Today, we are heading east, Interstate 84 along the Columbia, past The Dalles, overnight in Pendleton, up the Blue Mountains, south along the Idaho border.  Oregon is a big state, but one part of it exists almost universally outside of the American's collective consciousness.  It's as if nobody has ever thought about this one part of Oregon.  But this part - the southeastern quarter, is both enormous and fantastical.

I mention to Hans about my recent debates with Christian Fundamentalists over topics like creationism.  It is a great subject for the road; filled with good subplots and laughs.

The modern definition of a fundamentalist is roughly someone who believes in the inerrancy of their religious texts.  In this sense, the Americas are filled with religious fundamentalists.  Jamaican icon Bob Marley died because he refused a toe amputation to treat skin cancer.  The reason: Rastafarians believed in a literal interpretation of certain parts of the bible; they lived in accordance with their interpretation of the dietary and cultural laws of the Old Testament.  Kellogg's corn flakes were created because Seventh Day Adventists needed a breakfast meat substitute.  Like Rastafarians, the Adventists took a literal view of certain parts of the Old Testament, especially Leviticus.

In many rural counties, the Amish and the Mennonites live life by a strict religious code inspired by a literalist look at the scriptures. 

The word 'fundamentalist' these days gets people thinking about hijackers and terrorists.  Few Americans mention that this country has the highest rate of fundamentalism in the world: Forty-three percent of us practice Protestant evangelism, which implies a fundamental and literal belief in the words of the New Testament.

Fundamentalism is a modern invention of humanity; and its origins - whether in American Protestantism, Israeli Judaism or Arab Islam - come from a reaction and distaste for the complexity and apparent ills of the modern world. 

On the Washington side of the Columbia River, we see a series of white slabs sticking out of the hillside.  "That's a complete replica of Stone-henge," Hans says.  "They reconstructed it as part of a World War I memorial."  He explains that the builder of the site, a Quaker by the name of Sam Hill, constructed it, “as he thought Stonehenge looked when it was built.”

And later, he points toward the river, this time at a big complex called the Umatilla Chemical Depot, filled with projectiles, land mines, spray tanks, bombs with mustard gas and other blister agents.  "That's the biggest storehouse for U.S. chemical weapons in the country," he says, "that’s where they bring it all to be destroyed.”   

I tell Hans about how selective fundamentalists can be about their own fundamentalism.  Their lives are often truly modern - they drive big cars, their diets are filled with chemicals, they type away at computers and consume their medical prescriptions. 

Jokingly, I mention that if I were to become a fundamentalist, I would want to learn precisely what the scriptures required of me if I took its every word literally. I would also seek to learn about the surrounding circumstances of the age of the Bible.  Since I am a student of biblical archaeology, I have built up a long-standing belief that Christian, Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists could benefit from Middle Eastern archaeological finds; because their traditionalism would be reinforced by physical evidence of ancient practices and lifestyles.

I told him, also, that it would be prudent as a fundamentalist in a place like Oregon, so different from the Middle East, to adapt the scriptures for the geography and culture of the Pacific Northwest.

"If you go back to the time of the Bible, living in the Pacific Northwest," I tell him, "say like six thousand years ago to three hundred A.D., it would be all Indians!"

Hans says, "Those rabbis, making all those laws in the Old Testament, there were reasons for them.  They had very specific laws for very specific reasons.  I bet if we looked at the Indians of Oregon from the same time, their cultures would end up making similar cultural laws about food and customs."

”That’s why it’s forbidden to eat pelicans!” I said.