Beginning With Doubts

A reader writes:

I'm behind on my reading and am just now getting through The Conservative Soul.  I'm only about 60 pages into it now, in the midst of your dissection of fundamentalism, and I have to say - as someone raised in a fundamentalist home, as someone who at one time was among the most fundamental of fundamentalists, believing the Bible to be inerrant, and so on - I don't think I've read a more clear, honest, understandable assessment of fundamentalism, its logic, its allure, and its dangers.

There's a semi-obscure quotation from Sir Francis Bacon that has become a motto of sorts for me, in my middle years:

"If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties."

The fundamentalist will never understand the beauty of that statement; conservatives must, if they wish to "get back" the "soul" they have "lost."

Thank you for capturing what so many conservatives are thinking but have not yet had the forum or talent to articulate.