Escaping Fundamentalism

I grew up in a southern baptist church for 19 years.

Was your first real church experience in a fundy church?
- Yes

Did you get saved based on a fear of being tortured?
- More or less, yes. At the age of six. It was my decision, my parents didn't force me, but the church environment I grew up in definitely didn't help in letting me choose freely.

When did you notice overwhelming legalism?
- Probably in my early teens, around 14.

Did you leave church or christian life for a period of time?
- From 14 until 19, I turned my back altogether on God in my heart. I went to keep up appearances, but I was dying inside. The people I went to church with are good people, but they believe in some scary things. It was toxic to me and my faith. I nearly died spiritually. I still don't have a church but I'm studying a lot into the history and cultural context of the Old Testament. Its been pretty eye opening to say the least.

Discuss some legalisms that bothered you that you saw or experienced?
- Women not being allowed to preach (I really don't see how women preaching is an issue when several men read women's studies on the Bible, then preach from what they read. Kind of hypocritical don't you think? Women can't preach, but us men will regurgitate what we read from a woman's book.)

- Treatment of gay people. I don't agree with gay marriage, but I saw several people treating gays as despicable people, unworthy of attending "our" church. Regardless if gay people are in the wrong or not, they're still people. Treat them as you would want to be treated yourself, don't come at them saying they're going to hell. You'll only harden their hearts as well as your own.

- A lot of other churches I visited would preach about how awful we are as people, but then demand a tithe, as if that will help make up for our failures. Disgusting.

Did you find racism in the church?
- Yes, to a degree though. Not all are racists, just as not all are loving people.

Was your first real church experience in a fundy church?

Not sure if you could say the Salvation Army are fundamentalist.. but they can be very legalistic. From there I've been in charismatic and pentecostal denoms.

Did you get saved based on a fear of being tortured?

No, I got saved at home on my own without a church or another person involved.

When did you notice overwhelming legalism?

After nearly thirty years of being in a variety of different denominations. They are all legalistic in varying degrees. It snuck up on me slowly I guess, but it wasn't until I left mainstream christianity altogether that I noticed how bad it was... and is.

Did you leave church or christian life for a period of time?

I've been gone for nearly eight years now and won't go back unless the Lord asks me to of course.

Discuss some legalisms that bothered you that you saw or experienced?

Having to conform in dress and church social customs, eg... no smoking, drinking, going to pubs, listening to worldly music, etc... also conforming to church culture, like.. you must go to church so many days (or nights) a week.. if you don't then there's something wrong with your spiritual life. One must put church first.. not family. One that really gets up my nose is the attitude preached that if you don't go to church for awhile then you are backsliding.

Did you find racism in the church?

No, not that I noticed.

I escaped and I'm still running from fundamentalism

Was your first real church experience in a fundy church?

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yep. Grew up in a a southern Baptist drug religion.. Twas Drug to church every time the doors were open.

Did you get saved based on a fear of being tortured?

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Not really.. The pastors kid wanted to and I decided to join him. It actually came to mean something to me when I thought about what I as doing and I really wanted to do it. 7 years young

When did you notice overwhelming legalism?

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I did later on after God called me back and started showing me things and I started studying scriptures.

Did you leave church or christian life for a period of time?

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I started avoiding church in my teens and dysfunctionalism in my family drove me away from them and their religion.

Discuss some legalisms that bothered you that you saw or experienced?

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It was many years later before I discovered the legalisms. I returned to my Dads old Church and listened to the dryest sermon on tithing. An hour spent on why we should tithe. There is no scriptural basis for a modern tithe. Tithing was for the Levittes to live on. Yes the legalist organism craves money. Modern church groups can't live without it.

Did you find racism in the church?

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I found it in the bible. So naturally it would be found in some church's. Does God not approve of racism, did he change his mind?

Was your first real church experience in a fundy church?
When I was a student I started going to a popular student church, which turned out to have some very full on fundamentalist beliefs.

Did you get saved based on a fear of being tortured?
That was the idea from them, yes.

When did you notice overwhelming legalism?
When I realised that that wasn't what Christianity was about - when I started learning and reading outside of church.

Did you leave church or christian life for a period of time?
Yes. It made me feel that if that was what Christianity was, then I couldn't be a part of it. So I stopped going to any church, and struggled with faith for a long while.

Discuss some legalisms that bothered you that you saw or experienced?Just generally trying to change the person I was, and make me into a box shaped Christian. It was all "God will never love you, unless you do all this this and this, and change this this and this"

Did you find racism in the church?
I never noticed any, but there was a sermon one week about how the Preacher knew how much racism was happening.

Was your first real church experience in a fundy church?
Fundamentalist anglican - v. protestant.

Did you get saved based on a fear of being tortured?
Not really - though there were scary Chuck tracts on the table. It was more of an encounter.
When did you notice overwhelming legalism?
There was the assumption that you didn't question, and I remember have a very earnest conversation about eating ice cream on a Sunday...
Did you leave church or christian life for a period of time?
I drifted over to the High Anglican end of church for awhile when I left my home town to go to uni. Then ended up with the Quakers, where I am now.
Discuss some legalisms that bothered you that you saw or experienced?
The women preaching thing. The gay thing. The creationism thing. The weird second coming stuff.
Did you find racism in the church?
Not so I noticed; but we never had any black people in church, and no Asians despite their presence in the town.

Armistead14 said:

From my studies, I find the south, known as the bible belt has many ties to the Civil War era. I actually believe much fundamentalism stemmed from this era.

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Rural areas tend to change more slowly than urban ones. Supposedly there are parts of the Appalachians where speech patterns still show influences of Elizabethan English (although this may have been a couple of decades ago).

Fundamentalism was certainly helped in the South because it could provide a rationale to support slavery. But that's not why it developed. It goes back fairly early in Protestant history, and seems to have developed in controversy with Catholics. Catholics accused Protestants of having rejected the only source of real authority in the Church, and thus having retreated to their personal opinion. Of course the authority of Scripture was part of the initial Protestant concept, but the hard line view that you now see in fundamentalism seems to have developed at least in part to provide an unambiguous source of authority that could be advertised as an answer to the authority of the Pope and Catholic Tradition.

It doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone that before we argue over the source of authority, we need to look at the nature and role of authority in religion as Jesus taught it. I don't think the results of such an examination would support this kind of authority in the first place.

I wasn’t raised in a fundamentalist church, but being Baptist there was a lot of that teaching around us.


Understanding and and recognizing legalism was a long term thing. I can’t blame legalism on others.


Every I wanted to spend more time with God and do more of God, my natural way to try to do that has been to get more legalistic till recently. There have been 3 major times in my life when this has happened. Each time after months the result has been not feeling closer to Jesus, but further away.


No, I’ve never been upset with God and felt I didn’t want to live for Jesus.


I was in a midwest Baptist/Bible college for a semester. Billy Graham’s organization had a movie in the local theaters and local Christians were giving a invitation at the end of the movie. I wanted to be a counselor at the theater. The Bible college had such a strict rule about theater attendance they said I couldn’t. I went anyways.


No I didn’t see racism. But the part of the country I grew up in was 99,99 % white.

I also think fundamentalism had an oppertunity to grow as a result of the liberalism that denied the deity and resurrection of Jesus. While the church I grew up in had some issues with the Roman Catholics, they did feel some Catholics were going to heaven. But they and myself didn't understand how anyone could say God was dead, Jesus wasn't God, evolution made no sense. Of course those statements still don't make much sense to me today. But I have studied enough to know where those with those beliefs are coming from now. Like, Yes, Jesus is God and Jesus died, so we can say God died.

dayhiker said:

I also think fundamentalism had an oppertunity to grow as a result of the liberalism that denied the deity and resurrection of Jesus. While the church I grew up in had some issues with the Roman Catholics, they did feel some Catholics were going to heaven. But they and myself didn't understand how anyone could say God was dead, Jesus wasn't God, evolution made no sense. Of course those statements still don't make much sense to me today. But I have studied enough to know where those with those beliefs are coming from now. Like, Yes, Jesus is God and Jesus died, so we can say God died.

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And we should finish up by saying that Jesus was resurrected from the Dead and is alive and well sitting on the right hand of the Father.

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Amen, preach it brotha