July 5, 2021

Fundamentalism is what conservative, protestant Christians were using for a label during the second half of the twentieth century. Their intrusion into politics was so disgraceful that critics overwhelmed them causing them to change the label to evangelicalism. Strangely, the criticism seems to have stopped with that label, even though the result kept getting worse.

Fundamentalism was easy to attack, because it consisted of five basic points used to rationalize a corruption of Christianity and its imposition upon politics. The fundamentalist logic stated that, first, everything in the Bible is God's word and therefore infallible. Second, Paul had words in the Bible and was therefore infallible. Third, Paul said people are saved by grace and not works. Therefore, the works of fundamentalists did not have to be justifiable including the conservative oppression of the lower classes.

See why they changed the label? They were creating a target that no one could miss. The target became invisible upon changing the label to evangelicalism.

The more basic problem was the whole concept of mixing religion and politics. Separation of church and state requires otherwise. But the underlying problem was that the persons who adopted that line and interjected it into politics had no other purpose than politicizing religion.

Southern Christianity is that way. It is integrated into southern conservative motives. Bigotry is still the overwhelming force in southern politics, even though it was forced underground in recent decades. With the blacks historically turning to Christianity for solace, the bigots were not going to be outdone particularly with the power of truth in Christianity working against them. So they decided to out-Christian the blacks. The result was the so-called Bible belt in the south.

With the ulterior motive of prevailing with bigotry, the artificial form of southern Christianity was all politics and no religion. And with Paul creating the rationalizations, the religion was all Paul and no Christ—so much so that real Christianity in the south is often advertised as "full gospel." It means Christ's version of Christianity being included.

The end result is that the cultishness of exploited religion adds a source of power to the conservative purpose. The nature of the conservative purpose is transforming and being exposed, as Trump brought corrupt power to the highest point of achievement before it collapsed. Trump threw blood into the water, which the sharks cannot ignore. Conservatives must now transition from rationalized corruption to defiant corruption.

The underlying justification for corrupt power is always to be a winner. Winning is supposed to be the test of rightness combined with practicality. Micro winners were forever justifying corruption. Trump being a macro winner told conservatives that they were always right and destined to run the universe forever after. That assumption was supposed to represent the true meaning of the Scriptures.

So what happened when the winners became losers? They lost their justification based on being winners. So conservatives stopped trying to justify themselves and reverted to defiance. They intend to impose themselves upon society and take over the government through any lawless means necessary.