Five Favorites: Christian Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism, by James Barr, is book that helped educate Charlene concerning Victor Paul Wierwille’s claim of inerrancy of Scriptures.

Greetings, subscribers! Not only are we celebrating Undertow’s 10th birthday, but we’re also counting down to the end of these posts in early September 2026. Before then, I’ll be sending you content I hope will inspire, inform, or help you in some way before I say bye-bye.

For today, let’s flash back to five posts I wrote about Christian Fundamentalism. In a nutshell: this branch of Christianity is different from Evangelicalism, for instance, in that the Bible is the center of their beliefs. It’s as if it is on an altar to be worshipped.

Note: The featured photo is of an outstanding book about fundamentalism, by James Barr. Studying it soon after I left The Way helped me understand my experiences in the cult, especially in the Biblical research department, which you find near the end of Undertow.

You can read about Barr at James Barr (biblical scholar) – Wikipedia
And about his enlightening book at Fundamentalism: Barr, James: 9780334005032: Amazon.com: Books

I wrote about Christian fundamentalism…

…because The Way International, the Bible-based cult I spent 17 years in, fits into this category of religious ideology. How’s that? The main reason is that The Way’s founder, Victor Paul Wierwille (1916-1985) promoted the claim that the Bible is inerrant. Which Bible? He didn’t say, other than “the original Scriptures,” which were lost or destroyed eons ago. No one has them.

What’s inerrancy? It means that Scripture is without error or contradiction. In other words: it is perfect. Why must that be so? Because, as Wierwille said he believed, God Himself is the author of Scripture, despite the fact that men wrote the documents that are considered as Scripture—the content between the covers of Bibles.

The New Testament verse used to back up this claim of inerrancy is II Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God…” The problem? Scripture is not defined in this verse. The verse does not say “these 66 books in this version of the Bible.” The history of how the Bible became the Bible is fascinating, but sorry to say it is well beyond the scope of this post. If you’re really interested in what was determined to be scripture in the first place, I highly recommend Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Friedman, which addresses the history of the Old Testament, and books by Bart Ehrman and others who write about The New Testament and early Christianity.

BTW – did you know that Bibles used by Catholics and ones that Protestants use have different contents in the Old Testament?