I’ve said this before: I am concerned less with what individuals believe than with how they acquired their beliefs and why they maintain them. And in the evangelical/fundamentalist Christian community nothing illustrates this better than belief that scripture is the Word of God.
The terms “dogma” and “dogmatism” have a serious image problem, though it wasn’t always that way, at least in a religious context. Dogma is a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true. Thus Christians came to be expected to accept the Nicene Creed without question. It was just the way things were. Nowadays using the term “dogmatic” in reference to someone or his or her ideas is clearly viewed as a negative. But I think the term describes well the position of those who believe steadfastly in scripture as the inspired word of God.
