Growing Up Fundamentalist Journeys in Legalism & Grace Stefan Ulstein (©1995, InterVarsity Press, ISBN: 0-8308-1618-6)

 

With chapter titles such as, “I Killed the Barbie Doll He Gave Me,” and “Nudes, Cadavers and a Nine-Hundred-Foot Jesus,” Growing Up Fundamentalist by Stefen Ulstein snagged my attention and pledged to discuss more than acceptable, church foyer conversation. Ulstein’s book alarms—but not without remaining Christian in focus. Published the same year as agnostic Edward Babinski’s Leaving the Fold, this critique of fundamentalism was produced by InterVarsity Press, a Christian publishing house, with Christian author Stefen Ulstein who is a regular contributor to Christianity Today. Also, unlike Leaving the Fold’s well-known ex-fundamentalist contributors, Ulstein’s interviewees remain unnamed.

 

The Christian source does not mean that the accounts in the book are tied up into neat resolution and “Christian” closure. Many of the interviewees no longer consider themselves Christian. The honesty in these accounts proves refreshing—and painful. Topics swing from the intellectual dissonance interviewees felt growing up, to accounts of sexual abuse by those holding positions of power within the church. One woman’s account of her sexual abuse points back to church teaching, “In Sunday school we were always taught that it was not godly to trust your natural emotions, that instead of pleasing ourselves we should please others, that we should not hurt other people’s feelings, and that we should always obey—never say to an adult, ‘No, I don’t want to’” (p. 125).  The lack of nuance in fundamentalist teaching can lead to submission to sexual exploitation, which is a painful price to pay—the sacrifice of our children

 

Still, fundamentalists often don’t quite understand the need for distinction. Doubt is seen as sin and the opposite of belief. Questions are viewed as rebellion. Resistance is interpreted as pride. This absence of wiggle-room leads the interviewees to declare that they want to stay far away from the fundamentalism which has stripped them of a sense of self, and self protection.

 

Where is evidence that fundamentalism is harmful? Here it is—in the stories of those who grew up submerged in its teachings and culture.

 

 

by Rachel Ramer