Fundamentalism just ‘a stage’

Press, 15 July 1986, Page 1

Fundamentalism just ‘a stage’

By MARGARET BAKER Fundamentalism could be likened to a stage that a lot of people go through, like adolescence, says a leading Biblical scholar and author of many papers and books on the subject, Professor James Barr. Professor Barr is the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, and is the William Evans Visiting Professor at Otago University during the second term. In Christchurch this week to give the WestWatson Lectures at College House, Professor Barr said that he believed many people derived their first active experience of Christianity through a fundamentalist movement.

"For a lot of people, especially around the adolescent age, there is a gap in their lives which they feel is to be filled with religious commitment through the Bible and the biblical way of looking at things,” he said. Describing fundamentalism as a form of conservative evangelistic Christianity in which the infallibility of the Bible is seen as the most important factor of all, Professor Barr said that it answered a need for an absolute religious position, with the idea that religious questions were not negotiable by discussion. “If the Bible is treated as infallible, you come up against many contradictions — such as the different descriptions of the

Resurrection in the different Gospels. You can only believe the Resurrection Jf, you believe the Gospel is approximate.”

If a fundamentalist were confronted with this argument, Professor Bansaid “he probably wouldn’t have thought about it.” He said that the fundamentalist "conversion experience” took place quickly and completely, often centring in institutions such as universities. “The fervour of it all issomething like a missionary zeal. It is a will to conquer people’s ideology, and uses the Gospel as a kind of instrument to overrule people and sub-. due them to a certain point of view.” Professor Barr said he had found in New Zealand a severe polarisation between the fundamentalists and mainstream Christianity — more than in

other parts of the world. “It’s either one or the other; people don’t comprehend the two as possibly coming together,” he said. “It’s probably more noticeable here, because in places like the Unheu States there is such a diversity of religion that fundamentalism doesn’t stand out so much.” It seemed more advanced education in the community was not going to alter the fundamentalist view, as once thought “I think people can expect it will go on for a long time yet” Professor Barr said he did not think that the other churches should be unduly perturbed about the fundamentalist movement, as they had a

strong base in Christian tradition. “It is the fundamentalist position that is new; the others are well established. "The Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches have become closer than they used to be, and that is an important positive move. The Bible has done a lot to draw them together — the older Protestants believed it proved Protestantism to be right and Catholicism wrong, but today it is clear that the Bible gives some support to both directions.” During his visit, Professor Barr will give public lectures on aspects of Fundamentalism and the Bible, today, tomorrow and on Thursday.