Have you ever met a fundamentalist Christian who was not dogmatic?

[All Along The Watchtower]

No. Fundamentalist Christianity is, by definition, dogmatic, because believing the Bible to be absolutely perfect and the literal word of God is an inherently self-contradictory, black-and-white, and unreasonable theological standpoint.

[John Dibble]

No, because as you point out it's all about the dogma. However, I have met ones that aren't jerks about it. I even met one who came to the atheist meetup I go to who was really nice.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

No. Fundamentalist Christianity is, by definition, dogmatic, because believing the Bible to be absolutely perfect and the literal word of God is an inherently self-contradictory, black-and-white, and unreasonable theological standpoint.

If Jesus and the Apostles weren't "fundamentalists" under your definition, then what were they, exactly?

[TJ in Oregon]

Yes actually. He believes in hard-core sola scriptura interpretations on everything but those interpretations seem to change like every ten minutes. He identifies as a libertarian strangely enough but has spiritedly taken both sides of almost every political issue I can think of.

Depite having religious and political beliefs that are occasionally contradictory, incoherent, or strange, he is actually a pretty smart guy when it comes to math and science and I think will end up doing well for himself in his field.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Yes actually. He believes in hard-core sola scriptura interpretations on everything but those interpretations seem to change like every ten minutes. He identifies as a libertarian strangely enough but has spiritedly taken both sides of almost every political issue I can think of.

Depite having religious and political beliefs that are occasionally contradictory, incoherent, or strange, he is actually a pretty smart guy when it comes to math and science and I think will end up doing well for himself in his field.

was this posted in the wrong thread?  because you're not stating who you're talking about

[Alcon]

Yes actually. He believes in hard-core sola scriptura interpretations on everything but those interpretations seem to change like every ten minutes. He identifies as a libertarian strangely enough but has spiritedly taken both sides of almost every political issue I can think of.

Depite having religious and political beliefs that are occasionally contradictory, incoherent, or strange, he is actually a pretty smart guy when it comes to math and science and I think will end up doing well for himself in his field.

was this posted in the wrong thread?  because you're not stating who you're talking about

Eh?  I think he's pretty clearly talking about someone he knows but we don't.

[Swing low, sweet chariot. Comin' for to carry me home.]

Yes actually. He believes in hard-core sola scriptura interpretations on everything but those interpretations seem to change like every ten minutes. He identifies as a libertarian strangely enough but has spiritedly taken both sides of almost every political issue I can think of.

Depite having religious and political beliefs that are occasionally contradictory, incoherent, or strange, he is actually a pretty smart guy when it comes to math and science and I think will end up doing well for himself in his field.

was this posted in the wrong thread?  because you're not stating who you're talking about

Eh?  I think he's pretty clearly talking about someone he knows but we don't.

oh, yikes...I thought we was attempting to reply to a previous post, I didn't think about him replying to the thread question.  Makes sense now. 

[TJ in Oregon]

Yes, I was referring to someone I met/know in real life, as the title of the thread implies, not someone on the forum.

[useful idiot]

Just so you know, holding to inerrancy doesn't necessarily make one a fundamentalist. Christian Fundamentalism has a very specific history and context as a movement, with a certain set of characteristics that are quite different from other forms of "conservative" Christianity. A fundamentalist wouldn't usually accept Charismatic or Pentecostal Christianity as valid at all, yet the vast majority of the latter would believe in some form of inerrancy. Also, the word "literal," like fundamentalist, is thrown around but is generally unhelpful without any kind of qualification. To say that one believes the Bible is the "literal word of God" gives the impression that God was dictating to all of the authors of the books of the Bible, which isn't something most of the authors would claim. Even those fundamentalists and uneducated evangelicals using that term don't mean that. I'm personally more comfortable with the language of infallibility as opposed to inerrancy, but in practice they are the same, and I'm certainly not a Fundamentalist (I'd probably be thrown out of a Fundamentalist church).

As for the question, the answer is no, I haven't. I haven't met a single person who wasn't dogmatic in some regard, but I catch your drift. Most Christian Fundamentalists, if not all, are dogmatic about issues that aren't even dogma.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Well it's not accurate, but when most people say "fundamentalist", they really just mean "conservative evangelical".

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I don't mind being dogmatic about a subject, but fundies piss me off more than most because they're much more enlightened than I am, and far superior.

[Torie]

The short answer is no. If you think the Bible is inerrant, you're dogmatic. The end.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

And even though I used to be a fairly common offender, I too am growing someone annoyed at using "fundamentalist" or "fundie" simply as shorthand for "conservative evangelical".

It wouldn't be quite as irritating if people would realize that the group included as "fundies" were very far from homogeneous. I found some pretty out there site a couple weeks ago that had a whole section devoted to "exposing" what was described as "false prophets leading false churches that teach a perversion of the Gospel, etc. etc." with little blurbs about why they were so terrible. Well they were actually about 85% other evangelicals (mostly prosperity theology proponents and leaders of some rather legalistic Pentecostal sects), 10% people who are basically cult leaders, and 5% that could be described as "liberal" by any loose sense of the term (and this is counting Rick Warren as a "liberal".)

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Isn't that contradictory?