This is a must-read article by Carol V. Hamilton. I discovered it on George Mason University’s History News Network. I’ve excerpted some of the finer parts, and you can go here for the entire piece. (BTW, the answer to the question is yes.)
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The third branch of American Christianity insists upon the letter of the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament. Its adherents typically describe themselves as “Christian” (rather than “Congregationalist” or “Presbyterian”). Its institutions often describe themselves as “nondenominational.” This third branch seems untroubled by the doctrinal and behavioral differences between Jesus of Nazareth in his benign and tolerant moods and the despotic God of the Old Testament—that jealous and demanding deity who tormented Job and ordered Abraham to kill his son. Yet even in its seemingly unqualified admiration for the Old Testament, Christian fundamentalism studiously ignores certain Bible stories, such as the ones about the relationships of David and Jonathan and of Ruth and Naomi.
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This third branch of Christianity poses a serious threat to our political well-being. Authoritarian, narrow in its scope, rigid in its attitudes, and tautological in its thinking, evangelical fundamentalism has been making war on the founding ideas of the United States. Its belief in submission to authority puts it at odds with a democratic republic. Its hostility to intellectual inquiry—by its very nature an interrogation of authority—causes it to wage war on scientific research and modern medicine. Its valorization of ancient codes of behavior inspires its attacks on feminism and gay rights. Its revisionist attitude toward history—denying the deism, skepticism, and Masonic associations of certain major Founders—is dishonest.
Fundamentalist Christianity is essentially anti-modern. It holds that truth became manifest two thousand years ago, and everything since—Copernicus and the solar system, the work of Galileo and Michelangelo, the scientific discoveries of Newton, Bacon and Locke, Wollstonecraft and the rights of women, the abolition of slavery, Darwin and Wallace, anesthesia, vaccines against smallpox and polio, progress in civil rights and social justice, the invention of the automobile, bicycle, telephone, airplane, radio, television, computer—is of no consequence. Even though most fundamentalist Christians (unlike the consistent Amish) enjoy the advantages of modern discoveries, inventions, and medical care, they do not acknowledge human ingenuity. (If pressed, they will say God is responsible for all material forms of human progress.) The highest achievements in mathematics, music, painting, sculpture, and literature are of no compelling significance or interest. Evolution is “just a theory” —like gravity?—and a blasphemous one at that.
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Its anti-intellectualism makes fundamentalist Christianity not only intolerant and judgmental but also tautological and superstitious—inclined to the kind of circular logic that attributes divine motivation to carefully selected natural disasters while ignoring the innumerable tragedies and disasters that are not amenable to such interpretations. It believes in a divinity that controls every aspect of life, does everything for a (good) reason, and punishes those who disobey ancient prohibitions.
Its insistence on the inferiority and subordination of women, an attitude it shares with other religious fundamentalisms, is undemocratic and anti-modern. And its obsession with salvation and the afterlife makes it indifferent, or even hostile, to modern innovations for the general good and modern notions of social justice when those conflict, as they often do, with ancient traditions. Many of its members hope for an apocalypse in their own lifetimes, much as credulous peasants did as the year 1000 approached.
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Fundamentalists will insist in their blog posts (see the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post) that all you have to do is “read” the Bible—an assertion that ignores the multiple translations the Bible has undergone, both into English and into different idioms of English. For decades literary scholars have argued about interpretations of poems by Yeats; for centuries they have disputed the nuances of sonnets and soliloquies by Shakespeare. Well-educated theologians in Catholicism and the mainstream Protestant denominations know very well that religious scholars have quarreled over interpretations, with some of them risking excommunication or death, yet fundamentalists believe in a single, transparent, unambiguous, and universal Biblical text.
Even more disturbing is the fundamentalist belief that the Bible is the only book you need to read and study. It contains all the answers to every conceivable question. Fundamentalists may attend schools that feature a “Christ-centered curriculum” or be home-schooled in a way that prevents exposure to any subject or argument that conflicts with their 2000-year-old worldview. They may attend “universities,” (a misnomer) whose curricula conform to the views of people who died two millennia ago—back when it was common knowledge that the earth was flat and that the sun rotated around it. Such an education is guaranteed to prevent students from encountering the skeptical views of Jefferson, Freud, Darwin, Frazer, Malinowski, or Mark Twain.
One sign of their ignorance is the popular claim that our legal system originates from the ten commandments. As Bill Maher points out, a number of the commandments don’t correspond to law at all. Actually, the law is probably more involved with property than justice. We don’t arrest people who exclaim “My God!”, fail to buy a gift on Mother’s Day, or covet their neighbor’s Mazeratti. And like other bodies of human knowledge and creation, the law is an ongoing process of arguments, counter-arguments, decisions, appeals, and new decisions. In referring to the legal system, American fundamentalists give no credit to the contributions of Emperor Justinian, Alfred the Great, Henry II, Edward I, and various rebellious nobles, assertive merchants, and unruly peasants.
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Fundamentalist Christianity possesses no such intellectual curiosity, depth, or complexity. Instead, it concerns itself with the moral conduct of American citizens—morality as defined by Biblical precepts and taboos. In so far as it takes any interest in science, fundamentalist Christianity is defensive, attempting either to reconcile the Bible with, or to subvert, science. Its main preoccupations appear to be the control of female sexuality and reproduction (no birth control, no possibility of abortion), the criminalization of homosexuality, access to government funds for its “faith-based initiatives,” and the injection of a primitive Christianity into all aspects of the public sphere, from government ceremonies to first-grade classrooms.
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Much more at the above link, and well worth the full read.
, I for the first time and my wife for a repeat read. I then moved on to 
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. 
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