If you’ve left fundamentalism, the challenge to day is to tell us where and what you are now. Maybe you’ve got a new denominational label, maybe you’ve decided to abandon labels all together, or maybe you’re just plain confused. It’s rather difficult to leave somewhere without ending up somewhere else. Share a bit about your [...]

It’s a little scary to think that Hyles has its own army even if they do only trot them out to shoot off guns in honor of their Dear Leader. I think they would have been better off aiming their guns at the trumpet players.

I wonder, have you done your best for Jesus? I know that we live under all that grace nonsense now (my, how I miss a good old-fashioned stoning!) but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a good guilt trip now and again about your works or lack thereof.  Jesus is keeping score. Did you waste [...]

In 1961, a fundamentalist named Bill Gothard founded the Institute in Basic Life Principles and later masterminded the Advanced Training Institute home study program. These programs have forever changed the lives of thousands of people. Some of them have since managed to piece back together some shreds of their sanity; many more have not. Gothard [...]

Fundamentalists love comparing themselves to soldiers and the Christian life to war. Go to a fundy church for a few weeks and chances are good you’ll hear at least one sermon illustration involving soldiers, combat heroism, and a Christian in basic training who shined all the boots that were thrown at him (one can only [...]

In an age where people are likely to have more friends online than they do in their own neighborhoods and tweet more than they converse face-to-face, fundamentalism still provides a genuine sense of old-fashioned community with people you can actually see. And in a fundamentalist community you’ll see an awful lot of them since your [...]

Here’s the trailer for God’s Cartoonist, a look into the world of Jack Chick and co. If you simply can’t wait to see this, it’s available on amazon.com or wherever documentary films on wackos are sold.

For fundamentalists, the following is the “Christian Bill of Rights” I. You have no rights. For unlike the Founding Fathers they idolize, fundamentalists will claim that since our only reward as sinners is an eternity in hell that even once we are redeemed we still have no right to expect any freedoms at all in [...]

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 [...]

The “lunatic fringe” of fundamentalism is never quite as far away from the “mainstream” as those who claim to be the mainstream would have you believe. Since guilt by association is a favorite game of many fundies, I’ll beg your indulgence while I try my own hand at it for a moment. Consider Tony Hutson, [...]