When an unbeliever sees the problem with easy-believism, you know it has become a problem! Just ask former Harvard professor Philip Slater whose view is spelled out in “The Great Fundamentalist Hoax.”
Christianity as it exists among fundamentalists isn’t about behaving like Jesus. It’s all about faith—about believing the story. The underlying message seems to be: you can behave any way you want as long as you believe the story and say you’re sorry before you die. Following the teachings of Jesus is much too demanding, whereas with the Christianity of fundamentalists all you have to do is shut your mind off.
There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word “Christian” has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry.
