"The Sin of Fundamentalism"

The story of the blind men and the elephant was one of my favorites as a child. I remember it from the old Childcraft books my family had back in the 1970s, with the textured orange-red covers, the musty smell of the pages and the illustrations I can still recall today. I thought the story was so funny--all these men finding different parts of the elephant and thinking they had the whole thing. The language of "six blind men of Indostan" is rather outdated today, but the point is still as true as ever. It’s a very Unitarian Universalist point, although I didn’t know that as a child. It would be another decade and a half before I even heard of Unitarian Universalism.

By the time I found Unitarian Universalism, I had already lived through a rather turbulent journey of faith. I had a traditional Methodist upbringing, but I went on to encounter a number of very different expressions of religious belief. On four separate occasions, my whole view of the world and of what was real changed suddenly and dramatically--conversion experiences, if you want to call them that. Religion, science, human behavior, even mathematics turned out to be much bigger and more complex than I ever imagined.

Along the way, I noticed a few things, one of which was this: there appear to be quite a few people in the world who seem completely, totally, 100% sure that they are right about their beliefs, especially their religious beliefs. However, they don’t all believe the same things. Some of them have contradictory beliefs, from theists to atheists to Mormons to Muslims. They may all have some partial truths, or they could all be wrong, but they can’t all be totally right. This can only lead to one conclusion, which is that it is possible to be completely, 100% sure that you are right about something and still be wrong. If I apply that realization to myself, it is a humbling thought.

Unfortunately, there are a number of religious groups that encourage this kind of absolute certainty among their believers. We often use the word "fundamentalist" to describe this type of religion. Historically, the word "fundamentalist" referred to a specific Protestant Christian movement that identified five fundamentals of the faith. But the word ‘fundamentalist’ has evolved into a useful word to describe any extreme, absolutist religious movement, whether related to Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism or any other religion. Fundamentalism is not the mainstream in most religions, but it is a growing phenomenon in the world. I would recommend for your reading a good description of some of these fundamentalist movements in the book, The Battle for God, by Karen Armstrong.

Regardless of whose beliefs may be right or wrong, billions of people have to be wrong about at least some of what they believe. I began to wonder, how does that happen? If you look at how people acquire their religious beliefs, the biggest factor by far is the religion into which you are born. If you’re born in Iran, you’ll probably be Muslim. If you’re born in Thailand, you’re much more likely to become Buddhist, or in Mississippi to be Southern Baptist. Isn’t it odd that so few people ever doubt that they just happened to be born into the one true faith? Even when people change beliefs, it often has to do with where they have gone and what people they have encountered. If there were actually a God who punished or rewarded people according to what they believe, it certainly wouldn’t be fair to the people who had the wrong parents or who lived in the wrong places.

In his article, "Viruses of the Mind," Richard Dawkins makes a persuasive case that religious ideas, and many other ideas, have almost a life of their own, spreading according to how effective they are at reproducing themselves, not necessarily because they are true. He named the new field of "memetics" which looks at how ideas spread--for example, urban legends that are often not true, but which spread because they sound plausible or just because they make good stories.

Fundamentalist religious beliefs are often very good at replicating themselves, because that is a big part of what they are designed to do. They often contain many emotional hooks to help accomplish the task, such as promises of glorious rewards to true believers, and a horrible fate to those who fall away. There may be an addictive emotional cycle of inducing and then relieving guilt or fear. Questions are usually discouraged, especially anything questioning the source of authority for the religion, whether a revered leader or a book. Faith without evidence may be seen as more admirable than beliefs supported by evidence, so that merely seeking evidence can be seen as negative. Fundamentalism often thrives on fear and scapegoats or demonizes other groups of people. Children are often heavily indoctrinated. People with different perspectives are discredited and distrusted, and believers may be warned not to listen to them.

The result of all of this is that fundamentalist groups become deeply alienated from the rest of the world around them. Fundamentalists are rarely open to real dialogue--after all, if you think anyone with different beliefs is by definition deceived, or maybe even sent by the devil to deceive you, how can you have a dialogue with them? When people who are different are demonized or dehumanized, it can seem justified even to torture or kill them. We have seen the killing that supposedly religious people are capable of doing, and not only long ago or far away. Even when religion is not the cause of conflict, it can make conflict more intractable, harder to resolve. Fundamentalists tend to be suspicious of government power, unless they can take control of it, in which case they are likely to embrace that power and use it against their perceived enemies. Fundamentalism is a dangerous force in the world, and a dangerous force in our own country right now as we slide down a path of legalized torture and erosion of our constitutional rights.

The spread of fundamentalism in human society is almost like a disease, but it is more than just a social, religious or political phenomenon. As important as the politics of fundamentalism may be, I want to focus on something else, on fundamentalism as a spiritual phenomenon, as it affects the individual human spirit.

You see, fundamentalism at the personal level is not simply a matter of being very sure that your beliefs are right. I’ve met people who belong to groups I think of as fundamentalist, who have strong beliefs, but who still seem very open and gentle in spirit. I’ve also met people who don’t seem very sure of their beliefs, but who are nevertheless quite defensive if challenged on anything. Some people seem certain but are trapped in situations where it is not safe to say what they really think. Many people who have been raised in one religion from birth believe what they have been taught very innocently, but when they encounter another point of view, something inside them is tested, and not everyone responds in the same way.

I don’t know how it happens, and no one can see into the mind or spirit of another person, but I think there is a deep choice we each must make inside of ourselves, perhaps once, probably many times. It is a choice between loving truth and wanting to possess the truth. It is a choice between openness to whatever may be, and fearful attachment to what we think we know. At a personal, spiritual level, I would describe fundamentalism like this: If our commitment to the specific beliefs that we currently hold is deeper, more fundamental, than our love of truth no matter what it may be, no matter where it comes from or whether we are even capable of knowing it, then we have committed the sin of fundamentalism.

Now you may ask, why do I use the word ‘sin’? A classic theological definition for sin is "that which separates or alienates us from God". The two commandments that Jesus proclaimed as primary were to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Sin is the opposite--it is about alienation from God, alienation from our neighbor, and even from ourselves. If we have committed what I am calling the sin of fundamentalism, then our deepest commitment is to what we already believe, and we can ignore or condemn anyone who believes anything else. We are alienated from them. If God is a name that we give to whatever is true, whatever is the source of goodness and beauty and truth in the universe, then a deeper commitment to something more specific than that, including a more specific belief about a divine being, actually alienates us from God. I would argue that even if what we believe happens to be correct, our manner of believing it is sinful if we care about that belief more than we care about truth whatever it may be.

One of the most likely signs of fundamentalism is the inability to make this distinction or to see it as important. A fundamentalist may say, "Of course I love truth, AND I am committed to my beliefs, because my beliefs ARE the truth." Perhaps so, but if we equate what we believe with absolute truth, we are claiming to have a level of certainty that only a god could have. The sin of fundamentalism is not really a new sin--it is a form of the sin of idolatry.
We may claim that our certainty really comes from God, by way of a religious leader or direct revelation or from a book such as the Bible or the Quran or the Book of Mormon. We may feel humble in submission to that authority, but that feeling of submission hides the presumptuousness and arrogance of claiming to know with total certainty that these authorities are from God, that we know God has spoken to us and how, and we don’t need to listen to anyone who says otherwise.  It is a heady thing to believe that we can hold the words of a god in our hands, or that we can hear the words of a god from a religious leader, and it shouldn’t be surprising that so many people give in to that temptation. The idolatry of holy books is one of the central sins of modern religion. The Bible, the Quran and other religious books have significant human value, but to hold them up as exclusive or absolute guides is like holding the elephant’s tail and claiming it is the whole elephant.

Of course, simply having strong beliefs doesn’t make someone fundamentalist. We all can and must have some beliefs about what is true and what is not, and some of those beliefs will be tested and retested to the point that we feel very sure of them. You can have very strong beliefs and avoid the sin of fundamentalism as long as your love of truth-no-matter-what-it-may-be is stronger. Are you willing to be wrong? I am convinced, for example, that the Bible is a very human and fallible collection of writings, but if it or any other holy book really is the inerrant Word of God, then that is what I want to believe.

Just about any belief can be held in a fundamentalist or non-fundamentalist way. Individually, there can be fundamentalist atheists and humanists or even Buddhists, as well as Christians, Muslims, religious cults or political absolutisms. But some belief systems lend themselves to fundamentalism more than others, and those that encourage fundamentalist certainty are more dangerous than those that are explicitly open to new learning. It is true that even scientists can become excessively attached to their views, as th philosopher Thomas Kuhn discovered. But while science has its limits and is far from infallible, in general I trust the results of science more than the pronouncements of most religious authorities, because in the long run, science has within it self-correcting mechanisms that are based on truth-seeking principles. Fundamentalism is not just confident, it is resistant at its very core to the possibility of being wrong.

When you hear a conflicting point of view, are you able to listen and try to understand, or do you just want to stamp it out? It’s OK to be skeptical of another point of view, but there is almost always something to be learned from others. If we love truth, people who disagree with us can still be partners in the quest. In fact, we need people to explore different paths of learning or religion. If the blind men in the story had all grasped the elephant’s tail, they would have agreed with each other much more, but their collective knowledge of the elephant would have been much less. Their problem was in mistaking the part for the whole, in not listening to each other, in forgetting that their experience was only one small slice of reality.

Also, their problem was in forgetting that they were blind, that there were limitations on their perception. The sin of fundamentalism is partly a denial of our human limitations. We all have a natural tendency to pay attention to anything that seems consistent with our beliefs and to consider it convincing, while dismissing or not even noticing conflicting evidence. I once read an excellent book called How We Know What Isn’t So by Thomas Gilovich that describes how our rationality betrays us into believing things that may not be true. We are so good at seeing patterns and causes that we see them where they do not exist. When we become attached to claims of absolute certainty, we are denying the frailties of our human perception, alienating ourselves even from our own true selves.

Salvation from the sin of fundamentalism comes in this way: from a core spiritual commitment to an ever-deeper love of truth. Loving the truth is very different from knowing or possessing the truth. Just as a snail will never learn calculus, there are probably many truths about the universe that we are simply incapable of comprehending. What is amazing is that we can learn as much as we can. Loving truth is a deep and never-ending process. It is about an inner commitment that anyone can make; it is not about being especially intelligent or well-educated.  Anyone who loves truth will care about education, and will care about factual accuracy, but it goes deeper than that. The truth is, we are not always truthful, and the complexity of truthfulness is greater than what this sermon can convey.  If truth were only about literally true statements, we would have to throw out the fiction section of the library, and there would never be another surprise birthday party. No, the love of truth is about embracing truth in all its dimensions: ethical, aesthetic, practical and factual. Perhaps "truth" is the wrong word--maybe we should call it embracing reality. Or, if we set aside all the baggage and specific notions attached to the word, perhaps we should call it loving God. Whatever we call it, this essential openness to the whole of existence in which we are embedded is both freeing and grounding at the deepest spiritual level.

Loving truth means seeking the truth about ourselves as well, both the beautiful and the painful. I sometimes think we could use a sacrament of confession, not as a mandatory ritual, but as a way of healing ourselves by shining the light of truth on the places where we have alienated and deceived or hurt ourselves or other people. Being a lover of truth is a serious discipline, from which we are likely to slip many times. But each time we commit ourselves to it, we overcome alienation, we overcome fear, and we find that whatever may be true about the universe we live in, we are at home here. I can’t imagine a deeper source of inner peace.

Our Unitarian Universalist faith is well suited to help us on this spiritual journey. Unitarian Universalism is one of the few religions that has resisted the temptation to idolize a particular view of reality or God in a set of doctrines. Our religious institutions are not perfect, but we know that, and we expect to grow and change. There is a reason our hymnal is called "Singing the Living Tradition." It is a joyful path that frees us to love, to ask questions, to celebrate life.  Unitarian Universalism has a saving, healing message for a world filled with fear, alienation and fundamentalism, and we need to proclaim that message! It should never have taken me 23 years to discover that Unitarian Universalism existed, and I don’t want it to have to take that long for anyone else!

Fundamentalism is genuinely dangerous, and we must have the courage to confront it and speak out about what we see going on in our nation and the world, especially in times such as these, but we also must be careful about judging people in other religions. We have more friends and allies than we may think in other faith traditions, and we must remain open to learning from any source, even those we think of as fundamentalist. Fundamentalism tends to thrive on attack, and the best way to loosen its grip is by loving truth more deeply, by seeking to understand, and by fostering meaningful human relationships wherever we can. Be wise, be strong, and be careful, but never hate.

The real starting point is in our own hearts, for we are not immune to the sin of fundamentalism. Even our action in the world will be stronger if we come from a place of inner integrity.  So if you are clinging to a piece of the elephant as if it were the whole thing, are you willing to let go? Are you willing to commit and recommit yourself to the love of truth, no matter what it may be, no matter where it may come from, whether we are even capable of knowing it or not? Spiritually, this is perhaps the most important question that each person in the world must ask