Not So Inerrant After All

Fundamentalist Christians believe themselves to be personally inerrant when it comes to interpreting the Bible. The Bible is capable of many different interpretations, but a fundamentalist believes that whatever interpretation s/he chooses is inevitably the correct one. For example, they believe that “day” in Genesis 1 means 24 hours; but this cannot be the meaning of “day” in Genesis 2. So they claim that the word has two different meanings in the two chapters. And they believe that this rule of interpretation cannot be wrong, and you are headed straight for hell if you think they are wrong.

But they have quietly allowed their inerrant interpretations to change. A few decades ago, conservative white Christians were absolutely certain that some people were black because of the Curse of Cain, or maybe it was the Curse of Ham, or something, and that they had literal Biblical justification for hating black people and undertaking acts of violence against them. There are still white Biblical fundamentalists who believe this, but it is a comparatively rare belief today. Somehow, in the last few decades, many fundamentalist Christians have changed their beliefs. This has not happened because of federal government force. Maybe it started that way; they were furious about the government enforcing school busing and integration. But today you will find very few fundamentalist Christians who say “I get along with black people only because the federal government forces me to.” Most white fundamentalists genuinely like people of other races. Now.

Why the change? The Bible has not changed. Nor did God appear in the sky and announce, “Hey, uh, listen up; I just decided, uh, that it’s okay to like black people now.” It is the fundamentalists themselves who have changed their beliefs. If fundamentalists are inerrant in their Bible interpretations, then why have their beliefs changed? It is because they learned some things. They learned from experience that black people are just people, with good and bad individuals just like any other race. This means that somebody was wrong sometime. Either modern fundamentalists are insulting the Bible by liking black people, or else their recent predecessors were insulting the Bible by hating black people. Somewhere along the line, somebody interpreted the Bible incorrectly.

When a modern fundamentalist claims that they and they alone know what the correct interpretation of the Bible is, they should remember that earlier fundamentalists made the same claim about beliefs that are now widely rejected.