The Battle for God

Course Goals

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Course Goals:

1. To become familiar with the key ideas that Karen Armstrong presents in her book: The Battle for God.

2. To discuss, debate, learn together and support one another in a community that practices authentic hospitality, holy manners and relational learning.

3. To develope a historical understanding of modern religious fundamentalism in the religious tradition of Jerusalem - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

4. To distinguish between two approaches to faith; mythos (meaning) and logos (rationality) and to see how both are needed for an integrated contemporary spirituality.

5. To combine content sessions with group discussion (plenary and small groups, as desired by the participants).

6. To see this program as an activity of spiritual development and a-growth-in faith quest of life-long learning .

B. Purpose of the Book (Introduction, pp. ix-xvi)

To come to a better awareness of contemporary religious fundamentalism.

To study the historic and theological reasons for the emergence of religious fundamentalism today.

To seek to build bridges with those whose understanding of faith differs from our own.

C. A Key Characteristic of this Course:

To struggle with what it might mean to move from a posture of demonization to embrace of those advocating religious fundamentalism and terrorism in our world today.

Wayne's Introduction

In her book The Origin of Satan Elaine Pagels speaks of how we tend to demonize what we fear and do not understand. The history of religion, including Christianity, is replete with evidence of that kind of demonization.

Miroslav Volf, a theologian who was born in the Balkans, in the midst of Catholic, Orthodox and Muslim religious conflict, believes that the only way people of faith can move past the posture of demonization is to embrace our enemy. Embrace - is more than toleration. It means knowing and understanding the one we have come to fear and hate.

We Called them Fundies:

I realize now that, as I was growing up, my parents were what you might call soft fundamentalists. They took the words of the Bible seriously and literally. They were by no means arrogant or confrontational about their faith,. But they did, in truth, think like fundamentalists. Most Christian people I knew from that time were like that.

My first recollections of _fundamentalist_ take me to my seminary days, forty years ago. The term _fundy_ became common parlence back then for my fellow classmates and I. We used to describe the faith stance of people we did not like as _fundies_.

As I grew more aware of the critical approach to studying theology I was more demeaning of the faith within which I had been raised. When I would visit my parents, I would tell them about all the new and exciting things I was learning at seminary. They listened in pained silence. I was not speaking about the faith in the way they understood it.

Then, gradually, I became torn between what I was learning in school and what I was experiencing with my family. Early on, I determined that I could not reject either. I decided that I would dedicate my life to bridging the gap between the faith of my parents and the new understandings I was following vocationally.

So it is in that spirit that I speak to you about the challenges we face today as Christians. We fear and are quick to demonize religious fundamentalists who seem hell bent on destroying us. Yet, I believe, we are called by all that is highest and best in our Christian faith to embrace such people. We need to come know them and to see things from their perspective.

Seven Books & Summaries on Contemporary Fundamentalism and Terror

In the study resources of this website are reviews I have written on the following books:

The War for Muslim Minds (Kepel, 2004)
Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning (Ruthven, 2004)
Terror in the Name of God (Stern, 2003)
Strong Religion (Almond, Appleby and Sivan, 2003)
Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (Feiler, 2002)
In the Aftermath: What September 11th is Teaching Us (Taylor, ed. 2002)
When Religion Becomes Evil (Kimball, 2002)

Please click HERE for the Book Reviews.
From these books, I have developed seven issues that I hope we can deal with during the time we have together these next ten weeks. I describe them as follows:

7 Issues - Fundamentalism and the Modern World:

1. a passing fad

(or) entrenched reality?

2. a clash of civilizations

(or) a war within civilizations?

3. as traditionalists

(or) as innovative manipulators?

4. an exclusive

(or) an inclusive world (of East and West)?

5. demonization

(or) embrace?

6. a battle using weapons

(or) as wise choises?

7. Abraham - a faith family divided

(or) united?

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