As I’ve alluded to previously, I grew up as a KJV-Only Baptist Fundamentalist. This means that we viewed the King James Version as the “Authorized” Bible, the only one that truly conveys God’s Word to humanity. The “Baptist Fundamentalist” part requires a bit more explanation, some of which we’ll have to save for a future conversation, but it essentially means that we were of the Baptist denomination but distinctly committed to certain “fundamentals.”
The central fundamental is the doctrine of inerrancy – the belief that the Bible is without error in its teachings. This doctrine rose in prominence in the late 19th and 20th centuries in response to theologians and biblical scholars who questioned all aspects of the Bible. This development of biblical criticism was not new – it was a persistent element of the Renaissance and Reformation in the 15th and 16th centuries – but it took on new force in response to Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), which popularized atheism (as opposed to agnosticism or philosophical deism) in a historically new way.
My KJV-Only tradition seared into my brain a fundamental dichotomy between Faith and Science. Either I could believe the inerrant words of the KJV Bible, or I could risk my faith by learning information gained by scientific research and experimentation. I lived in fear that I might accidentally hear some idea that would endanger my faith. As a quick example, the Land Before Time series became a danger because one of the later sequels mentioned evolution. A formerly beloved cartoon became a threat.
Perhaps ironically, this emphasis on protecting my beliefs from all other influences in no way strengthened my faith. Instead, I lived in fear that at any moment, some piece of information could come along and endanger a key aspect of my identity, as well as my eternal soul. I therefore learned to hate all that was different, everything that contradicted my convictions as a KJV-Only Baptist.
Reflecting back on how I thought as a child, I have come to emphasize this key principle:
Ignorance breeds Fear, and Fear breeds Hate.
As much as I may disagree with this tradition, however, these people shaped me. They cared for me, and showed me how to care for others. I was primarily taught and guided by my maternal grandparents and my uncle, who was the pastor of our church. As a KJV-Only church, it was a fairly small congregation which lacked the funding of larger churches in town. Because of this, I received a very different vision of a pastor and church life than is typically experienced by American evangelicals. My uncle did everything in the church – preaching, planning, plumbing, lawn care, everything. The congregation consisted of people struggling to survive, including many first– or second-generation Mexican immigrants, recovering alcoholics, or just generally down-on-their-luck types looking for purpose and hope.
I left that church, and the KJV-Only tradition, when my uncle died unexpectedly from a treatable cancer. I couldn’t have been more confident that God would heal my uncle, and my faith offered no real explanation or comfort. I continued at the church for a while under a new pastor, but finally left when a man visiting one Sunday collapsed from an aneurysm and died in the sanctuary; I will never forget his wife’s desperate cry piercing through the pastor’s welcome, halting the service. I took that experience, right, wrong, or otherwise, as a final sign from God that I should leave.
I found my way to a much bigger, better-funded Southern Baptist church. That community also cared for me, and I still appreciate the love they showed me. At the same time, I prodded the teachings and practices constantly, regularly rubbing people the wrong way. While I embraced the opportunity to more thoughtfully engage my faith—a couple pastors I still deeply respect encouraged me to read C.S. Lewis and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which had a tremendous impact on me as a high schooler—I nevertheless felt disconnected from the ethical call to care for the poor, widow and orphan.
In the more mainstream evangelical churches, there was more room to think, but there was far less emphasis on practicing care for others.
There was a connection for me between “ethics,” or how we treat other people and engage in society, and “biblical authority,” the conviction that the Bible sets a standard of living against which my life and actions are judged. For me, the less fundamentalist communities were not practicing what they preached, while fundamentalism taught me to fear and despise the people I was called to serve.
I sought a faith I could think, live, and practice beyond the Ignorance – Fear – Hate cycle of fundamentalism.
Ultimately, Karl Barth’s theology provided me a path toward this kind of faith. His articulation of biblical authority, which I will refer to by his phrase “the Word of God in its Threefold Form,” creates space for encountering and embracing difference without abandoning faith. Further, it deepened my faith and understanding while encouraging a deeper, critical engagement with ethics and society.