Fundamentalism is dead ... again

So says Harvey Cox in the Boston Globe
You might enjoy Dan Phillips analysis at PyroManiacs

Discussion

Ahhhh, these words open up the chapter on fundamentalism that I read in his latest book.

So many prophets these days in America spouting their predictions about the end of biblical truth … Harvey says we are dead, but then he talks about wanting to dialogue with us in his book.

How ironic.

Interesting how Cox shapes the definition of fundamentalism. For example, the majority of Pentecostals (in America) embrace the 5 fundamentals as non-negotiables and also happen to be the foundational funders of the TV evangelists (marks of a dying movement that Cox talks about), yet he has to place them in an entirely different category in order for his thesis to work. Not to mention him associating this theological fundamentalism with operation rescue. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the majority of people, except for some Jerry Falwell types, who publicly associated themselves with Operation Rescue in the past 20 or so years have been the charismatics/pentecostals, moderate evangelicals, and Roman Catholics.

Also, its hard for me to take his predictions too seriously since he’s made wrong predictions about faith trends before. For example, he was gushing all over modernity’s secularism in his book, “The Secular City” in the 1960’s because he felt that conservative/historical/traditional Christianity was dying, which should cause the church to embrace the “religiousness” of secularism…..However, he naively and grossly underestimated the evil that the “secular-city” would end up producing.