Anyway, there's also a difference, in my opinion, between the more fuzzy term "very young" and the more concrete term "13 years old".
For instance, consider the depictions of Mary throughout the centuries. In most, Mary is depicted to look like a young woman, but not as a 13 year old kid. I guess, a comparison of the different Bible translations could also produce some evidence. In general, more literal minded Christians seem to prefer ignorance about many details discovered by scholars in the last 100 years or so.
Another indicator is the look of actresses playing Mary in movies and documentaries [1]. More "realistically looking" actresses appear only rather recently, for instance in BBC1's 'Nativity' [2]. Still, even the young actresses act mature; for instance, in this short clip from the U.S. TV series "The Bible" [3]. Whether maturity can be expected in such a culture is open to debate, of course, but I have my doubts.
[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/filmchat/2006/09/who-is-the-you... [2] http://biblefilms.blogspot.de/2006/05/script-review-for-nati... [3] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kwqt8_Vz-JY
In quite a large number, Mary looks like a woman of young-but-marriageable age of either the same culture/ethnicity of the place where the depiction was made or one idealized there.
> Still, even the young actresses act mature
Which, given the depiction of Mary in the Bible, is unsurprising; even if social context didn't play a role (along with brain development) in maturation, it would be inconsistent with the source material to depict Mary as typical of her age.
I see you must be talking more about the crazy Christians you have in the US though.
I'm from Toronto (Canada), and it would be a bit weird for someone in my social group to just offer "I'm a Christian" except in response to "What's your religion?". It seems that in a lot of the US "I'm a Christian" is short-hand for "I'm a Christian Fundamentalist."
I've always struggled to reconcile how someone could suggest they're Christian but only choose to believe certain parts of the bible and dismiss the rest as just stories (note, I'm not referring to how specific parts of the bible are illustrative in nature). For me, the whole thing crumbles away if you dismiss parts of it.
I've heard people suggest that it's more important to take away the good things and good examples than to actually believe in the stories as facts.
Anyway, that's just a slice of my opinion.
I'm interested in your statement that evangelicals are communitarian and fundamentalists are separatists, I see this practically in some church communities - but I see the opposite in others. I would consider my church more on the separatist side than communitarian.
"For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? And that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? And again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally."
That was written by Origen of Alexandria, one of the most prolific Christian writers ever, in the early 200s. Yes, that's the right number of zeros. Those very modern sounding remarks are 18 centuries old.
The rise of Liberal Christianity in the 1800s (which decided that everything in the Bible, including Jesus, was figurative) led to the rise of Fundamentalism in the 1900s (which decided that nothing was figurative). Prior to that, most Christians understood that parts of the Bible describe real truth, but within the mold of figurative stories. They would consider it "dismissive" to treat the stories as literal and therefore to miss the real truths being communicated figuratively.
It can be quite enlightening to read ancient mythology and discover the ways some Biblical stories use the same elements but turn them on their heads. For example, the Genesis creation account uses almost all of the same elements as the Egyptian creation account -- but the things that are "gods" for Egypt, like the sun and the moon, are treated as mere objects not even worthy of being called by name in the Genesis account (read it carefully; they're just "lights".) The point isn't to communicate that the sun and moon were created approximately 6000 years ago, but that they are objects with no personality or power or claim to godhood, which God created specifically in order to shine on the earth.
I hope this illustrates how someone can be a thoughtful and serious Christian, and yet not treat every part of the Bible as literal fact.
Citation needed, otherwise you're just making stuff up. =)
Counterchallenge: find me ANY citation older than ~1870 AD that states that all of scripture should be read literally.
I must admit, my studies have not been completely exhaustive. But I'm quite confident in claiming that "some of scripture is figurative" is by far the majority view in Christian history.
Biblical hermeneutics is a separate concern from biblical inerrancy. They're similar because they're both concerned with the ultimate interpretation of scripture, but separate in their scope and effect.
What I was referring to in my original statement was the interpretation of decidedly hermeneutically-literal passages as figurative due to their apparent improbability. These include miracles that Jesus performed, historical events, and even extends down to the account of creation.
I do not disagree that some parts of scripture are designed and meant to be read figuratively - much of Revelations comes to mind as a basic example.
I think the reason all Christian's have been lumped together is US Politics. Candidates want to show they believe in God but don't want to side with any particular faith and therefore use the Christian moniker..
Then, when they win, say, a House seat on the strength of a single district (a small part of a single state), they automatically have a national platform they can parlay into a global platform if they say something batshit crazy enough, thanks to the global 24-hour news cycle and the endless linking and repetition in the blogosphere.
It's a classic case of a very loud minority making the uncritical thinkers of the world believe "They're all like that".
According to the latest Gallup poll, 46% of Americans are sufficiently fundamentalist (christian or otherwise) that they believe that "God created humans in present form".
32% think that "Humans evolved, with God guiding", which is still a lot of the religious in America, but far fewer than many seem to expect. Fewer than those who reject evolution completely.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/21814/evolution-creationism-intel...
That's not particularly either Fundamentalist or fundamentalist; "Fundamentalism" is a particular school of Christian theology for which specific creationism of that type is not distinguishing, and "fundamentalism" in the generic sense inspired by Christian Fundamentalism is "the demand for a strict adherence to orthodox theological doctrines" and cannot be identified by simply belief in a particular doctrine on a matter of "what happened", its defined by beliefs of how you treat people who disagree with your beliefs on such doctrines.
EDIT: there is definitely a lot of fundamentalist influence in the US on certain topics, particularly on literal creation. But that influence has been waning for 30-40 years. And many of those who have been influenced on one or two topics are nonetheless very much not-fundamentalist on other topics.
I would say that fundamentalist does not imply creationist (you'll find fundamentalist Roman Catholics for instance), but creationist does imply fundamentalist. Creationism is one of many fundamentalist stances.
In Christianity, "Fundamentalist" refers specifically to a Protestant/Evangelical movement that was named for a series of essays published before and during WWI, which outline certain specific doctrinal positions. The movement arose largely in response to opposing beliefs which themselves date to the mid-late 1800s. Being "unwilling to budge" might make someone a literalist or a dogmatist, but being a Fundamentalist is more specific.
Among Americans who call themselves Christian, few are anything close to true Fundamentalists [0]. Most are hybrids whose beliefs have been assembled in bits and pieces from pastors, books, etc. which includes some fundamentalist-inspired ideas, some ideas that resemble fundamentalist ideas but are actually much older, and some ideas that are completely opposite of fundamentalist ideas. People whose beliefs are mostly Fundamentalist are a very small subset of Christianity, both globally and in the US.
[0] note that "no true Scotsman" is only a fallacy if one is using inappropriate criteria to determine group inclusion/exclusion. It's not a fallacy to point out that James Doohan wasn't really Scottish.
If you are a creationist, you are an utter nut, full stop. A significant portion of Americans are religious nuts.
And, to clarify earlier discussion on the behalf of JabavuAdams, "Online, when someone writes "Christian", it's hard to tell whether they're referring to fundamentalists^Wreligious nuts, or not."
All better?
I have already proposed better terms: "literalist" and "dogmatist". Those terms may be insufficiently pejorative for your purposes, but here on Hacker News we have guidelines and cultural expectations against name-calling and incivility.
[0] note that I am not a member of the Fundamentalist, literalist, dogmatist, or creationist communities.
To describe fundamentalism as modern is flat-out bizarre.