I don’t think most fundies make the distinction between “good works” and “sincere faith,” although you’re right about that being the heart of the matter. My fundie girlfriend in high school had all kinds of crazy ideas about Catholicism brainwashed into her by her Covenant ministers, and she’d gone to a Catholic private school for nearly 10 years at that point.
Being raised Catholic, I was floored at the misconceptions. She thought we worshipped Mary as a goddess, on par with the Trinity. She thought we believed Jesus resided within the Pope’s body and was transferred to a new Pope at death, and the whole thing with the cardinals choosing a new Pope was actually them trying to figure out who had been infused with the Pope Power or whatever. She didn’t like the idea of confirmation being when it was because it “was too late.” She considered the doctrine of Transubstantiation to be tantamount to witchcraft, while I just considered it retarded. Weird shit.
She was a really, really smart person, but anything that came out of the ministers’ mouths was pure truth as far as she was concerned. I specifically remember the Mary thing because when I told her she was wrong, she remained convinced for months that she was right and I just didn’t realize what I’d been doing for 15 years.
Most of the fundamental Christians I know and have known over many years don’t hate anyone. They may think that some folks are going down the wrong path, but they also are Christians in the true sense of the word - they follow Christ’s words and examples, such as “so what if you love your friends? Even the heathens do that! Love your enemies, then folks will see God’s love in you and know you are different.” (Lackey Paraphrase Version (LPV)).
It’s easy to focus on the most visible, strident, loudmouths, but those have not been representative of what I’ve seen of true fundamental Christians.
On the Catholic issue, the biggest issue I’ve seen as the “problem” is the extent to which the Pope is considered equal to the Bible in terms of authority, as well as baptizing babies rather than a proactive statement of faith in Christ at a later age. But our Baptist church in MI used to have joint dinners and charity activities with a local Catholic church. FWIW
What’s the deal with infant baptism? The Swedish state church has been protestant since the time of Luther himself and has always baptised infants as far as I know, with confirmation in the teens. I don’t see why that would be a strike against catholics. Hell, back in the 16th century you wanted to baptise your kid as quickly as possible before the devil could possess him/trolls would replace him with one of their children/ insert scary myth here.
Catholics believe that there is an actual redemptive result from baptism, while protestants believe that baptism is simply an act of public profession of your faith. I.e., protestants believe that a person is saved when he/she actively decides to accept Christ, period. Communion, baptism, etc. are just symbolic activities with no actual “power” in them. Catholics believe that baptism of the baby saves them, even though the baby has no say in it, and that the communion, etc. have redemptive powers. There are other differences, of course.
But again, I know a lot of fundamental Christians who believe that many Catholics are as saved as any Baptist, and that many professing Baptists are not. For a true fundamental Christian it is very much an individual thing.
Wow. You must have gone to college in a different Mississippi than I did.
But seriously… There are “literal word of the Bible” fundamentalists, and there are “rural church fire & brimstone” fundamentalists. And the couple of times I got dragged to the latter churches in high school (“Sure, I’d love to go to church with you on Sunday,” he said, trying not to stare directly at her ample bosom), there was an organized intolerance for and dismissal of those of different beliefs.
We had some looney christian cult group (acronym was the CBC) in my town that really hated Catholics. As in, friends whose parents joined it were no longer allowed to hang out with me because I was possessed by Satan or some such at baptism.
My sister went to one of their meeting things with a friend who didn’t know she was Catholic and was terrified that she was gonna get lynched, because the preacher was so vitriolic. Probably not literally. I mean, no one would lynch a 14 year old girl right?
Oh, and they had summer boot camps, where you could “Come be a soldier of God!”
I read something pretty crazy the other day that basically said a lot of evangelical and fundementalist folks are converting to Orthodox because of the stricter, more “old school” practices. Isn’t the whole jist of Orthodox that they use even MORE icons and whatnot than Catholics? You’d think that would be a turn off for these converts, but apparently icons are less evil than gay people and women being ordained?
I was a Catholic among the Southern Baptists (and the even more fundamentalists.) Like others said, the fundies didn’t really ‘hate’ the Catholics, but the Catholics were not really ‘good people’ and Catholic beliefs weren’t tolerated just like Jews, Muslim, Atheists and whatever. Fundies have a low level mistrust of those that allow alcohol and gambling, have a Pope, and don’t believe the King James Bible™ is the literal word of Jesus.
So, why is there this distrust? Charismatic leaders using vitriol, fear, and propaganda to bring them followers/money/power/advance-their-cause and deflect blame onto other people. Doing that to other religions is easy, so that’s a main target. Fundamentalist Christians do that to Catholics because the religions are fairly different, and have plenty of hooks from history (schisms, crusades, etc) to latch onto.
Much the same things that governments, political groups, and talk show hosts do.
