds.

There is a tendency to view fundamentalists as anti-intellectuals and it’s true to a point that they do tend to like their facts and figures hand-picked and of a certain slant (then again have you seen what they’re teaching in public schools these days?). However, I’ve yet to meet a fundamentalist who’s children were illiterate when it comes to reading, writing, and ‘rithmatic.

In fact, fundamentalists put a great deal of stock in school. Most fundy churches over a few hundred members have at least an elementary school, with some going so far as to have a high school, college, seminary, and school of home economics all housed withing their walls. Fundamentalists publishers such as A Beka Book and BJU Press make millions of dollars each year selling to both church schools and more home schools than you can shake a McGuffey Reader at.

Fundamentalist kids may not be able to tell you who Immanuel Kant was or why the Beatles were important to musical history when they graduate but most can diagram the living daylights out of a compound-complex sentence and calculate a tithe plus three percent offering on their gross income without picking up a calculator. If they’re like I was they’re also likely to have read more books in the last month than the average kid will have done in the last year.

Anti-intellectual? Perhaps “selectively-intellectual” would be a better term. My mom and dad who sacrificed so much to give their seven children the best fundamentalist education they could afford have my heartfelt thanks.

“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.

thanks to “BJ student” for the links to Patriot Bible University

A little background: The Campus Church (Pensacola Christian College’s church that most staff and students are required to attend) recently lost its third pastor in five years leaving long-time resident professor and vice-president Dr. Joel Mullenix to fill the pulpit.

In the most recent telecast of Sunday’s morning service, Dr. Mullenix dispensed such a classic example of all that’s wrong with fundamentalist preaching that I could not help but put it here. Without further ado, I give you the SFL summary of “Pictures of Laodicea from Mount Sinai” broadcast December 6th.

After a brief intro explaining that the seven letters to the churches in Revelation 2 and 3 are representative of seven church ages and that we are now in the last age of Laodecia, the good doctor dives right into the drawing seven parallels between Mt. Sinai and our current church age. They are as follows:

1. The children of Israel waited 40 days and nights for Moses to return. This is just like the current church waiting for Jesus to return in the Rapture. And if we really believed that he was coming back and rapturing us all we’d live a lot differently than we do.

2. Aaron didn’t stand for the truth at Sinai. Neither to Neo-evangelicals, Neo-orthdox folks, or basically anybody else with Neo in their name. Mark and avoid them.

3. The Children of Israel used music that sounded like the sounds of war. THIS IS JUST LIKE ROCK MUSIC IN THE CHURCH! (No, I’m not kidding, listen to it for yourself).

4. Israel was naked just like the church in Laodeciea. Which reminds us that people no longer dress up and wear their best clothes for church. Because that’s exactly like being naked. Right.

5. Idolatry made the people claim they were worshiping God while doing the world’s work. Just like people today who live and worship like the world does and call it God’s work.

6. God was angry at Israel and wanted to destroy them. LOOK AT ALL THE HURRICANES, NATURAL DISASTERS, DISEASES, AND PLAGUES THAT HAVE NEVER, EVER HAPPENED BEFORE EVER EVER EVER. IT’S ALL BECAUSE WE’VE ALL GONE LIBERAL IN OUR CHURCHES. God is obviously angry at us too. Turn or Burn.

7. God moves away from the people just like Jesus is found outside the church in Revelation 3. Evidently he’s standing out there because he doesn’t like the music inside. Oh, and doctrine too. And other stuff.

Conclusion: Who is on the Lord’s side? Are you on the Lord’s side? Well are you? Then please stand to your feet. No, really. Stand up. Are you standing yet?

I for one am not only standing, I’m saluting too. One wonders what preacher boys learn in Homiletics classes at PCC other than how to properly use hairspray. I’d also like to take this opportunity to invite those who claim that SFL only covers the lunatic fringe of fundamentalism to explain to me how this sermon from a mainline fundy organization fits into that theory.

The Bob Jones high school biology text notwithstanding, education about matters reproductive in fundy schools often consists of thundering chapel messages about fleeing fornication. Even there, some kids who haven’t gotten the scoop on what “fornication” means may only know it happens at public schools and liberal churches and probably has something to do with breaking dress code and watching late-night television.

If you were old enough to vote before someone clued you in to where babies really come from…you might have been a fundamentalist.

This one happens to be from PCC.