Religious Fundamentalism is a ‘Plague,’ Pope Says

ROME - Interreligious dialogue is an important way to counter fundamentalist groups as well as the unjust accusation that religions sow division, Pope Francis said.

Meeting with members of the Argentine Institute for Interreligious Dialogue Nov. 18, the pope said that in “today’s precarious world, dialogue among religions is not a weakness. It finds its reason for being in the dialogue of God with humanity.”

Recalling a scene from the 11th-century poem, “The Song of Roland,” in which Christians threatened Muslims “to choose between baptism or death,” the pope denounced the fundamentalist mentality which “we cannot accept nor understand and cannot function anymore.”

“We must beware of fundamentalist groups; each (religion) has their own. In Argentina, there are some fundamentalist corners there,” he said. “Fundamentalism is a plague and all religions have some fundamentalist first cousin.”

According to its website, the Institute for Interreligious Dialogue was founded in Buenos Aires in 2002 and was inspired by then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as a way “to promote understanding among men and women of different religious traditions in our city and the world.”

The pope welcomed the members of the institute who are in Rome to reflect on the document on “human fraternity” and improving Christian-Muslim relations, which was signed Feb. 4 by Francis and Sheikh Ahmad el-Tayeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar and a leading religious authority for many Sunni Muslims.

The intention of the document, the pope explained, was a way to adopt a “culture of dialogue” while respecting each other’s unique identity.

“This is key: Identity cannot be negotiated because if you negotiate your identity, there is no dialogue, there is submission. Each (religion) with its own identity is on the path of dialogue,” he said.

Well, at least on condemning Fundamentalism (the dreaded f-word) this Pope is in perfect accord with his traditionalist opponents. Everybody knows that Fundamentalists are inbred Anglo-Celtic residents who live in the trailer parks of the Southeastern United States--the "accursed race!" Such have no place in the so-called "universal religion."

This won't stop FReeper Catholics from still using "Fundamentalist" as a curse word.

Before, and still now largely, we were known as “Evangelicals”. The term, Fundamentalist, comes from a series of essays, “The Fundamentals” printed at the personal expense of Lyman Stewart and his brother, of Union Oil Company. Hundreds of thousands of these booklets were mailed free of charge to every community leader in the country. If you believed what was in those booklets, you were a “fundamentalist”.

The wiki article on this is good and if you will let me know what you think I will be curious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fundamentals

At the end of the wiki page, find links to these essays, which you can read for yourself. The four volume set in .pdf format and edited by R. A. Torrey is the best way. I own the single volume hardback published by Biola in the early 1950’s. (No you can’t have it. I inherited it from my father-in-law, who was somewhat influential in the early days of the Conservative Baptist Association.)

The term “evangelical” carried, during the early decades of the 20th century, the same pejorative connotations as the term “fundamentalist” does today, until a speech by Harold J. Ockenga for the founding of Fuller Seminary in which he imagined a compromise position he called a “new evangelicalism.”

The former president of the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship, my friend, Dr. John Vaughn, tried to raise money to do it again, to print the booklets and mail them out everywhere free. I suspect that among other more noble goals, he also wanted to rescue the term from complete destruction. He failed in this. He is now retired, and our fellowship has changed its name to “Foundations Baptist Fellowship Int’l”. They wanted to keep the letters FBF!

I invite everyone to continue to call us names. It seems to be working for you.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.