Location
SEPTEMBER 14
“THE FUNDAMENTAL OF
FUNDAMENTALISM”
All sessions are held in the Lean Lecture Room
on the lower level of Wishart Hall, at Bever and
University Streets on The College of Wooster campus.
83
From
Cleveland
(I-71 South)
Friendsville
Road
DR. CHARLES KAMMER
The James F. Lincoln Professor of Religious Studies
The College of Wooster
SEPTEMBER 21
Milltown Road
“AMERICAN REACTIONARY
MOVEMENTS: THE CASE OF CHRISTIAN
FUNDAMENTALISM”
Cleve
land
Road
religious
fundamentalisms:
Portage Road
the clash of
“true believers”
Wayne Avenue
Bever
DR. SARAH MIRZA
Street
an Street
Gasche
Bowm
Beall Avenue
Wishart
Hall
“ISLAMIC FUNDAMENTALISM,
BETWEEN NEO-NAZIS AND
NEO-COMMUNISTS”
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
The College of Wooster
From Akron
(I-76 West
and
Route 21)
585
Street
SEPTEMBER 28
Mechanicsburg Road
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
The College of Wooster
Oak Hill Road
Highland Avenue
DR. JEREMY RAPPORT
Burbank Road
Oldman Road
Libert
y Stre
From
30
Columbus
(I-71 North)
et
From
Canton
30
7:30 – 9:30 p.m. Wednesdays
Madison Avenue Exit
OCTOBER 5
September 14 – October 19
“STRANDS OF JEWISH
FUNDAMENTALISM”
DR. JOAN FRIEDMAN
Associate Professor of Religious Studies
The College of Wooster
OCTOBER 12
“THE TENSION BETWEEN HINDU
UNIVERSALISM AND RELIGIOUS
EXCLUSIVISM”
DR. ISHWAR HARRIS
Synod Professor of Religious Studies, Emeritus
The College of Wooster
The 48th Annual
Fall Academy
of Religion 2016
Board Members
G. Kenneth Barnard, Chair Kathy Begert Frederick H. Bohse
The Rev. Charles Cureton
Tom Gregory
Ruth MacKenzie
Roger Moyer
Michael Musyt
Gordon Shull
Staff and Executive Committee
Ken Barnard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Administrative Dean
Charles Kammer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Academic Dean
Ruth MacKenzie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Treasurer & Registrar
Michael Musyt . . . . . . Secretary to Executive Committee
Free lecture series for persons
of any background
OCTOBER 19
WRAP UP SPEAKER
The Academy offers its appreciation to the J. Arthur Baird
Endowment and the Office of Interfaith Campus Ministries
for their continuing financial support.
THE COLLEGE OF WOOSTER
religious fundamentalisms:
B
y the close of the nineteenth century, casual observers, as well as social scientists and academics, were
predicting and documenting the decline of religion.
Religion was portrayed as a holdover from a pre-scientific past where human societies drew upon stories,
myths and so-called common sense observations to
create a worldview and to provide explanations for
natural events and human behavior. As such, religion
was portrayed as either irrational or prerational, soon to
be replaced by reasoned, scientific explanations which
would provide a power and control over life which
religion was not able to provide. Modern agricultural
sciences would produce an abundance of food, eliminating hunger, in a way that religious prayers and fertility
rituals were never able to do. Confronted with the choice
between so called “faith healing” and modern medical
sciences, people would choose the effectiveness of modern medical science over the uncertainty of faith healing
techniques.
It is in this context that Frederick Nietzsche would
write: “Have you not heard of that madman who lit a
lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market
place, and cried incessantly: ‘I seek God! I seek God!’—
‘Whither is God?’ he cried; ‘I will tell you. We have
killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers.’”
“’I have come too early,” he said then, ‘my time is not yet.
This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering;
it has not yet reached the ears of men.’”
Certainly religion did not immediately disappear
but as the twentieth century went on, religion increasingly declined in scope. It slowly lost its influence in
the political, economic and social realms, retreating
to the realm of privatized spirituality. The retreat was
so dramatic that academics in the 1960’s and 1970’s
declared that we had become a “secularized “society,
we now lived in “the secular city” where the claims and
values of religions no longer had any currency. Religion
was simply a place of retreat from a hectic, often hard,
anxiety producing world. Once again, those who studied
religion confidently predicted its continuing decline,
replaced by a world of rationality where scientific calculations would rule in the worlds of economics and
politics and where modern science would provide
explanations for both natural phenomenon and human
behavior. The superstition of religion would finally be
replaced by the certainty of human reason.
the clash of “true believers”
Then, in the 1980’s, something dramatic and unexpected occurred, the reemergence of dynamic, politically
engaged religion based not on human reason but reshaped religious myths and morality. Often the appearance of the Moral Majority, an organization founded
by Jerry Falwell to mobilize conservative Christians in
order to make them a political force, is used to mark the
beginning of this phenomenon. Since the 1980’s, the continuance of this movement in various forms has been a
powerful force in the politics of the United States shaping
debates around issues such as abortion and gay marriage.
It has been a critical factor in determining political candidates in the Republican party all the way from Presidential candidates to local officials. Its continuing power
is represented by the need of Donald Trump to secure
the support of this part of the Republican party and the
American electorate to assure his selection as the Republican nominee for President and in order to give him a solid
chance of being elected President of the United States.
This re-emergence of active political conservative
Christianity has often self identified itself and has been
culturally identified and academically described and
studied as “religious Fundamentalism.” While the term
Fundamentalism first appeared in the United States in
the 1920’s to describe a theology which was rejecting
modernism and aspects of modern science such as
evolution, the term has come to have a wider and more
applicable meaning. While some academics have rejected
the term Fundamentalism because of its strong Christian
associations and have instead used the term “strong
religions”, all note the resurgence of conservative politically engaged religions has become a global reality. Such
movements are and are becoming significant forces in
all the major religious traditions and in the societies of
which they are a part. The news is full of information
and misinformation about Islamic fundamentalism (often
called Islamism), but similar movements exist in Judaism,
Hinduism and even Buddhism. Jewish Fundamentalism
has become a political as well as a religious force in Israel
and a driving force in advocating for the expansion of
Israel to the boundaries described in the Biblical mandate.
In India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has become a
powerful political movement trying to transform India
into a self-consciously Hindu state. And, in places like
Myanmar, strains of Buddhist fundamentalism have
become powerful political forces.
While each of the “Fundamentalisms” has different
historical and political roots, while each has been
shaped by different factors, and while each has different beliefs and different objectives, all these Fundamentalisms share a number of factors in common which
allow them to be studied and analyzed.
At the core, of all of them present a very black and
white view of the world and morality and all operate
with a sense of being under attack by forces of corruption and disintegration. Each movement understands
itself as providing an alternative, based on beliefs and
values from the past, to a world in the throes of crises, a
world needing saved. And each movement has a small
set of core beliefs and values to which its adherents,
people of the faith, are expected to ascribe.
It should be noted that not all fundamentalisms
are necessarily religious. Militant atheism can be
fundamentalist as can nationalisms or certain forms of
neo-liberal economics. What makes something a fundamentalist movement is not specific beliefs, but the
structure of beliefs and values and the underlying
assumption that the particular fundamentalist movement possesses the truth and so need not, in fact should
not, engage in dialogue with those who disagree.
Similarly, fundamentalist beliefs cannot be altered by
the change of facts and data which contradict the belief
system. In the words of Eric Hoffer, a moral philosopher, adherents to these movements are “true believers.”
Fundamentalisms, then, also share a certain psychology
of belief.
The world of fundamentalisms has ushered in a
world of conflict and polarization replacing the conflict
and polarization of “the Cold War”.
In this Academy we will explore a variety of religious fundamentalisms in an attempt to understand the
causes, structures, and psychology of fundamentalist
movements with the hope of discovering some way
past the impasse and conflict that a world divided by
conflicting fundamentalism has created.
Is there a way to a more peaceful future, to a world
where concern for the common good transcends concern for ideological purity, a world where the dignity
of all persons is recognized and respected irrespective
of belief systems?
We invite you to join us and to contribute to the conversation as we engage this difficult topic and reality.