These days, when people ask about religion, I say I am Theravadin Episcopalian. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Fundamentalism makes no distinction between e.g. "God" and concepts of God, "scripture" and interpretations of it, "jihad" and understandings of it, etc. It is a matter of cognitive development. We all develop there, some just stay there. When turned into a political force it creates problems for pluralism or its potential within a society.

I once heard a friend and colleague speak appreciatively of his fundamentalist upbringing. "In making me appeal to the authority of text they made a scholar of me. In making me sing about it they made a musician of me."

How true in my experience. Growing up with the carrot of heaven and stick of hell also made spiritual matters important. For all the Samsonite I have had to unload, that value is still a gift.

Reflection/Expression Faith Poetry Reality		Influences Armstrong on fundamentalism Dogma past from the Southern Baptists Fowler on faith and development Keagan on cognitive development Kornfield, Boorstein et al on meditation Spong on modern/relevant Christianity Wilber on integral facets/levels of reality