Dan Reid has a good post about that old canard, "taking the Bible literally." This is a wild guess, but it may have been inspired by his reading the first two paragraphs of Susan Jacoby's opinion piece about the recent Evangelical Manifesto. Jacoby in turn may or may not have read Alan Jacob's review of the manifesto in the Wall Street Journal, but she was obliging enough to prove one of his best points:
"[T]he heart of the document is a kind of urgent appeal: Please don't call us fundamentalists or confuse us with them. This strikes me as a regrettable tack . . . people who make the kinds of theological statements found in this document -- for instance, 'We believe that the only ground for our acceptance by God is our trust in Jesus Christ' -- are going to be called fundamentalists no matter what else they say."
So here's an interesting survey question: What kind of person is a "fundamentalist"? Describe a prototypical fundamentalist. I'm not looking for a precise definition, just a cluster of associations.
1 comment:
Women must wear their hair and skirts long, without jewelry or (heaven forbid!) tattoos. They must birth as many children as possible, homeschool them, and forbid all card-playing, dancing, and non-Christian music.
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