American Fundamentalists: Their Identification, Traits, and Proper Mockery

03/05/2008

By Jeff Gustafson

Contrary to media representation, North American evangelicalism is by no means the reflection of a single monolithic mentality. As the icy clutch of diversity continues to wring dry the neck of the once predictably Bible-thumpin’, gay-bashin’, infomercial givin’ hegemony of the evangelical church, it has been forced to accommodate a number of lifestyles and cultures, none of which are particularly interesting. Still, spotting them in the wild can be a dicey business. Here is each, according to their kind.

OLD-SCHOOL FUNDIES

Identification: As the name implies, this is the class of evangelical that has changed the least since America’s founding. They are mostly relegated to the South, but with healthy distributions in the Midwest and Appalachian regions, always in secluded areas. They are distinguished from other groups mainly by their primitiveness and their tendency to spit a lot while preaching. Forget televangelist sheen; these guys are the genuine article, and as such are often disheveled and unwashed. (Fig 1.1) They tend to have large, bulbous eyes, particularly when they’re describing something from Revelation. Don’t be surprised if they’ve got a couple snakes hanging on them. Oh, and guns. Lots of ‘em.

Beliefs: Imagine the most seriously out-to-lunch ramblings of Pat Robertson, or that guy who has that half-hour show on the end times on UPN, and multiply it by ten. The ones that can read disagree with the theology of the Left Behind series, but only because it isn’t wacky enough. James Dobson’s claim that SpongeBob Squarepants supports the homosexual agenda is insufficient—they cannot fathom a popular children’s character who doesn’t support homosexuals, although their knowledge of cartoons is strictly limited to hearsay, as none of them own TVs. In terms of the Bible, they tend towards the sections that have God doing awesomely violent things while including the Jesus stuff more or less as a concession. If you suggest that perhaps the gospel accounts of Jesus don’t always give an entirely historical portrait, they’ll probably set you on fire.

Evangelical Style: Turn or burn. Old-school fundies tend to be direct, and prefer to tell you that you’re going to hell to your face rather than through the filter of TV or radio (neither of which they know how to operate). They can be seen on college campuses or metropolitan areas making a dramatic case for the Lord’s judgment, frequently using a homemade pedestal. This strikes people as cute and, in a hilarious misunderstanding of the intent, they will often leave spare change.

Political Views: Politics are too much of an “of this world” thing for the old-school fundie, so there is not much light to be shed in this section. Even Christian “hot-button” issues like abortion and gay marriage don’t sway them (aside from the occasional clinic bomber), since their extreme zealotry leads them to believe that even Bush is a rabid sodomite. A unique quality of old-school fundies that could be construed as “progressive” is the fact that they are about as likely to be black as white (KKK not included).

Musical Taste: You can never go wrong with old hymns, but I would submit that more of them are into death metal than is commonly thought.

How to Tame an Old-School Fundie: Tell him that your favorite part of Revelation is when the flying scorpions come to eat away at the unbelievers. Be prepared for him to recite the rest of Revelation by memory. Make sure there are no snakes on him before you make bodily contact. If social niceties are out of the question, just shoot him before he shoots you.

MAINSTREAM FUNDIES

This class of evangelical is the kind which the media portrays most accurately, which is fitting, since they are the most media-savvy. They have much in common with their cousin the Old-School Fundie, but they are far better dressed, are perhaps not quite so vitriolic in their preaching, and have heard of the Internet. They can be found anywhere, but spotting them in the wild is greatly simplified if you happen to know where the homosexual agenda will hit next (Fig. 1.2); they await its strike like a reactionary mongoose on its guard against a hypnotically amoral cobra. The main point of divergence between old-school and mainstream fundies is in appearance. They tend to favor the televangelist look for the men, conservative dresses for the women. They don’t carry around guns, but they have their Bible, and they will fire with a rifleman’s zeal.

Beliefs: The Bible is the infallible word of God. Every species of evangelical will have some kind of statement to this effect, but they all have to gay it up with their appeals to cultural context, proper hermeneutical method, and the lexical-syntactical method, whatever that is. They are the truest, bluest form of Biblical literalists, though they probably won’t set you on fire, unless you ask them to. They are comfortable with a Left Behind level of nuttiness in interpreting the end times, and they are the only known evangelical species to admit to enjoying the Book of Leviticus. They’re way more into Jesus than their more primitive brethren, often pronouncing his name in three syllables (“Juh-EEZ-suss!”) to fully express their piety. Christ is the savior of the world, but He gives preferential treatment to Americans—specifically, American Christians—so that they will not have to be challenged with multiculturalism or slight lifestyle changes (“persecution”) in the pursuit of ultimate comfort … er, holiness.

Evangelical Style: Despite their uncanny ability to embarrass themselves, mainstream fundies maintain an imaginary public dignity that disallows them from embracing the Turn-or-Burn approach directly. They prefer catchy mantras like “The Condom Nation will receive Condemnation,” or “Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve,” or “Keep your laws off my body”¹, and they have been known to make subtle hints that God will bring natural disaster on schools that vote against teaching intelligent design. They tend to at least generate a conversational tone before they start preaching at you, and they appeal just as much to God’s love for you as to His unquenchable wrath.
     Since so much of their ministry revolves around politics, getting you to vote for whoever they support on the tracts they send you is seen as akin to saving your soul. Still, winning you over for Christ is their ultimate goal, and they’ll be the first to tell you that it would break their heart to see you with the mark of the Beast on your forehead when the Judgment comes.

Political Views: This is the group that spawned the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition. They’re sane enough to fit into the normal political spectrum, but only just. They don’t “hate” gays, but they DO think that the gays have a vampiric lust to feed on the lifeblood of our children’s moral groundings. What’s more, most of them read and agree with Ann Coulter, even those who don’t still think she’s “on the right track.” Their contempt for public schools is second only to those who attend public schools. Most mainstream fundies homeschool their kids, all the while fighting for the inalienable rights of prayer, Bible indoctrination, and the stoning of adulterous teachers within the secularized walls of the Damned.
     Back in their heyday (which may still be now, for all anyone knows or cares), the Christian Coalition would send out flyers to their perceived constituencies that detailed the positions that various candidates held on key issues. Did they sanction the killing of children? Were they capable of spinning any left-leaning rhetoric of their opponent as anti-Christian? And most importantly, were they possessed by Satan? All these and more were given carefully thought-out answers by God’s chosen people, that whosoever should believe in them uncritically should not perish, but have everlasting voting power (Gospel of Pat Robertson, verse 16).

Musical Taste: For this part, it’s easier to go by what they disapprove of. They hate anything on secular radio, including Radio Disney, since we all know whose agenda Disney supports. They have been known to flog their children for watching MTV (one of the few things that qualifies them as decent parents), and even that stuff on the local Christian station is getting a bit too edgy, what with the electric guitar and all.

How to Tame a Mainstream Fundie: Tell them to shut up. Their indignation at this will manifest itself in an involuntary geyser of half-baked rhetoric about how the persecution of Christians is what’s sending America into the abyss and the separation of church and state is just a secular myth and so forth. I guess you can’t really “tame” a mainstream fundie, you can just get them to ramble incessantly, which will at best put them in a sort of trance. Our best field naturalists are still working on this one.

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¹The notion that this originated with pro-choice feminists is false. It was principally a mantra used by public-school attending children of mainstream fundies, whose parents’ zeal for seeing the 10 commandments displayed in the public arena was made manifest by the branding of 1-10 of the commandments on their children’s backs. This would mark the first—and last—time that feminists would ever borrow a slogan from evangelically parented schoolchildren.

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