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Defining Fundamentalism
It has
also been argued that this Christian term cannot be
accurately applied to movements that have entirely different
priorities. Muslim and Jewish fundamentalist, for example,
are not much concerned with doctrine, which is an
essentially Christian preoccupation. A literal translation
of fundamentalism into Arabic gives us usuliyah, a
word that refers to the study of the sources of the various
rules and principles of Islamic Law. (9) Most of the
activist who are dubbed “fundamentalists” in the West are
not engaged in this Islamic science, but have quite
different concerns. The use of term “fundamentalism” is,
therefore, misleading. Given the many disparate uses of the
concept, it is not surprising that fundamentalism has not
been easy to define. Several recent works are helpful in
developing a conceptual understanding of the phenomenon.
Three important works are examined here:
Bruce
Lawrence, Defenders of God: The Fundamentalist Revolt
against the Modern Age. Lawrence defines fundamentalism
as: “the affirmation of religious authority as holistic and
absolute, admitting of neither criticism nor reduction; it
is expressed through the collective demand that specific
creedal and ethical dictates derived from scripture be
publicly recognized and legally enforced.”(10)
Lawrence argues that fundamentalism is a specific kind of
religious ideology. It is anti-modern, but not
anti-modernist. In other words, it rejects the philosophical
rationalism and individualism that accompany modernity, but
it takes full advantage of certain technological advances
that also characterize the modern age. The most consistent
denominator is opposition to Enlightenment values. Lawrence
believes that fundamentalism is a world-wide phenomena and
that it must be compared in various contexts before it can
be understood or explained with any clarity. Lawrence ends
his general discussion by listing five “family resemblances”
common to fundamentalism.
•
Fundamentalists are advocates of a minority viewpoint. They
see themselves as a righteous remnant. Even when
they are numerically a majority, they perceive themselves as
a minority.
• They
are oppositional and confrontational towards both
secularists and “wayward” religious followers.
• They
are secondary level male elites led invariably by
charismatic males.
• They
generate their own technical vocabulary.
•
Fundamentalism has historical antecedents, but no
ideological precursor.
The
American Academy of Arts and Sciences funded a multiyear
project that brought scholars from around the world together
to study fundamentalism. Ultimately they produced 5 volumes
containing almost 8,000 pages of material. Admitting some
difficulty with the term, the project opts to use it anyway
for a variety of reasons. Essentially, they argue that it is
commonly accepted, here to stay, and the best term anyone
can come up with for this phenomenon. The last chapter of
volume l, “Fundamentalisms Observed”, discusses the “family
resemblances” found in the various chapters. These family
resemblances include:
•
religious idealism as basis for personal and communal
identity;
• they
understand truth to be revealed and unified;
• it
is intentionally scandalous, (similar to Lawrence’s point
about language -- outsiders cannot understand it);
• they
envision themselves as part of a cosmic struggle; they seize
on historical moments and reinterpret them in light
of this cosmic struggle;
• they
demonize their opposition and are reactionary;
• they
are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage
they stress;
• they
are led by males;
• they
envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the
distribution of power.(11)
The
last several chapters of the final volume,
“Fundamentalism comprehended” attempt to delineate
several properties of fundamentalism with the research of
the previous 7,500 pages in mind. Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan,
and Gabriel Almond list five ideological characteristics and
four organizational characteristics of fundamentalism. The
Five ideological characteristics are:
• they
are concerned “first” with the erosion of religion and its
proper role in society;
•
fundamentalism is selective of their tradition and what part
of modernity they accept or choose to react
against;
• they
embrace some form of dualism;
• they
stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of
revelation; and
• they
opt for some form of Millennialism or Messianism.
The
organizational characteristics include:
• an
elect or chosen membership;
•
sharp group boundaries;
•
charismatic authoritarian leaders; and
•
mandated behavioural requirements. (12)
At
about the same time that the Fundamentalism Project was
getting underway, Jeffrey K. Hadden and Anson Shupe in their
“Secularization and Fundamentalism Reconsidered”
offered the following definition of fundamentalism: “It is a
proclamation of reclaimed authority over a sacred tradition
which is to be reinstated as an antidote for a society that
has strayed from its cultural moorings.”(13)
Hadden
and Shupe note that fundamentalists refute the split between
sacred and secular that characterizes modernist thinking. It
also involves a plan to bring religion back to centre stage
in public policy decisions. As the “Fundamentalism Project”
makes clear, in every corner of the world and in every major
faith tradition, there are groups identified by some as
fundamentalists. Hadden and Shupe argue that fundamentalism
is an attempt to draw upon a religious tradition to cope
with and reshape an already changing world. The question
arises: What changes are so world wide that a reactive
movement like fundamentalism can be found anywhere in the
world? The answer, according to Hadden and Shupe, is
globalization.
The
range of religious responses to globalization explains
fundamentalism’s global presence. Hadden and Shupe argue
that around the world there is a “common process of
secularizing social change.” This process contains “the very
seeds of a reaction that brings religion back into the heart
of concerns about public policy. The secular….is also the
cause of resacralization… [This] often takes fundamentalist
forms “years of the twentieth century. This loss of
influence, coupled with the liberalizing trends of German
biblical criticism and the encroachment of Darwinian
theories about the origin of the universe, prompted a
response by conservative churchmen.
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