Note: This is an edited and collated version of a series of posts that I made at Free Jinger in August 2011.
For much of my life, my encounters with U.S. fundamentalist Christianity were sporadic and bewildering. I started digging into the roots of the fundamentalist mindset when I became a homeschooler and a Sunday school teacher. As many of us have discovered, fundamentalism has become prevalent in both fields of endeavor–particularly homeschooling.
Fundamentalism, of course, is not a monolithic entity, but different fundamentalist groups share many common traits. A particularly disturbing common trait is the fundamentalist use of exegesis. In short, it stinks. This incompetence exists right at the foundation: not only in interpretation, but also in basic reading comprehension. This is a disturbing [Read more…]