Originally posted by rwingett
I will put the question to you again: Are people like Santorum helping or hurting Christianity? By putting Christianity into an increasingly extreme position, are people like Santorum alienating mainstream society from it? Will this have long term detrimental effects on Christianity?
I think what Santorum represents definitely will have a long term detrimental affect on
American Christianity at least. I don't think there is any doubt that Christian fundamentalism, because of its devotion to anti-intellectualism and its unprecedented, even radical insistence upon biblical literalism, will eventually go the way of the dodo.
Fundamentalists like to think of themselves as rediscoverers of the original faith of the early church, shortly after Christ's death when Paul was writing his epistles, but the fact is anti-intellectualism and an exclusively literal interpretation of scripture were never part of the founding of the Christian tradition. If fundamentalists knew how radically their ideas diverge from those of the earliest Christians and the majority of church history up until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they would be undone by how unprecedented their understanding of scripture truly is.
I disagree with people like RJHinds who arrogantly declare other Christians like Santorum "fake Christians" (for whatever reason - it doesn't matter) - I believe RS is sincere - but sincerity is no guarantee of being right. I think someone once said that being convinced that you are right is a good indicator that you, in fact, aren't. Fundamentalism is reactionary and therefore theologically doomed, in my opinion, and long before Santorum had anything to do with it.