Why the Dark Portrayal of the Fundamentalist Era?

It is common among freedomists to speak of days gone by in dark and dismal terms of legalistic oppression. There can be at least two reasons for this.

First is the need to remove any possibility of authentic good from the era they love to hate.   Although  I had my share of encounters with legalistic manhandlers, the early years of my walk with Christ in the fundamentalist era were vital and good.

At fifteen years of age, in a culture where three other students and I were the only ones from a broken home in our high school class, I lived in a little community far from the hub of anything. In that context I dealt with the psychological isolation of the then unspeakable reality of my mother’s paranoid schizophrenia. Practicing Christians in my world were fundamental and many had their non-this and non-that lists. But that is not what I remember about them. What I remember is they were deeply into Jesus and were used to bring Christ into my life.

Consider a little-old-lady Sunday school teacher. She could make teenagers behave with a look and a trill of the tongue. She dedicated herself to bringing fun into our lives and helping us grasp the narrative of Scripture. Somehow she talked me into learning verses I didn’t want to learn, to go to a camp I didn’t know about and listen to someone talk about things I wasn't interested in. There God confronted me with Himself and I trusted His Son. 

Far from the demagogues, amid a consensus of forbidden things, I began a journey the first days of which still bring joy when I pause to remember them. A journey shared with a camp director who mentored me, a pastor who became my first substitute dad, and Youth For Christ friends who were impressed with such statements as, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose.”

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