Fundamentalism

by James Barr

Much of the Christianity which flourishes best today has "conservative" or "fundamentalist" characteristics, that is, strong emphasis on the correctness of the Bible, hostility to the methods of modern critical theology and an assurance that those who choose to differ are not really "true Christians" at all. In this penetrating critique Professor Barr first argues that the nature of fundamentalism is often misunderstood and that the general understanding of the way in which biblical conservatism works needs to be improved and corrected.

Secondly, however, he seeks to dissuade those who are attracted by it, arguing that the conservative position is not only incoherent as a scholarly position but thoroughly in contradiction, theologically, with the central logic of Christian faith. Biblical scholarship and theology, he believes, have much to learn from the discussion. While it is right to repudiate a fundamentalist approach, the reasons advanced for this rejection have often been unsound, and these unsound arguments have damaged both modern biblical criticism and modern theology. Both conservative evangelical and more liberal scholars are likely to study what he has to say with unusual avidity.

Genres: Religion, Theology, Christianity, Fundamentalism

402 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

James Barr, FBA, was a Scottish Old Testament scholar. At the University of Oxford, he was the Oriel Professor of the Interpretation of Holy Scripture from 1976 to 1978, and the Regius Professor of Hebrew from 1978 to 1989.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_B...

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Ancient Weaver · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little dated in some respects, but still proves to be a classic study of modern fundamentalism. This book analyses Christian fundamentalism with a greater degree of sophistication than many other treatments.

While many different aspects of fundamentalism are covered here in detail, one of the things I think Barr does exceptionally well is to analyze the core logic of Christian fundamentalists' understanding of the Bible. As Barr points out it's not exactly accurate to characterize fundamentalists as insisting that the Bible be read in a literal sense (even though most of us (myself included) are guilty of that kind of shorthand thinking). More careful study reveals that one of the core beliefs, if not the core belief, of modern fundamentalism is in the Bible as a supposed inerrant document (i.e., that it contains no errors of fact or ideas, internal contradictions, etc.) of divine revelation. The fundamentalist emphasis is on the belief in biblical inerrancy rather than on biblical literalism.

What does all of that mean? As strange and counter intuitive as it might sound, it turns out that it isn't the Bible itself that fundamentalists are really committed to. (Even though I'm sure they would absolutely deny that statement.) Fundamentalists are perfectly willing to disregard or explain away things within the actual text of the Bible that would threaten or contradict their particular theological beliefs or that which would threaten their belief in biblical inerrancy. So, what really lies at the very heart of fundamentalist belief is not really the Bible per se, but faith in an ideal Bible, a document of absolute truth without any factual errors, contradictions, conflicting points of view, etc. that contains a single set of theological doctrines. (A perfect master program, if you will.)

This overarching commitment to the idea of an inerrant Bible explains why fundamentalist theologians have no problem reinterpreting portions of biblical books non-literally when they feel compelled to do so. As Barr demonstrates via examples, fundamentalists are willing to posit rationalizing interpretations of portions of the Bible (such as miracle stories) in the interest of preserving faith in biblical inerrancy. In these cases non-literal interpretations, which take a certain amount of liberty with the text, are considered fine if they make a certain portion of the Bible sound more plausible to modern ears.

In the same way fundamentalists have no problem explaining away contractions within the Bible or details in the texts that make no sense. In these instances fundamentalists fall back on their belief in a perfect, ideal Bible, and resort to dreaming up imaginary, hypothetical scenarios which make any contradictions, factual inaccuracies, etc. merely apparent. An ancient scribe must have made a copyist error that wasn't in the original text or our understanding of the translation of the ancient words must be wrong. Again, it's worth pointing out that the faith here is placed in a hypothetical, idealized version of the Bible that exists in only the mind of the fundamentalist as opposed to the actual texts of the Bible that we actually possess.

All of this might sound kind of esoteric, but I think Barr's insights about the central place the belief in biblical inerrancy has within the sphere of Christian fundamentalism are crucial to understanding this form of religion. So much of fundamentalism is focused almost exclusively on "defending the Bible," which is to say on propping up belief in an inerrant Bible. This is one of the reasons why I think creationism remains such an entrenched article of faith among fundamentalists. A more literal interpretation of the Genesis creation stories is easier to reconcile with a belief in inerrancy, while a non-literal understanding of the Genesis creation stories is perceived by fundamentalists to be more threatening to maintaining a belief in an inerrant Bible. (Unfortunately, Barr's book was published just at the pre-dawning of the modern creationist movement, which reversed many of the tentative steps fundamentalists were then making towards reconciling evolution with their religious ideas. This was the opposite of what Barr takes for granted throughout his book as the inevitable trajectory of fundamentalists' ideas about origins.)

While Barr is quite critical of Christian fundamentalism in his book, I think he still refrains from making a fuller critique that follows from his analyses. An obsession with maintaining faith in an inerrant Bible is a sign of great fear and anxiety. Fundamentalists cannot live without an absolute, simple, clear set of thoughts and beliefs that they are convinced must come from God. This need for security in an exclusive Truth (that is, a set of absolutely true beliefs) in a confusing, complicated world tends to become a neurotic, all-consuming focus to the exclusion of things like loving one's neighbor or living out any of the other positive aspects of Christian tradition.

As a result, fundamentalist Christianity tends to devolve into a quarrelsome, paranoid form of religion eager to attack all others, including other types of Christians. Much, if not most, of the fundamentalists' time and energy is spent denouncing all non-fundamentalists, engaging in bibliolatry, reading apologetic defenses of fundamentalist beliefs, etc. The whole focus of their religion becomes about indoctrination and policing the purity of indoctrination. (If there is a God, it's hard to imagine these are the kind of things it would want it's followers to be obsessed with.)

But this topic of inerrancy I've been focusing here is only one part of Barr's the larger discussion. You'll find much more food for thought throughout the various chapters of this book.

[Tyler · Rating 5 out of 5]

NB I read the first edition. Not the one pictured.

This is an excellent book. If you want to learn about Fundamentalism (or Evangelicalism as it is often called today) read this book.

I spent the first 20-some-odd years of my life being a fundamentalist so I know a good bit about its beliefs. I felt like James Barr was my biographer at points. You'll see a lot of info floating around about Fundamentalism from outsiders and much of it suffers from a real lack of understanding. Things will be said like, "Fundamentalists take the Bible literally." Or, sometimes an ancillary belief of Fundamentalism (such as homosexuality being wrong) will take up the entire focus of people's focus when they speak on Fundamentalism. Not so with Barr. I imagine he has talked with a lot of Fundamentalists in addition to studying all the Fundamentalist literature he cites.

Barr is coming at the topic as a non-fundamentalist Christian, but his own views on religion play a very small role. He is clearly annoyed with Fundamentalism but never loses his balanced tone.

This book was written in the 70s (before I was born), so I was shocked by how relevant it was to me. Maybe that attests to how hostile Fundamentalism is to change. Everything he said I could match with personal experience. The one exception to this is his claim that Fundamentalists have given up fighting the theory of Evolution. I don't know if that was true when he wrote the book, but it certainly ain't true now as we all know. I assume there must have been a lapse in the 70s in their antagonism to this topic because everything else is as true today as the day he wrote it.

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

THE FAMED ANALYSIS (BY A SCOTTISH SCHOLAR) OF THE SUBJECT

Author James Barr explains in the first chapter of this 1977 book, “My main task… has been to attempt a theological analysis of fundamentalist beliefs and practices… Fundamentalism has an effect on theology and biblical study, not only through the positive pressure towards conservative positions that it exercises, but also negatively through the decisions people take in order to avoid a fundamentalist position… A fresh description of the phenomenon of fundamentalism may assist theologians and biblical scholars to … avoid both over-reactions and reactions in a mistaken direction.” (Pg. 7-9) He adds, “There is a further purpose… there are very many who have their minds still open and uncertain… who nevertheless are under much pressure from the arguments of fundamentalists and are deeply impressed by the seeming attractiveness of their position… I hope that the analysis of the phenomenon … will help them to make an intelligent and deliberate decision in their uncertainty.” (Pg. 10)

He asks, “But what of the time when there were no conservative evangelicals, when this type of Christian thinking and piety just did not exist? Did God, let us say in the Middle Ages, not have any true Christians to worship him? The answer of the fundamentalist is that there was no such time. The faith and practice of conservative evangelicals today is, apart from some non-essentials, identical with the faith and practice of the church of New Testament times… It is the same if we start with the names of individuals from ancient or medieval times. Judged by the criteria which modern fundamentalists apply, was Athanasius… a true Christian? Was St. Francis of Assisi? The fundamentalist is not much troubled by this question… Whatever was the case in the fourth century of the twelfth, he feels, in the modern context it is clear that liberal of modernist theology and biblical criticism are enemies of the true gospel…” (Pg. 16-17)

He notes, “We see… that a symbolic and non-literal interpretation of Gen. 1 is preferred, and it is now only very extreme fundamentalists who assert that a literal interpretation of the six days of creation is obligatory, or even desirable. The reason for the preference is plain. It has nothing to do with a softening of the fundamentalist rejection of the critical approach to the Bible… What has happened is that the scientific evidence for the long duration of the beginnings of the world has become too strong to withstand… they shifted their interpretation of the Bible passage … in order to save that which for them was always paramount, namely the inerrancy of the Bible.” (Pg. 42) He adds, “Inerrancy is maintained only by constantly altering the mode of interpretation… as soon as it would be an embarrassment to the view of inerrancy held.” (Pg. 46)

He points out, “Did [Jesus] say, ‘Why do you call me good?...’ or did he say, ‘Why do you ask me concerning the good?..’ One of them must be wrong… Not so fat, says ... E.J. Young… Firstly, we do not know that the intention of the writers was to give a verbatim report of all the words of the questioner and of Jesus. Secondly, the original conversation took place in Aramaic, while the gospel text is in Greek… Young is thus taking refuge in vagueness… But Young… has in fact now changed his ground. He has abandoned the position that the Bible actually tells you what Jesus said. It doesn’t. It tells you what Matthew or Mark… intended the reader to understand.” (Pg. 58-59)

He argues, “There is no such thing as ‘the Bible’s view of itself’ from which a fully authoritative answer to these questions can be obtained… The most obvious difficulty is the absence from the New Testament of clear and unambiguous ‘claims’ about the infallibility and inerrancy of the total New Testament as we have it today… many or most of the passages in the New Testament: when they talk about ‘scriptures’ … they are talking about the Old Testament.” (Pg. 78)

He states, “Among political issues of the present day there is one that is of special interest to fundamentalist, namely the return of the Jews to Palestine and the fortunes of the state of Israel… ‘The Jews’ are regarded as a uniform collectivity for the purposes of this trend of thought…there is disappointment at the failure of ‘the Jews’ to embrace Christianity… but in fact it seems that … the old conversionist interest in the Jews has become muted… In such a milieu uncritical admiration for the state of Israel becomes common, and fundamentalist religion lends its ideological support to many of its policies, sometimes also to its conquests.” (Pg. 118-119)

He suggests, “There is no question… that the sort of scholarship conservative evangelicals respect has improved in erudition… What has not improved is the awareness of this scholarship of the methods and principles that it itself follows… conservative scholars, especially the younger ones among them, equally crave intellectual respectability… They may be perfectly willing to write material that may be READ by a conservative readership as if it confirmed traditional views. But they also write with an eye to what will be at least up to a point justifiable on the level of general scholarship…” (Pg. 125)

He says, “But what of the argument from archaeology? Is it not the case that archaeological evidence … has increasingly ‘confirmed the accuracy of the Bible’?... This again is a propagandistic misuse of archaeology, which … quite conceals the limits of what can be demonstrated by this means… it is now argued that archaeology has revealed evidence of customs among peoples of the second millennium BC which closely parallel customs and incidents … mentioned in the book of Genesis… [This] is not the evidence of buildings, structures and artifacts, rather is it the evidence of texts found in the course of archaeological excavations… Even if one granted the fullest concessions to the conservative argument from evidence of this kind, it is quite mistaken to suppose that the general critical assessment of Genesis is affected by it. All it would indicate is that aspects of social customs incorporated into the narratives had descended from ancient times in well-remembered tradition.” (Pg. 135-136)

He continues, “No scholar has been more thoroughly quoted by conservative writers in the last decades than the late Professor W.F. Albright… his widespread archaeological researches were often stated in such terms as to suggest that new information from the ancient east was flooding in, almost all of which tended to confirm the Bible’s own picture as against those widely held by scholars… There are, however, several reasons why readers should not allow conservative writers to push them into a more conservative position through the citation of Albright. Firstly, Albright’s judgments, often dogmatic and categorical, often ran far beyond the area in which he had any real expertise: so for instance his … idea that ‘there is no fundamental difference in teaching between John and the Synoptics. On a matter of this kind Albright was not in the slightest degree an authority… Even on the basis of his own judgments… he changed his views very frequently… in any case… for all that Albright said against the … critical documentary hypothesis on the Pentateuch, he himself continued to adhere to it.” (Pg. 150-151)

He argues, “I am sure that very few of [critical biblical scholars] have in fact denied the possibility of miracles and of divine intervention in the course of history…the vast majority had in fact believed in some sense that Jesus rose from the dead… They have not in the slightest ‘assumed’ that miracles, the resurrection and the supernatural are to be ruled out on principle… What they have thought is that these cannot usefully be invoked as explanations for literary and historical questions in the dating and authorship of biblical books … [conservatives are arguing] If we accept that miracles really happen… and previous forecasting thereof by divine inspiration, then that will enable us to date Isaiah 40-55 in the time of the original Isaiah and the book of Daniel in the sixth century BC.” (Pg. 236)

He explains, “I am suggesting that non-fundamentalist Christianity took a turn in the wrong direction when it reacted against the fundamentalist insistence of verbal inspiration… The intention was quite right: it was to make it clear that the Bible was not historically perfect… But this should perhaps have been expressed in another way… It should have been said that the Bible is inspired, and even verbally inspired, but it remains fallible.” (Pg. 287)

He concludes, “whatever credit the church may wish to give to the fundamentalists for their achievements, it cannot and it must not give any unless it makes it clear that it at the same time gives credit and honor to those whom the fundamentalists most bitterly opposed. We do not have to be liberals: but we have to recognize that the liberal quest is in principle a fully legitimate form of Christian obedience within the church, and one that has deep roots within the older Christian theological tradition and even within the Bible itself. And those whom the fundamentalists attacked, and sometimes drove from their teaching positions, are and will remain honored and accepted teachers of the church.” (Pg. 344)

Although more than forty years old, this book is still “must reading” for those (on ALL sides of the issue) studying contemporary Evangelicalism and conservative Christian theology in general.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moderate, British biblical scholar puts on the boxing gloves in this polemical work. Despite some generalizations and a few disputed points, I found this to be an accurate and incisive critique of fundamentalist Christianity.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal critique of conservative evangelicalism. Holds up extremely well 50 years later, full of insights and erudition.

[Bob Breckwoldt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thirty years ago almost no one really discussed Fundamentalism, now every type of Fundamentalism is pored over and examined, it worries and depending on which type produces fear and panic. Its pejorative connotations are such that almost anyone who holds strong opinions about anything is described as a fundamentalist.

Fundamentalists have held to the following beliefs:
1, The bible is inerrant - without error in its original form - because it is the inspired word of God.
2, The virgin birth of Jesus.
3 The belief in his bodily resurrection
4 That his death was a substitutionary atonement for sin.
5, And that his miracles actually happened as recorded in the Bible.
It is a theology (or ideology) as practised by groups who would style themselves as either, Fundamentalists, Conservative Evangelical or Evangelical and some of their historical and philosophical roots.
The late James Barr’s book was thus groundbreaking, but its focus was limited. It is a theological exposition of a form of conservative Protestantism within the United Kingdom. His "Fundamentalism" is a theology as practised by conservative Protestant Christians. But it is practised in different ways by different groups.
The fact that it was written in the 1970s should not put people off, as it is very thorough and detailed – a little too detailed, at times somewhat of a sledgehammer to crack a nut approach. However, many of the writers discussed here are still important within this religious movement, and though now superseded by Harriet Harris’s “Fundamentalism and Evangelicals”, it is still informative and important as she herself takes very much Barr’s position.
The fact that it is a work of theology is a weakness because for those outside of British Christianity it can seem too focused on it only being relevant to Christians. It has little to say about self styled Fundamentalist groups who refuse to participate in events with any groups that don't hold to their essential doctrines but it is not ignored -see reference to Lloyd-Jones.
He acknowledges that the group he identifies as Fundamentalist would, in the USA, be described as extreme Evangelicals or moderate Fundamentalists. But this doesn't detract from his inquiry.

Churches that are very conservative or ideologically fundamentalist are often very welcoming and friendly places. Their members too can be kind generous and open. It is only when members or those close come into conflict or disagreement that the experience can be traumatic and profoundly painful.
For those on the outside they remain peculiar and odd in respect of the fundamentalist beliefs that they adhere to.

Overall it is a good, if slightly dated book,(but see Niels Peter Lemche in Bible and Interpretation for evidence to the contrary.) However, for those ignorant of this movement, this book, along with other books such as Marsden and Harris, gives a thorough understanding of a group, who though still marginal in British society, have an impact beyond their size, because of the important if diminished role Christianity still has within Britain, in areas such as politics and education. Powerful, still, for many trapped or disillusioned by this group (see the many online ex-fundamentalist blogs and websites that demonstrate the degree of accuracy it has).

[Stefan Djupsjöbacka · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read the first edition and it seems that Barr has made some important corrections and additions in the second edition. My impression is that many characteristics typical for fundamentalism, according to Barr, are equally tupical for more critical and liberal groups, especially concerning spirituality. Perhaps, to some extent, the differences between fundamentalism and it's critics are over-estimated. But, on the other hand, some features in fundamentalism, are more strong now than in the 1970ties, for example in the fight against evolutionism and modern cosmology in creationism and ID. Some kind of polarisation seems to have happened.