Religious Right, Religious Wrong: A Critique of the Fundamentalist Phenomenon

by Lloyd J. Averill

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0829808043
• ISBN13: 9780829808049
• Release Date: January 1989
• Publisher: Pilgrim Press
• Length: 196 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An Important Discussion about Christianity

This book is a discussion of Christian fundamentalism and about how this movement has distorted the message of Christ. The discussion about fundamentalism in this book is not about critiquing fundamentalism from outside the faith, but from within, from other voices about what Christianity has been in the past and what it has become. The book is a little hard to summarize in this review, because the book itself is a kind of summary. I gather that it might be used in a classroom setting, since the author is a professor. There is a section on biblical inerrancy which discusses the fundamentalism claim that the Bible is free from historical and logical errors. The author examines this claim from a number of angles, showing how many religious figures who influenced the development of Christianity did not believe in biblical inerrancy, how the bible itself does not really claim inerrancy for itself, and how there are a number of examples of various kinds of errors that are fairly easy to verify. He goes further, too, in why fundamentalism still feels this kind of absolutism is important and what it does to shape Christianity in a certain direction, justifying a kind of intolerance within a religion that is meant to be gentle, loving, and forgiving in its orientation. The style of the author is not about trying to prove fundamentalism wrong, though there is ample critique that can be taken in this light, but more to open up a dialogue or discussion about what Christianity means and how fundamentalism may or may not be serving this. Much of the discussion is rooted in modern history, tracking parts of the lives of some fundamentalist leaders. Some of the discussion is about different historical perspectives about how Christianity and the Bible arose. The book reads well and smoothly, and opens up what I feel is an important discussion. For those who are outside of Christianity, the book can illuminate some of the struggles going on inside Christianity now and illuminate what is going on in the right wing political world.