FEAR TACTICS OF THE FUNDAMENTALISTS

Of all the versions of Christianity it looks like we ended up with the fieriest. Maybe you grew up like me- in fear of waking to piles of clothes on the floor and driverless cars careening after the truly saved souls have been disappeared to Heaven and I had been left behind.

When you grow up with this version of reality, scary as it is, you grow up with a palpable sense of relief that you were born into a church that understands the truth.

But doesn't every child of faith? Surely our indoctrinated Catholic peers were as convinced in their faith, and maybe felt double the luck we did, relieved they didn't have fear of the Rapture to contend with.

For many of us in fundamentalist Protestant folds, our relief in being privy to the truth is hardly a comfort, given the fear we live with.

We are products of the 16th Century Reformation.

The Reformation

The Reformation sought to reform the Christian faith. People saw through the rituals and rhetoric of the Church to a sinister ploy by clergy- priests would literally knock off time in purgatory (the place where souls wait to be sorted and possibly refined after death) for monetary donations.

The Protestant Reformation stressed biblical literalism. It was fertile footing for fundamentalist thought to be born.

So was this principle of sola scriptura (scripture alone) the idea of private interpretation of the Bible, empowering preachers to pluck from the pages and twist the words however they pleased.

Our inherited "reformed" Christianity would be subjected to the whims of pastors and their interpretations. Those who inherited saints and rosaries instead would be subjected to abuse by those in power too however.

Religion provides this dangerous environment that attracts bad people with their own agendas looking to exploit others. Enter predator priests and Protestant fear tactics.

THE AWAKENINGS

More than half of Americans will tell you the fires are stoked hot and ready, mostly evangelicals who make up almost a quarter of the adult population. Evangelicals are products of the religious free market, where denominations with less engaging practices risk losing members to competitors.

Two series of large-scale religious revivals in the 18th and 19th centuries handed us the evangelical brand. Their fear mongering tactics of the First Great Awakening (which also occurred in parts of Europe) and the Second Great Awakening (US) would prove quite engaging.

These original fundamentalists shot back against new modernist attempts to reconcile Christian belief with emerging scientific theories like evolution and higher biblical criticism.

They also rejected traditional Reformation ideas of Martin Luther, like predestination, the idea that God has already chosen who will be saved. The new focus on being afforded the opportunity to choose your salvation with faith is the key point of the evangelical movement. They held "five fundamentals" first formally articulated by the Presbyterian General Assembly in 1910:

✅The inspiration and inerrancy of the Scriptures

✅The full divinity of Jesus Christ

✅The virgin birth

✅Christ's death on the cross as sole means of salvation

✅The bodily resurrection of Jesus and his imminent return

There was Jonathan Edwards, Puritan minister from Massachusetts, with his viral 18th century sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," charismatic Anglican minister George Whitefield and father-son duo William and Gilbert Tenent who founded the first American Presbyterian seminary which trained ministers to carry the revival's message throughout the colonies.

The American evangelical brand with Hellfire popping and raring to roast was brought to us by 19th Century "Second Great Awakening" fear-mongerers like Charles Grandison Finney, Peter Cartwright and Francis Asbury. When he arrived in America (1771), there were only a few hundred Methodists. By the time of his death, there were over 200,000 members.

These revivals rained down the fire and brimstone of Hell.

Deconstructing Hell

“Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell.” CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS

For many Christians, Hell is the whole point. At least avoiding it is. It's a fear-based religion around the idea that something terrible will happen to us if we don't believe and behave a certain way.

Some Biblical scholars say there's room for doubt regarding the scriptural basis for Hell. They point out that Hebrew and Greek words used in the Bible which Christians translate to “Hell” actually have different, ambiguous meanings.

The ancient Jewish concept of the afterlife, or Sheol, for example, was not originally a place of punishment but a shadowy, indiscriminate underworld. The word Gehenna, which Jesus used, referred to a valley outside Jerusalem where garbage was burned, and it served as a powerful metaphor.

But it was a metaphor for a very visceral threat. Jesus spoke of Hell frequently.

Matthew 13:42, 50: At the end of the age, law-breakers will be thrown into a "blazing furnace".
Matthew 25:41: He speaks of an "eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels".
Matthew 25:46: He says the unrighteous will go to "eternal punishment," while the righteous go to "eternal life".

Matthew's Jesus can't shut up about it.

Mark’s Jesus, not to be outdone, repeats three times that it is better to enter life maimed than to go to hell, "where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched". And old Luke (13:28) is where we get the “weeping and gnashing of teeth” reference.

Despite all this fear-mongering, the average Christian concept of Hell was not this literal lake of fire. The idea was far less unified than it is today, a mix of ideas drawn from the New Testament, Jewish tradition, and Greek philosophy.

Weeping and gnashing teeth in a literal, tormenting Hell became dramatically more vivid and terrifying during the Middle Ages, as the Church found it useful.

Early church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) laid much of the groundwork for the medieval view and Italian Dominican friar and priest Thomas Aquinas (1224–1274) was among those influential in stoking the fire.

The blaze spread to the U.S. with puritan colonizers, some of whom would be successful in starting the evangelical movement.

It would be this fire that danced in my dreams at night in youth, eliciting my pleas for my soul as young as six. Nightly my brother and I stomped on the shag carpet in our bedrooms together, chanting “Pound, pound, pound; Don't go down”.

Some Christians and biblical scholars will argue that Hell as we imagine it is based on a faulty interpretation of scripture. But to the fundamentalist Hell is hot and ready. The Bible was the completely inerrant, infallible word of God, they proclaimed- actually an astonishing break with Protestant church fathers and the traditional interpretation of the authority and limitations of Scripture.

Fundamentalists are typically this fringe niche where subscribers are just extra. They swallow every Scripture and file in line behind the teachers who will tell them what each bite really means.

That's why you've got a hundred plus Protestant denominations competing for souls.

From charismatic, emotional preaching that emphasized a personal brand of faith, the Holy Rollers were born, subscribers to the interpretation of the Book of Acts in which the Holy Spirit bestows gifts upon the faithful, such as the ability to heal sickness with your hands and to speak in the language of God (Tongues). The Holy Spirit is regarded with extreme reverence.

You definitely can't blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Some preachers will say it's the unforgivable sin per Matthew 12:31. What exactly that means has been up for debate. In context it looks like Jesus is telling people not to attribute his miracles to the works of the devil but most believers say it refers to the act of rejecting Christ as your savior.

While it took charismatic preaching and fear mongering to sucker in the adults in centuries past, today's evangelicals are born to parents of faith. The indoctrination with fear and guilt starts young.

The threat of eternal damnation and the end of the world is present even in Sunday School. Jesus loves you, but if you don't love him back, you will weep and gnash your teeth forever.

Did Christ speak with symbolic, hyperbolic imagery, understood as metaphors by the original audience? Perhaps, but that's not how the Gospels read.

The narrative of a literal Hell is most effective at converting souls after all.

So is a surprise comeback of Christ to swoop the Saved up to Heaven, and a potential for even devout souls to get “left behind” if they had some doubts or didn’t sincerely repent for a white lie they told last week

Deconstruct the End Times

Every fundie knows Revelation. If your experience was like mine, the book haunted your dreams: the beast rising from the sea with ten horns and seven heads, the red dragon, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Apocalyptic literature was a trending genre of the era when Revelation was written. It wasn’t a terribly unique story. But it was terrifying and it could be put to use.

The original fundamentalists sure thought so. John Darby and William Miller turned up the heat, bringing their interpretations of apocalyptic Scripture to the table.

Enter the End Times. You may know it by its fancy name, Millennialism, or maybe just the Rapture.

Millennialism is this narrative, based on interpretations of Old Testament prophecy and the Book of Revelation, that Christ is coming back to reign on Earth for a thousand years.

Fundies can't stop fighting over how it's all going to go down though. Is the 1,000-year period literal or symbolic? Will it happen before or after Jesus swoops up the Saved in the Rapture?

Amillennialism says it’s all figurative. Postmillennialism says that Christians will enjoy 1,000 years of Christian dominion over the Earth before the Rapture. Premillennialism says the Rapture is first, and those raptured will come back and reign with Christ on Earth for 1000 years. That's the most popular brand and it's got two versions too.

Historic premillennialism says the Rapture happens after this seven year period of time of Tribulation on Earth. The more popular (and complicated) view, Premillennialist Dispensationalism, says the Rapture is first. Anyone left behind gets a second shot if they can endure the Tribulation.

Things are going to get ugly here. War, famine and death will sweep the Earth and plagues and natural disasters will prevail. It's painted as a terrifying time to be alive. An Antichrist known as "the Beast" will deceive the world and demand worship.

American evangelicals believe Jesus will scoop up the Saved so they don't have to endure this. On this timeline, God can resume his Old Testament plan for Israel: restoration to their promised land and the Jewish people finally recognizing Christ as the Messiah.

To be raised fundamentalist Christian is to grow up worrying about this return of Jewish people to their biblical homeland because that return is necessary for the fulfillment of biblical prophecy and the Second Coming of Christ. It means political support for Israel, often involving advocacy for its territorial expansion.

These were God’s people and to share their god we had to support them. (Christian Zionism) In worshipping the same God, we are "grafted into the vine” (Romans 11). Basically that meant non-Jews (Gentiles) could be God’s children and be saved alongside his Israelites with whom the biblical covenant is still binding.

Evangelicals in power in the U.S. have successfully taken it upon themselves to make the alliance a political agenda.

The End Times doctrine grew from this obscure theological position into a dominant force in American evangelicalism over a period of roughly a century due to emphasis on evangelizing. Televangelists of the 1960s through 1980s John Hagee, Jimmy Swaggart, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts and Billy Graham took the crusade up a notch, dispensing premillennial dispensationalism in an accessible, often sensationalized format. They connected current events to End Times prophecies, reaching millions who might not have otherwise engaged with the theology.

Anticipation of such catastrophic, shocking, life-altering events is normalized in the church, but that doesn’t minimize fear.

Most preachers will hold that “no one knows the day or hour” regarding the Rapture, but over the years some have made predictions: William Miller in the 1840s (the Great Disappointment), Edgar Whisenant in 1988, Harold Camping in 1994 and 2011, Hal Lindsey, author of The Late Great Planet Earth, suggesting the 1980s, Ronald Weinland for 2011 and 2012, and a more recent prediction by Joshua Mhlakela for September 2025.

Each time you get subscribers scrubbing their souls, selling their cars and making embarrassing predictions publicly only to look up to the empty sky and see no Christ coming on the clouds of glory.

To this day subscribers can check the Rapture Index online, for predictions linking current geopolitical events to biblical prophecy to forecast an imminent apocalypse. Natural disasters easily attributed to global warming are considered a sign.

I remember the 1990’s- when everyone thought the world was ending anyway- and the Left Behind series came out. Never mind the Chick tracts - those fun-sized fear-mongering booklets with outlandish illustrations were popular for decades.

Obsessing about the end of the world is just a Tuesday afternoon for a fundamentalist kid. But the sad fact such fear is normalized doesn't negate the lifelong consequences of growing up with that kind of fear.

Fortunately we can deconstruct, and we can heal. Check out our page on healing from fear.