FUNDAMENTALISM

Meaning of Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism is:

1. a movement to recapture an ideological ‘purity’ within a religion, that supposedly has been lost by mainstream adherents of the religion at large;
2. a religious movement or point of view characterised by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism;
3. an organised, militant Evangelical movement originating in the United States in the late 1800s and early 1900s in opposition to Protestant Liberalism and Secularism, insisting on the inerrancy of scripture;
4. Christianity, the belief that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired and therefore true;
5. Islam, a movement favouring strict observance of the teachings of Koran and Islamic Law;
6. strict adherence to the fundamental principles of any set of beliefs;
7. the demand for a strict adherence to certain theological doctrines in reaction against modernist theology.

Defining Fundamentalism

So what is fundamentalism? In one of the first and most careful sociologically based theoretical works on fundamentalism, Riesebrodt (1993 [1990) defines fundamentalism as “an urban movement directed primarily against dissolution of personalistic, patriarchal notions of order and social relations and their replacement by depersonalized principles.” In the follow-up book to the five-volume Fundamentalism Project, Almond et al. (2003) define fundamentalism as “a discernible pattern of religious militance by which self-styled ‘true believers’ attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and behaviors.” Put most directly in the context of modernity, Antoun (2001, p. 3) defines fundamentalism as a religiously based cognitive and affective orientation to the world characterized by protest against change and the ideological orientation of modernism.

Each of these definitions supposed a transnational, transcultural character to fundamentalism. It can be defined apart from its specifically unique historical circumstances. Some scholars and some practitioners argue that the term only applies to theologically conservative U.S. Protestants. They make this argument because the term was first used to describe this movement and because it is meant to apply only to a subject of people within a religious tradition. Muslims, for example, often argue that they cannot be called fundamentalist simply because they take the teaching of the Quran and their faith seriously. For if that were the criteria, then all Muslims are fundamentalist. And if this were true, the term ceases to be of use.

Serious critiques have been leveled at work that examines fundamentalism as a global phenomenon. Critics charge that such work often conflates conservative religious movements with post-colonial national religious movements. Others criticize what they view as the immensity of differences that have to be brushed aside to view, for example, U.S. Protestant fundamentalists and Hindu national fundamentalists as the same conceptually [e.g., Billings & Scott 1994, Iannaccone 1997, Munson 1995; see also review symposiums in the Review of Religious Research (Chalfant et al. 1993, Jelen et al. 1996)]. Some scholars are willing to use the term to apply to conservative movements within the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, but not other religions. (Lawrence 1989). Riesebrodt (2000) has responded that from a sociological perspective, the fact that resurgent conservative religious movements share many features in common is highly relevant, as it suggests that such movements have risen under similar sociological conditions. For this reason, he argues, despite important differences across these movements, knowledge can advance by considering fundamentalism as a sociological category in need of theoretical and empirical development.

How fundamentalism is defined and interpreted depends in good part on one’s perspective. From a modern, secular viewpoint, fundamentalists are reactionaries, radicals attempting to grab power and throw societies back into the dark ages of oppression, patriarchy, and intolerance. These fundamentalists are misguided, scary, and even evil. Supporters of modernization do not view themselves as being like these fundamentalists. Rather, modernists are the good, reasoned people, lovers of freedom and human rights. Again, from their own viewpoint, because they think more clearly and value empirical evidence and individual rights, modernists can see that fundamentalists are wrong.

Conversely, for fundamentalists and their sympathizers, Western versions of modernization rush over them in a tidal wave of change, ripping apart communities, values, social ties, and meaning. To these changes, some groups say, “No”. When they do so out of their religious conviction, they are called, by modernists, religious fundamentalists. Fundamentalists and their sympathizers see their stand against the tidal wave of change as honorable, right, life preserving, and a life calling. They are people fighting against the heavy hand of secular oppression, emptiness, anomie, and the restriction of freedom. As Bruce (2000) states, “Fundamentalism is the rational response of traditionally religious peoples to social, political and economic changes that downgrade and constrain the role of religion in the public world…. Fundamentalists have not exaggerated the extent to modern cultures threaten what they hold dear.”

Meaning of Fundamentalist

“Fundamentalist” is a term that is frequently bandied about in the news media there days. Casually invoked to describe anyone who seems to hold some sort of vaguely-perceived traditional religious belief-be they a Bible Baptist TV preacher, a Hasidic rabbi, a Mormon housewife, or a soldier of the Islamic Jihad-the word has become so overused as to be nearly useless.

When used within the North American historical context, however, there are precedents for the use of this term which restores a sense of descriptive cohesion. Fundamentalism was a movement that arose in the late 19th and early 20th centuries within American Protestantism reacting against “modernist” theology and biblical criticism as well as changes in the nation’s cultural and social scene. Taking its name from The Fundamentals (1910-1915), a twelve-volume set of essays designed to combat Liberal theology, the movement grew by leaps and bounds after World War I.

During the 1920s, fundamentalists waged a war against modernism in three ways: by (unsuccessfully) attempting to regain control of Protestant denominations, mission boards, and seminaries; by supporting (with mixed success) Prohibition, Sunday “blue laws”, and other measures defending traditional Protestant morality and sensibilities; and (fairly successfully) by attempting to stop the teaching of evolution in the public schools, a doctrine which they saw as inextricably linked to the development of “German” higher criticism and the source of the Great War.

This last strategy resulted in the infamous Scopes Trial Fiasco of 1925 (later fictionalized in the highly inaccurate play and film Inherit the Wind), in which a substitute biology teacher in Dayton, TN was charged with illegally teaching evolution to his class. The circus atmosphere of the resultant trial-pitting Presbyterian layman, former Secretary of State, and three-time Democratic Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution against the famed Chicago criminal defense lawyer Clarence Darrow-discredited the movement in the eyes of America’s intellectual and media elites, resulting in fundamentalism’s subsequent disappearance from the nation’s cultural stage. Since the 1940s, the term fundamentalist has come to denote a particularly aggressive style related to the conviction that the separation from cultural decadence and apostate (read liberal) churches are telling marks of faithfulness to Christ.

Most self-described fundamentalist churches today are conservative, separatist Baptist (though often calling themselves “Bible Baptist” or simply “Bible” churches) congregations such as the churches of the General Association of Regular Baptist Churches (GARBC), or the Independent Fundamental Churches of America (IFCA). Institutions associated with this movement would include Bob Jones University (Greenville, SC) and Tennessee Temple (Chattanooga, TN); representative publications would be the Sword of the Lord and the Biblical Evangelist. Concerns over doctrinal purity and issues of “first-degree separation” (the refusal to associate with groups who endorse questionable doctrinal beliefs or moral practices) and “second-degree separation” (refraining from association or identification with groups or individual who do not practice first-degree separation) have meant that self-identified fundamentalism has been prone to constant disputes and splits.

Characteristics of Fundamentalists

1. Religious idealism is the basis for personal and communal identity;
2. Fundamentalists understand truth to be revealed and unified;
3. It is intentionally scandalous (outsiders cannot understand it and will always be outsiders);
4. Fundamentalists envision themselves as part of a cosmic struggle;
5. They seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in light of this cosmic struggle;
6. They demonize opposition and are reactionary;
7. Fundamentalists are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage they stress;
8. They are primarily led by a narrow demographic (e.g. white males);
9. They envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the distribution of power;
10. Their logic is so different from normal logic, they cannot be argued with. For instance, in an argument over the existence of God, which is supposed initially to assume nothing, fundamentalists assume there is a god and that opposing statements are irrelevant.

Fundamentalism in United States

Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement’s purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of liberal theology and higher criticism.

The term “fundamentalism” has its roots in the Niagara Bible Conference (1878-1897), which defined those tenets it considered fundamental to Christian belief. The term was popularized by the The Fundamentals, as collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 and funded by the brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart. This series of essays came to be representative of the “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy”, which appeared late in the 19th century within some Protestant denominations in the United States, and continued in earnest through the 1920s. The first formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which distilled these into what became known as the “five fundamentals”.

• Biblical inspiration and the inerrancy of scripture as a result of this;
• Virgin birth of Jesus
• Belief that Christ’s death was the atonement for sin
• Bodily resurrection of Jesus .
• Historical reality of the miracles of Jesus

By the late 1910s, theological conservatives rallying around the Five Fundamentals came to be known as “fundamentalists”. They reject the existence of commonalties with theologically related religious traditions, such as the grouping of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into one Abrahamic family of religions. In contrast, Evangelical groups, while they typically agree on the theology “fundamentals” as expressed in The Fundamentals, often are willing to participate in events with religious groups who do not hold to the essential doctrines.

The “First” Fundamentalism in the United States

The term fundamentalism was first used to describe a conservative strain of Protestantism that developed in the United States roughly from 1870 to 1925. During at least a portion of this period, the United States was arguably the world’s leader in modernization. As U.S. religious historian George Marsden and others discuss, this original fundamentalist movement was foremost a religious movement (Marsden 1980, Riesebrodt 1993 [1990], Woodbury & Smith 1998) and took its name from a series of Pamphlets, “The Fundamentals A Testimony of the Truth,” published from 1910 to 1915. These pamphlets outlined the fundamental, non-negotiable aspects of the Christian faith, as agreed upon by conservative religious leaders of the time. Rather unlike many fundamentalist movements today, U.S. Protestant fundamentalism of the early twentieth century was not so much a battle with the secular state as it was an intra-religious fight with other U.S. Protestant people and organizations. These other U.S. Protestant people and organizations were attempting to modernize their religion to be, in the progressive Protestant view, relevant for a new time. Fundamentalists of this era were militantly opposed to modernizing the Christian faith, and militantly opposed to cultural changes endorsed by modernism. As Marsden (1980,) notes, “fundamentalism was a loose, diverse, and changing federation of cobelligerents united by their fierce opposition to modernist attempts to bring Christianity into line with modern thought.”

In the aftermath of the 1925 Scopes Trial in which fundamentalists went from being respected members of society to a ridiculed group, fundamentalists essentially retreated into their own private world, where they stayed for many decades. While there, they quietly developed parallel institutions, strategies for influencing society, and well-trained leaders. Their re-emergence in the public eye in the 1970s coincided with the resurgence of conservative religious movements around the globe.

The Recent Rise of Religious Fundamentalism in the United States

In the 1970s, fundamentalism appeared to hit the world stage from out of thin air. (Ammerman 1987). Although there were earlier movements (such as the Jewish Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) in 1974), the Iranian Revolution was the first unmistakable indicator of a growing phenomenon. Fundamentalism also resurged in the United States, this time as a much more politically active strain. Fundamentalist movements emerged in most of the world’s religions on most of the earth’s continents. Something was happening. In a 1979 article, Ethridge & Feagin noted a lack of “a coherent sociological definition and theoretical context for the term fundamentalism” And no wonder. The accepted wisdom among those who studied religion and society was that societies were secularizing. According to secularization theories, religion was not supposed to resurge and take a center spot on a global stage.

Sociologists fumbled to understand, and it took them nearly a decade to begin making serious progress. Indeed, many of the most notable early works on the relationship between fundamentalism and society were not written by sociologists. Duke religious historian Bruce Lawrence published an important book in 1989 that anticipated a growth in the study of fundamentalism as a sociological category. In Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt Against the Modern Age, Lawrence (1989) argued that fundamentalism is an ideology rather than a theology and is formed in conflict with modernism. His study set the groundwork for sociology because in his work we see that fundamentalism is viewed as a transcultural phenomenon located in a developmental historical framework. He sought to understand fundamentalism as a socio-cultural category with common roots in its encounter with the modern world. Lawrence’s work was preceded by sociologist Nancy Ammerman’s (1987) book, Bible Believers. Although this work was limited to U.S. fundamentalists, Ammerman was among the first sociologists to conduct an in-depth study into the lives of contemporary fundamentalists and to draw connections between fundamentalism and modernity.

As Riesebrodt (2000) notes, however, in interpreting the resurgence of religion, sociologists have largely gone in two directions different from that of Ammerman. Some have held fast to secularization theory and viewed the wave of fundamentalisms around the globe as a collective last gasp of religion. Modernism has swept the globe, and religions are making one final but ultimately futile attempt to preserve themselves, Weber reminds us all organizations and institutions are wont to do.

Another school of thought-what Warner (1993) calls the “new paradigm”-argues that modernization and secularization serve as fertile soil for religious resurgence, especially of the more fundamentalist strains. Where the signs of modernization are strongest-measures as religious pluralism and urbanization, for example so too is religious involvement (e.g., Finke & Stark 2005). Using a narrower definition of religion-individual involvement than is common in most secularization theories, these studies find support for their claims (although these claims have not been without challenge-e.g., Olson 199, Voas et al. 2002).

One can find other, smaller voices to the challenge of understanding global rise of fundamentalism. But as Riesebrodt (2000) outlines, all these explanations, dominant or not, are lacking in that they do not adequately answer three vital questions : (a) why these movements emerged, (b) why they emerged at this point in history (largely since the 1970s); and (c) what their future signs hence may be.

Religious Fundamentalism

One particularly notable feature of religion in the United States has been the appearance of fundamentalist religious groups.

Fundamentalism refers to “black-and-white” thinking that opposes modernism, or progressive thinking about religion and other social topics. Fundamentalist groups tend to oppose anything that challenges their religious group’s interpretations and opinions. For instance, Christian fundamentalists believe in the literal inerrancy of the Bible, and often define themselves as theologically and ritually conservative, or even “not Catholic”. They see themselves as reacting against liberal theology.

To most Americans the term fundamentalist conjures up images of “Bible-thumping” Protestants, which is far from the case. All denominations and groups-including those of religions like Islam-contain fundamentalist members. These activists usually think that they have a corner on “the truth”, and do not tolerate other viewpoints or practices.

The most well-known fundamentalist denominations in the United States are the Assemblies of God, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the Seventh Day Adventists. Organizations such as these often become politically active, and support the conservative political “right”, including groups like the Moral Majority.

Characteristics of Religious Fundamentalism

To date, the most comprehensive study of fundamentalisms around the world was sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and directly by religion historians Martin Marty and Scott Appleby. After a decade of exhaustive case study research with contributions from dozens of scholars (including sociologists) studying fundamentalist groups and movements across five continents and within seven world religious traditions, and after five volumes of reporting and analysis, the chapter Fundamentalisms: Genus and Species” by Almond et al. (1995) identified nine interrelated characteristics of fundamentalist groups, five ideological and four organizational..

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