@Holiday20310401,
Quote:I will not contend with you in this DT since I feel you're more advanced than me in this matter. Care to give me a round down of this claim? Links will be appreciated.
First, I wasn't trying to disagree with the whole of the post. Fundamentalism as a major religious movement does have roots in more extreme Protestant groups, Protestantism having come up in the dawn of the modern period. We can even find instances of fundamentalism dating back thousands of years. But today's fundamentalism is a world wide movement that has touched every major faith tradition. We even find fundamentalism in some of the Buddhists now fighting in northern Ceylon.
Scholarly study is not essential in interpreting the Bible. Not every soul needs to, or even can, pursue the path of scholar monk. For most people, congregation is invaluable. What is essential for a faith tradition is that the clergy, the teachers, pursue honest and open scholarly study of their scripture. These are the men who instruct and lead the congregations.
Don't get me wrong, I encourage scholarly study of scripture by everyone - even people who do not see themselves as spiritual. But the real issue is the education of the teachers - the idea is that you have the adept do the serious scholarly work that not everyone can do, and then have these learned souls instruct the congregation in a way that is relevant to the congregation. With proper spiritual guidance, the individual practitioner can read and interpret the Bible just fine for the sake of their spiritual path.
As for my post:
That's basically the run down. As far as links go, you might start with the relevant Wiki entries. Karen Armstrong has two books worth looking into, that I've read, and probably several more -
The History of God and
The Battle For God: A History of Fundamentalism. She begins the second book with a chapter on Jewish religious change after Isabella and Ferdinand issued the Edict of Expulsion in 1499.
If we want to discuss the trend towards Fundamentalism in a particular faith tradition, the historical events of influence will obviously change from tradition to tradition. In Europe, for example, the plague and similar deflating events like the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottomans played a role in the trend towards fundamentalism. But the underlying, unifying issue is the modern era of hyper-science, global perspective, and aggressive secularism.
Fundamentalism is just one reaction to the modern era. The Baha'i faith is, in my estimation, a very positive reaction to modernity.
Quote:I tend to view Jesus as a radical liberal, not a staunch conservative.
If Jesus lived, he was. Unfortunately, it didn't take long for the 'conservatives' to pirate the church of Christ. Constantine was a bright politician, from what I can tell.
Quote:So the roman catholic church are hypocrites for not crediting Aquinas with the work he did to try to rationalize the christain perspective. (I think it was Aquinas anyways).
Aquinas was one of the great scholastics. I have to be honest, I'm not terribly familiar with the Roman Catholic Church and her particular doctrines. But I was under the impression that the Church deeply reveres these men - St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas.
... the RCC would accustom the philosophers as heretical. I thought it was the dominican that revered the thinkers of that time.
Ironic, eh. I mean, the papal state was evil in many ways. (Unfortunately I always get rejections if I make an absolute statement saying the papal state was simply evil. Oh well.):rolleyes: