I’m devoting my time for the next week or so to writing my final integrative paper for graduate school. In the meantime, I’ll be reposting some of my favorites. Enjoy.
I recently bought a book off of Amazon that was so marked up I almost couldn’t read it.
My friend and fellow MAGL cohorter Margaret Yu suggested I check out Peter Palmer’s Let Your Life Speak. Palmer is a Quaker, which is really the closest thing that Protestantism has to a mystically tradition. Mystic’s are concerned about the inner journey, and are often having a much different conversation than fundamentalists are.
The previous owner of the book marked almost every page in pencil with a clear and effeminate script. For the statements she agreed with there were little checkmarks. For those she disagreed with, she cross them out and write a diatribe, including scripture references to prove the author wrong. Time and again, she would argue with a word, phrase, or her misrepresentation of Palmer’s point.
My definition of a fundamentalist, whether it be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Marxist, Atheist or Anarchist, is a person who is so rigidly committed to a set of beliefs and practices, that they are unable to accept, converse with or perhaps even live near someone who doesn’t agree with them. For a fundamentalist, life is a constant witch hunt.
Find out what the two reasons are by read the full post here.