This thread is really moving to me. Thanks, all, for this discussion.

JohnH says, above: "Here's where I think the Fundamentalist pretenders have it wrong. One of the very defining fundamentals is that God looks on the heart. Behavior, while important, is secondary (a by-product of belief, if you will). The interesting thing about how this should inform one's view of governing other's behaviors------no "fundamentalist" would ever believe that he could save a person's soul (let alone the society or the world) by forcing certain behaviors."

First of all, John, I love the term "Fundamentalist pretenders"; what an accurate description! A fundie-pretender would very likely counter your characterization of behavior as "secondary" with the Biblical quote "Faith without works is dead" in order to justify his "work" of trying to control the behavior of others. He would emphatically agree that no person could "save" another's soul... but I have seen him and others like him comparing – and bragging about – the number of souls each of them has "brought to Christ". And I have seen him and others like him convince themselves that their attempts to govern the behavior of others will somehow bring those others to him to ask him how they might be "saved" like him.

Of course, few if any of the fundie-pretenders consider the number of souls driven away (except to dismiss them as "lost" or as having given themselves to Satan).

Kevin (McGrath of Harlow) says, above: "The issue is what you do when you have made a choice - when are you entitled or duty bound to try to get other people to go along with it, and when are you duty bound to stand back and let other people make the choice." My experience has been that the fundie-pretender feels duty-bound to get other people to go along with his choice not only by "witnessing", or testifying to his faith, but by roundly condemning any other choice (to lead them to water – even if it means to drag them, kicking and screaming), and duty-bound to stand back only when the other people make the choice to see things his way and to seek salvation on his terms (to drink, or to walk away and be dragged back to the trough).

To borrow Susan's (WYSIWYG's) phrase in part 1 of this thread, this is "the picture [the fundie-pretenders] show of themselves, on the outside." On the inside, many of them truly love and care for and want to help their fellow human beings (not all, but many). Unfortunately, those loving people have no clue that what they're doing is far more damaging than helpful, for the simple reason that they've had their behaviors and their way of thinking drummed into them as the "one way" of behaving and thinking. As lamarca said in part 1 of this thread, they're frightened (by the threat of eternal damnation AND by the threat of condemnation by their peers in their church community) of behaving and thinking in any other way. So, for those fundie-pretenders who truly care for the souls of the "unsaved", that fear for themselves extends to fear that others will be damned, which drives them to desperate attempts at rescue. For those fundie-pretenders who consider the "heathen" to be soulless tools of the devil and already headed for hell unless God intervenes, that fear of their own damnation drives them to desperate attempts at removal of the temptation (and even of the temptors) from their midst. They figure God is able to rescue these "Satan-spawn" if he wants to, but they have no interest in helping other than to "witness" from afar (pushing them toward the water and away from themselves).

In both cases, they believe that their behavior is an example of Christlike living, and will quote the Bible to prove it. But whether it is or isn't, it's still not up to the fundie-pretenders to govern anyone else's choice of behavior or thought, anyone else's choice of what to read or where to live or whom to love... but that's not what gets drummed into them from their pulpit.

In my humble opinion, based on personal experience from "the inside" and from removing myself to "the outside".

Sharon