I found it a fascinating and well-written and disturbing account of US fundamentalist attitudes which both help show some of the differences between US Christian fundamentalists and other species of fundamentalisms, and some of the features common to the genus.
The article is part of a forthcoming 'narrative history of fundamentalism'. Sharlet seeks to set fundamentalism in American history, and also shows how the fundamentalists re-tell history to ground their own account of the present.
Two (separate) quotes:
'Those unable to feel His soothing touch at moments such as these snort at the notion of a god with the patience or the prurience to monitor every tick and twitch of desire, a supreme being able to make a lion and a lamb cuddle but unable to abide two men kissing. A divine love that speaks through hurricanes. Who would worship such a god?'His thesis is that fundamentalists are not newcomers but 'the natural temperature of the nation'.
Later in the article he recounts,
'Rusty and I talked back by the literature tables. He had something he wanted to explain. He had neglected the twin sins, he said, the two wicked acts that fundamentalists believe to be the collective responsibility of the entire society in which they occur. "Child sacrifice"-by which he meant abortion-"and sodomy. Any nation that condoned those behaviors? That did not challenge them, that did not prevent them from happening? It will be reduced to rubble."
'He shook his head, eyes squeezed shut. The church had allowed women to murder their children and men through sodomy to damn themselves and all their brothers. It was his fault more than theirs because he knew the "blueprint of God's Word." 'Those who know God's blueprint are the most dangerous: they are scarcely containable by what other people would call rational means. Nor can they see that they have set up an image of God, a limited version of the Bible, and have made that their God; technically idolatry.
