Fundamentalism: Introduction
Source For This Series
• The primary source for this four-week series is the book, “The Battle
For God” by Karen Armstrong.
• A former Rom an Catholic nun, Armstrong is one of the world’s
leading authorities on contemporary religion. Armstrong received the
TED Prize in 2008, valued at $100,000. She used that occasion to call
for the creation of a Charter of Compassion, which was unveiled the
following year. Armstrong is the author of over 25 books.
What is Fundamentalism?
• The term “fundamentalism” was first used
by conservative American protestants in the
early 20th century to distinguish themselves
from more “liberal” protestants.
• Originally, the term “fundamentalism” referred
to specific doctrinal beliefs in Christianity.
However, Muslim and Jewish fundamentalism
is concerned more with behavior and traditional religious practices,
not doctrine.
• It is important to remember that fundamentalism is not wedded to
the past. Many of the ideas put forth by fundamentalist groups are
modern and innovative.
The Common Pattern of Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalism represents a spirituality in response to a perceived crisis
• It involves conflict with enemies whose secularist policies and beliefs seem
inimical to religion
• Fundamentalists often see themselves engaged in a cosmic war between good
and evil
• Fundamentalism involves a selective
retrieval of doctrines and practices of
the past
• Fundamentalism usually involves a withdrawal from
the mainstream of society
The Common Pattern of Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalists are not impractical dreamers
• In contrast to what many think, most fundamentalists have absorbed
pragmatic rationalism and modernity, and have used modern
technology and conventional political strategies to achieve their goals
• Fundamentalist groups provide a plan of action for the faithful
• Fundamentalists fight back against what they
perceive is a secularist or modernist attack in order
to try and “re-sacralize”
a skeptical world
The Common Pattern of Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalism is a 20th century phenomenon, although it has roots
going back centuries
• Fundamentalism is always a reaction against
scientific and secular culture
• Fundamentalism has a symbiotic relationship
with modernity
• It rejects scientific rationalism, but can’t escape it
• There are Buddhist, Hindu and even Confucian
fundamentalisms, which also cast aside many of the
painfully acquired insights of liberal culture, and
which fight and kill in the name of religion and
strive to bring the sacred into the realm of politics
and national struggle.
Religious Resurgence?
• This religious resurgence has taken many observers by surprise.
• In the middle years of the 20th cent. it was generally taken for granted
that secularism was an irreversible trend and that faith would never
again play a major part in world events.
• But in the late 1970’s fundamentalists began to
rebel against this perceived rise of secularism.
• They tried to wrest religion out of its marginal
position and back to center stage.
Focus for This Series
• In this series we will focus on three different fundamentalist
“movements”:
- Jewish fundamentalism in Israel
- Muslim fundamentalism in Egypt,
which is a Sunni country, and Iran,
which is Shii.
- American Protestant fundamentalism
Similar Transitional Period
• Western civilization has changed the world.
• All over the world, people have been struggling with these new conditions
and have been forced to reassess their religious traditions, which were
designed for an entirely different type of society.
• There was a similar transitional period in the ancient world, lasting roughly
from 700 to 200 BC, which historians have called the Axial Age because it
was pivotal to the spiritual development of humanity.
• In the Axial Age, there was a shift from a
subsistence economy to an agrarian economy, and
power shifted partly from the local priest or
king to the market place. People were enabled
to build the first civilizations.
• During the Axial Age, the great confessional faiths sprang up.
The Enlightenment
• The roots of the current period of transition lie in the 16th and 17
centuries of the modern era when the people of Western Europe
began to evolve a different type of society.
• This society was based not on agricultural surplus (as in the Axial
Age), but on a technology that enabled people to reproduce their
resources indefinitely.
• An entirely different scientific and rational
concept of the nature of truth brought about
an immense social, political and intellectual
revolution. This period is usually called the
Enlightenment.
Mythos and Logos
• We tend to assume that the people of the past were (more or less)
like us, but in fact their spiritual lives were rather different.
• They evolved in two ways of thinking, speaking, and acquiring
knowledge, which scholars call mythos and logos.
• Mythos was regarded as primary. It was concerned with what was
thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. It was not
concerned with practical matters, but with meaning.
• Logos was equally important. It was rational, pragmatic and scientific
thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world.
Unlike mythos, logos must relate exactly to facts and correspond to
external realities.
Logos Displaces Mythos
• In the premodern world, mythos and logos were regarded as
indispensable. They were distinct but inextricably connected.
• Example: In the First Crusade, Pope Urban wanted the knights of Europe to
stop fighting one another and to expend their energies in a war in the
Middle East. But when this military expedition became entangled with folk
mythology, biblical lore, and apocalyptic fantasies, the result was
catastrophic.
• In the Crusades, whenever logos ruled the
Crusaders prospered. But when mythos ruled
the Crusaders were usually defeated and
committed terrible atrocities.
• By the 18th cent. the people of Europe and
America had achieved such astonishing success
in science and technology that they began to
think that logos was the only means to truth
and began to discount mythos as false and
superstitious.
Modernization Has Increased Polarization
• Modernization has always been a painful process.
• People feel alienated and lost when fundamental changes in their society
make the world strange and unrecognizable.
• Fundamentalists feel that they are battling against forces that threaten
their most sacred values.
• Modernization has led to a polarization of
society and we are seeing increasing examples
of this in our current political culture.
• Many politicians (who would claim to embrace
modernity) would admit that many examples of
modernization are not experienced as a liberation,
but as an aggressive assault on timeless values
and beliefs.