Copyright© Struan Hellier 2003 - Feel free to use this essay as you wish, but please leave my name on it.
An Enquiry into the term 'Fundamentalism' and it's Transportability from the North American Protestant Context.
Prologue
The term, ‘fundamentalism’, has entered the language of journalists, politicians, academics and the public to such an extent that one might be forgiven for thinking that it refers to a single discrete idea which can be subjected to easy and accurate definition. Perhaps the simplest of these attempts at explanation is the, ‘plain man’s definition,’ that a fundamentalist is somebody who takes the Bible literally (Barr 1971 pg 1), but this conveys very little of the meaning implicit in the term, especially when it is applied to religions distinct from Christianity who may use other sacred texts as their starting point.
With this in mind many commentators (eg Heilman & Friedman 1991 pg 197) have preferred to use alternative descriptions such as, ‘ultra orthodox,’ ‘extremist,’ and even the rather cumbersome, ‘revolutionary neo-traditionalist radicalist,’ to denote certain tendencies or individuals within religions, but for reasons that will become apparent I feel that these terms are often either too exclusive or else they fail to do justice to the peculiar nature of fundamentalism which is a global phenomena encompassing many cultures and religions, all bound by a continuum of closed ideologies within which family resemblances manifest themselves in a variety of ways.
This Wittgensteinian notion of ‘family resemblances’ (Cit. Caplan 1987 pg 4) will form the methodological and conceptual basis for my study as it seems better placed than an essentialist approach to recognise the huge variety of contexts and texts which exist within this phenomenon. My aim will be to tease out from the available literature transportable themes which, taken as a whole, serve to distinguish fundamentalism from other religious groupings such as, ‘orthodox,’ ‘conservative,’ or ‘evangelist’ and which can equally be applied to every religion containing sub-groupings that fulfil the criteria presented.
For the purposes of this study I shall be restricting my analysis to the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, although many of the features of fundamentalist expression found in these three religions can be equally successfully applied to other traditions. More specifically I shall consider first and foremost the Protestant Christian fundamentalism of the United States, which provides the model for all other manifestations, simply because it was the context where the term first became widely used and from where the term was transported to others. From the Islamic tradition I will consider the Shi’ite jurisprudence of the state of Iran which, due to an entirely different sociological, historical, cultural and religious context, provides an excellent challenge if I am to show transportable themes in any meaningful way. From the Judaic tradition I will primarily discuss the haredi community of Israel who display many of the characteristics of fundamentalism in their beliefs and practice while reference will also be made to the Gush Emunim, a small but cohesive movement made up of settlements and active settlers.
The importance of understanding the term fundamentalism is difficult to overstate as in many Western minds there is a perception that religious fundamentalism has replaced, or will soon replace communism as the new enemy. (eg New York Times 01-01-92 pg3). This is particularly applied to Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East and as such often contains within it racist and nationalist overtones. Equally, this idea is not restricted to newspapers and indeed somewhat ironically, the political scientist John Mearsheimer in his article, ‘Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War’ (The Atlantic 1990 pg 22), postulated that without a common enemy, Europe in particular would descend into factional violence of a sectarian and ethnic nature. In some respects his thesis is supported by the recent war in Yugoslavia and other Eastern European states, although contrary to the claims of Marty and Appleby (1993 pg1), this seems likely to be the result more of the collapse of internal mechanisms within the old Soviet sphere of influence than the consequence of a Western search for a worthy adversary.
Regardless of whether such theories will become a reality it is surely incumbent upon us to define just what we are talking about when we use the term fundamentalism and indeed, to analyse whether the original North American Protestant Christian context in which fundamentalism arose can serve as a model for other manifestations around the world.
It should be noted that I make no attempt to draw value judgements with regards to the fundamentalist position. Although I do draw attention to tensions within that position, my intent is to understand what it is that makes a fundamentalist a fundamentalist and not to offer a critique of their beliefs and practices.
To achieve this end I propose firstly to look at the socio-political, historical and psychological forces which caused fundamentalism to arise in the United States at around the turn of this century, before moving on to an analysis of the beliefs and practices of these groups which are paradigmatically manifested as sets of strategies by which adherents attempt to preserve social and cognitive coherence and achieve salvation. Throughout this I shall be relating the original fundamentalism of the United States to others around the world, pointing out areas of coincidence as well as divergence.
My purpose is therefore a comparative study across three religions which seeks to distinguish those beliefs and practices which ideologically bind together various groups from radically different contexts.
Just what the conditions were that lead to the birth of fundamentalism and the reasons why it can be seen as conceptually different from what had been before will form the content of my next chapter. Although its roots can be traced back to nineteenth century pre-millenarian movements, fundamentalism is very much a product of this century in that the conditions which precipitated it finally found expression as an active force against modernity. In the decades preceding this birth of fundamentalism orthodox religion had been in retreat from the modern world, seemingly without a coherent riposte. The fundamentalists took it upon themselves to gather their forces, reverse the trend and place modernity itself into a defensive stance by attacking it head on and with utter conviction.
Fundamentalism and the Challenge of modernity.
By the turn of this century science was already in the process of questioning traditional beliefs about creation. Darwin (1809-1882) had proposed his theory of evolution in which man was evolved from the animals and not placed upon this earth by God and this view had, over the decades, become accepted by most sections of society. Sociologists such as Compte (1797-1857) and Durkheim (1858-1917) were formulating functionalist views of religion with the result that the old order of religious belief felt itself to be under attack as never before.
In the United States many Protestant leaders saw that they would have to meet this challenge directly and a number of publications were produced with this end in mind. One of the most famous and influential was a set of essays entitled ‘The Fundamentals’ published between 1910 and 1915 (cit Ammerman 1991 pg 2), which set out the principles which "all God fearing men should be willing to fight for." The authors had very definite ideas about where things had gone wrong in society and were convinced that Modernism and the theory of evolution were to blame. "Modernism is a revolt against the God of Christianity," wrote the president of the Moody Bible Institute (cit Marsden 1982 pg 4), while J. Gresham Machen declared, "there can be no peace without victory; one side or the other must win." (Ibid)
What emerges here is a vehemently oppositional character which finds its worthy adversary in modernity. Indeed some commentators have found the whole ‘raison d’être’ of fundamentalism to be this very thing. Hunter, for example, sees all fundamentalism as, Orthodoxy in confrontation with modernity," (1993 pg 28), while a proud fundamentalist of the 1920’s wrote in the Northern Baptist newspaper, ‘The Watchman Examiner,’ that a, "fundamentalist is a person willing to do battle royal for the fundamentals of the faith." (July 1st 1920 pg 834).
At this point it seems that a working definition of modernity is required in order for us to see more clearly just where the objections to it are in the minds of the fundamentalist. Marty and Appleby use it as a code word for all those facets of Western twentieth century thought that traditional religion sees as a threat (1991 pg vii) while Fowler (1989 pg 4) points out just what those facets are, highlighting the following three. Although the ideology that constitutes modernity was articulated before the twentieth century it was not until this century that these ideas became the norm for the ordinary man or woman and it is this mass threat that finally provided the impetus for action.
Although fundamentalism is essentially a pre-post-modernist reaction it is interesting in the context of our current decade to note that it is equally at odds with post-modernism which sees everything as relative and blurred. Fundamentalists see their world in absolute and exclusive terms, a direct refutation of modernity with its alternative truths, but also of post-modernity with its denial of all objective truth.
Secular Rationality
The first aspect of modernism regarded by Fowler as incompatible with modernity is a preference for secular rationality. In the United States this is most starkly exposed in the ‘religio-political problem," which, for Bellah (1992 and 1980) manifests itself as a form of civil religion. In his observations Bellah pointed out that the problem of legitimacy between political power and religious power is resolved in the United States by having God within the superstructure and substructure of the state, but not within the state itself, so religion is removed from all state institutions - schools government etc - but still exists both below the state as denominational church going and simultaneously above the state as ‘One nation under God.’ and related concepts of America being the ‘chosen land and its people a chosen people. This restriction of legitimated religious activity is anathema to the fundamentalist who regards religion and politics as inseparable and may even view any attempt to form a secular government as an insult to God. In the Judeo-Christian heritage the millenarian eschatology. implicit in passages such as the following are taken by fundamentalists as proof that any attempt to institute secular government is not only doomed to failure but is also interference with and even active opposition to the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In the Jewish context we find that the fundamentalist Haredi are almost all vehemently opposed to, "Zionism in particular and modern secular culture in general," (Sprinzak 1993 pg464), for these very reasons. For many Haredi this is the result of the belief that the Jewish people should withdraw from politics altogether and await the coming of the Messiah who will institute the only legitimate state.
In Islamic fundamentalism the distaste for secular government is equally evident with the clergy taking passages from the Qur’an to justify fighting against the secular.
Although some are secular, Muslims in general and Shi’ite Muslims in particular often regard religion and politics as inextricably linked, believing that it is their duty to create moral social order through political and social activism (Esposito 1991 pg 30) and this is no more apparent than in the Islamic revolution of Iran. After a period of political infighting Ayatollah Khomeini (1900 - 1989) managed to impose his form of Shi’ite jurisprudence upon the country. In this model the religious clergy entered every aspect of political and judicial life with the firm rejection of secularism and West-toxification together with the establishment of the Sharia as sovereign. (Arjomand 1993 pg 92-93). The Fundamental Law of 1979 made plain the desire of the jurists to return to an emphatically Islamic way of life and to impose this upon all citizens. The Islamic state was intended to be trans-national and eventually to encompass the whole Muslim world and with this in mind Khomeini had little time for nationalist sentiment, emphasising instead the religious transcendence of sovereignty. (see Article 57 of the Fundamental Law. cit, Encyclopaedia Iranica 1992).
For Shi’ite Muslims this integration of the religious and political results in their greater predisposition to fundamentalist ideology through being accentuated firstly by their history with its integral eschatology and secondly by their tradition of a single leader (Imam) as the final authority on all political and religious matters, rather than the Sunni concept of consensus (ijma) of the community (ulama) which inevitably leads to some separation of religious and political authority between various parties. The theological differences here are stark and very important for an understanding of the particular pre-disposition of Shi’ism to fundamentalist tendencies.
In practice this distaste for secular rationality was starkly exposed in the immediate aftermath of the Iranian revolution where severe punishments were meted out to anyone connected with the old secular regime. Khomeini set up a new secret police and revolutionary guard whose actions were ruthless and widespread. (Backhash 1984 pg 19). Even supporters of the revolution, such as the Communist party, found themselves sidelined and persecuted. In this respect there is little difference between Iran and other countries at times of revolution as a period of blood letting seems common practice as the victors attempt to establish control. It is however contrary to the example set by Muhammad.
Liberal and modern elements within the ruling elite who advocated a relationship with the West were overruled in their attempts to set up democratic institutions (Taylor 1988 pg 100) with the result that the average person in the street had little or no say in the application of the law. This is entirely consistent with Khomeini’s theory that if the clergy are responsible for the administration it will be pure and just as the Sharia, and by extension the clergy, is infallible, but it is entirely contrary to the modernist concept of secular democratic rationality.
Relativism
The second facet of modernity that Fowler (1989 pg 4) highlights as incompatible with fundamentalist thought is the tendency towards relativism which in modern times has taken over from absolutism as the predominant creed in issues of ethics, law, education and almost every other aspect of public expression. The Utilitarian principles espoused by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) which form the basis of much of secular law, arguably leave little room for God and place ethics within the sphere of context. (Mill 1964) What might be right in one context may not be in another and so relativism prevails. For the fundamentalist this goes directly against their sacred texts, all of which provide absolute standards for living.
The area of education is always a divisive issue between fundamentalists and secularists, both in content of curriculum and in the manner in which material is presented. Secular systems usually see their function as presenting facts in a non-judgmental relativist fashion. Instead of positing creationism as true, for example, they would seek to acquaint students with the facts and allow them to judge the merits or demerits of an argument for themselves. Fundamentalist systems seek to provide students with one correct and irrefutable worldview and set of values. One pertinent example of this is the repeated attempts by the Council of Churches in the United States to ban the teaching of evolution in all schools.
In Israel in 1953 when the government took overall control of the education system, the Haredi community opted out entirely and set up their own schools with the expressed aim of teaching the Torah and Talmud to the exclusion of secular subjects. For the Shi’ite fundamentalists in Iran education was also of great concern. By 1978, just one year before the revolution, forty five thousand students from Iran were placed in universities abroad, the highest proportion of foreign students in the world and they, along with immigrant Western teachers and academics, formed the backbone of the education system in Iran. Again the method of imparting knowledge to students was incompatible with the revolutionary beliefs and so all Western teachers were expelled and almost all Iran’s own students were recalled from their universities in the West. (Mottahedeh 1985 pg 65)
Another demonstration of the Iranian fundamentalists rejection of relativism is evidenced in their treatment of the Baha’i community, a splinter group of Islam who place great emphasis upon equality regardless of race, religion or gender. (Mayer 1993 pg 117). This group actively works to unite all the peoples of the world together and emphasise the relative merits of all creeds. (Hutchinson 1991 pg 71). These programmatically modernist liberals were seen as symbolising all that had gone wrong with the Islamic religion and the charge of apostasy was brought to bear against its adherents, resulting in the torture and death of a large part of the community. Even the cursory rights of Christians and Jews were denied as these latter groups were seen as absolutist. In other words wrong, but at least wrong in the right way. Khomeini stated;
These examples show direct family resemblance with the United States original where carefully vetted Bible colleges are the preferred establishments for the offspring of fundamentalists in the area of higher education (Rose 1993 pg 454) and where twenty percent of private secondary schools are conservative Christian with a good many of these falling into the category of fundamentalist. (Carper 1989 pg 34).
Individualism
The third aspect of modernity which Fowler identifies as incompatible with fundamentalist thought is the emphasis upon the individual which is a distinctly Western trait. The United States is, at its core, a republic which depends upon liberal capitalism. This creates an inevitable clash of values between the individualism that such a society presupposes and civic duty. With a large number of land owners each with a semi-autonomous financial position and an over riding concern for personal freedom, the theory seems to be that a good society can result from the actions of individuals alone, provided that the mechanisms of a free market are protected. ‘Laisse Faire’ and communitarianism do not make easy bedfellows especially in a society where the constitution defends not only the right to freedom of religion, but also the right to freedom from religion. It is easy to see why many feel that this is a selfish and decadent way to live and fundamentalists by their very nature consider that community is far more important than individual freedom. Partly for this reason, all fundamentalist groups have strict rules of conduct, which are expected from all members, and each individual is required to consider the communal good before his or her own desires.
Whilst it is true that some recent debate arising out of the existentialism of Jean Paul Satre has concluded that it is possible to choose to be constrained and so the distinction between communal and personal good is not always valid, there is no doubt that this message is one that would be recognised by the fundamentalists themselves and so it is, in a real sense, true for them and thus valid in this enquiry.
The Three Choices of Orthodoxy
Thus far I have examined the various ways in which modernity and fundamentalism are ideologically opposed, but it is the fundamentalist’s active opposition that marks them out from other groups who may hold the same beliefs. Faced with modernism, orthodoxy has three choices. Either it can remain Orthodox and ignore the outside world to a greater or lesser extent, a position adopted by, among others, the Mennonite Amish a radical Protestant group in North America. Alternatively orthodoxy can attempt to integrate with the outside world as in the case of Reform Jews and thus become, to a greater or lesser extent, liberal in ideology. The fundamentalist however, takes the third option. He will fight against modernism using every tool at its disposal, including modern technology in all its forms. There is a plethora of fundamentalist groups advertising their own ideology on the World Wide Web and a number of dedicated radio and television shows whose role is invariably restricted to refuting secular positions and spreading ‘the word of God’. This use of technology is not restricted to Christian fundamentalist as even Khomeini exploited the telephone, fax and television networks to savage the Pahlavi dynasty of Iran from the security of his exile in France. (Rappoport 1993 pg 451). Perhaps ironically, the fundamentalist will also use the tools of modern science to point out the veracity of his beliefs, convinced that his world view is not just correct for him, but also for everyone who cares to look, from whichever standpoint they approach it from and with the only proviso being that they are genuine in their motives.
Having examined in detail the reasons why fundamentalism arose and shown that modernity is the object of its oppositional character, I propose in my next chapter to look at what the fundamentalist actually believes and discuss how these beliefs are manifested in similar form across the religions covered by this study. I will try to show how these features, when taken as a whole, distinguish fundamentalism from other conservative groups, many of whom share a number of the same characteristics to some degree.
Fundamentalism: Belief in Practice.
Fundamentalist belief is so intertwined with fundamentalist practice that it is unwise to treat belief and practice as two separate concepts, rather we can see that the doctrines of fundamentalism are, in a real sense, less important than the desire to do God’s will. In this way the belief is grounded in the practice, while the practice results from the belief that it is the duty of the righteous to fight against perceived decadence. These groups do not simply stay within their communities and hope their piety will lead them to salvation. Instead they actively proclaim their worldview and demonstrate by their actions what they believe to be true. In this chapter I will look at the beliefs in practice of fundamentalist groups under sub-headings as follows.
Evangelism
The first aspect of this marriage of belief and practice that I shall look at is evangelism and it is clear that in the American Protestant manifestation of fundamentalism this is of vital importance to the role these groups see themselves as providing.
In the American context the fundamentalist forms a sub-grouping within a larger branch of conservative Protestantism that defines itself as evangelical (Ammerman 1991 pg 2) and they are a people who believe that only a personal relationship with Christ is good enough to for individual salvation. In addition their concern is not merely with the fate of their own soul, but also with the fate of everyone around them and it is seen as urgent that as many sinners are ‘born again’ into the faith before the rapture and the new millennium of Christ’s rule on earth. This belief means that a great deal of effort is expended in spreading the word of God and such is the necessity for conversion that it overrides the disdain for the modern and manifests itself as radio and television broadcasts on a huge and relentless scale, along with millions of pamphlets and prayers sent out to households across the United States.
While it is true to say that Protestant Christian fundamentalists are all evangelist it is by no means true that all evangelists are fundamentalist and it is important to note that this is just one of the ‘family resemblances’ which, as a whole, mark out fundamentalists as a distinctive group. There is little doubt, for example, that many African American Pentecostal groups are equally devoted to spreading the word of God and yet their style of worship is, "distinctive not for its doctrinal content but for the way in which it celebrates an ethnic tradition." (Ibid pg 3). Lincoln claims that, "black ethnicity denies the relevance of white styles of worship for black people and sanctions the ritual patterns developed in the churches of black experience." (1984 pg 92-93) From this we can see that although the black churches here described separate themselves from secularism, their motives are more to do with maintaining racial identity than religious autonomy. In which case the adversary is not so much modernism and secularism but the exclusive nature of white worship in past decades.
Equally, it is perfectly possible for a Christian to be a liberal evangelical whose motives are based more upon the desire to spread good news than an urgent saving of souls for Jesus in a decadent world. For example the evangelicals studied by Virginia Stem Owens (1980 Chpt.3) who flourished precisely because they did not impose serious demands upon their flock, preferring instead to simply share Gods message with the world with little of the exclusivism seen amongst fundamentalist groups. These people did not construct oppositional boundaries, had little objection to modernism or secular ideology and so the term fundamentalism is not applicable.
Moving away from the North American Protestant context and into Islam we find similar ideology expressed as, ‘da’wah,’ a word derived from the Arabic root ‘da’a’ which means ‘to call’ and generally refers to the proselytising that is incumbent upon all Muslims. (Nash 1991 pg 693). This may take various forms from the setting good standards of living in order that others may be influenced to do likewise, through to jihad which is simply a struggle against wrong which may, in its most extreme form, result in holy war.
Similar to the Christian concept of evangelism, this ideology has become more important in the eyes of fundamentalists than it is for the majority of other Muslim groups, to the extent that a number of factions within Islam have become known as the ‘Da’wah’ and have organised themselves politically into anti-modernist parties which display many of the facets of fundamentalism discussed in this enquiry. (see Choueiri 1997 pg 68).
As with their Christian counterparts the Islamic fundamentalist is always evangelical to a high level and this is directed not just at unbelievers, but at members of their own communities who are deemed to be lax or decadent in their practices and beliefs. However as with their Christian counterparts, their evangelism does not, on its own, mark them out from other conservative groups, but does help to fill out a little more of overall picture.
Within Judaism, historical and cultural considerations have meant that evangelism is pushed to the background in favour of separatism, another transportable theme and one which I shall discuss shortly. Jewish people have always seen themselves, and been seen by others, as a distinct cultural and racial group who are, ‘God’s chosen people.’ This chosen-ness does imply a function for the Jewish people within the wider world, as demonstrators of a new and better way of living. Leon Roth puts it this way;
Within this concept of being ‘chosen’ is the notion that it is by God’s grace that one group has this task and it is not for humans to interfere with that choice. For this reason fundamentalist Jews restrict what little evangelism there is to other Jews who may be less pious. The outside world are not, in normal circumstances, able to become Jewish and so the question of proselytising beyond the faith does not arise.
For this specific reason, the direct transportability into Judaism of evangelism in fundamentalist thought breaks down in this case, but nevertheless having identified the distinctive nature of Judaism as the cause of this breakdown we can still point to the family resemblances including the desire to influence others by their actions and the struggle to steer the world in a different direction. Within Christianity and Islam this predominantly takes the form of active recruitment while in Judaism the emphasis is upon setting a good example that others may follow in their own way.
The need to evangelise is seemingly at odds with the second aspect of fundamentalist though which I identify and that is the desire for separatism.
Separatism
The separatist instinct of fundamentalists is evidenced, not only in the educational issues discussed earlier, but also in their desire to withdraw from modern culture in almost every other aspect of their lives. This is hardly surprising considering the fundamentalist’s hatred of modernity and it results in the need for even stronger maintenance of group identity. It is partly for this reason that strict rules are applied to the laity which affect every aspect of their lives. Smoking, gambling and drinking are frowned upon and uniformity of belief is insisted upon if members are to remain within the group.
Some leaders in the early days of fundamentalism within the United States considered that this separation should be absolute. A.C Gaebelein, for example, told the Prophetic Bible Conference of 1914 that, "God’s greatest call is separation," adding, "How dare you support men and institutions who deny your Lord? How dare you keep fellowship with the enemies of the cross of Christ." (cit 1914 pg 154). While others tried at first to work within the ‘enemy’ in order to bring about change, by the 1930’s almost all fundamentalists had withdrawn as far as practically possible from the outside world. This does not mean that they stopped actively opposing the secular world, in fact quite the contrary is true. They simply attacked that world from a distance thus restricting the risk of self-pollution that this contact may engender. This change in emphasis probably came about as the fundamentalists came to realise that their position was not going to be accepted by the majority of Americans.
There is here a tension in all fundamentalist’s minds between the need to evangelise on the one hand and the desire to remain separate on the other. This need to evangelise must be weighed up against the risk to ones own soul, thus a fundamentalist may refuse to enter a casino in order to attempt to convert casino customers simply because the act of entering a casino is self polluting.
Another aspect of this is the striking lack of charity work done by fundamentalist groups in the United States, which is very unusual in the Christian religion. The reason for this stems from the belief amongst fundamentalists that worldly, temporal matters are a distraction from the true spiritual mission of the church.
Dwight Moody, a self proclaimed fundamentalist, put it this way;
We can see then that the fundamentalists quickly came to a position whereby all contact with the outside world should ideally be limited to the spreading of God’s word and the saving of souls for Jesus.
In Judaism the separate instinct manifests itself in similar ways to the United States model and has led in Israel and the Diaspora to fundamentalist Jews locating themselves in separate communities and attempting to expel any foreign elements (see Heilman and Freidman 1991 pg 238). In Israel this reconstruction (in one sense) of the ghettos by the haredi was to some extent supported by the secular government who exempted young men from military service and allowed a great deal of autonomy in judicial and policing matters.
Within these communities, as with the American model, very strict rules of conduct are expected from all members and each individual is obliged to consider the communal good or to leave the grouping. The forms of Judaism manifested in these communities are very closed in ideology and so vigorous suppression of decadent elements is essential if group identity is to be maintained. In practical terms this is aptly demonstrated by the Miahmarot Hatznuit (Chastity Guards) whose function it is to ensure that sexual deviance within the community is eradicated ( see Spinzak 1991 pg 464). Often violent punishment awaits those caught transgressing very strict rules of conduct and as the state laws are not recognised, it falls to the halakhic court system of the haredi community itself to mete out judgement. For similar reasons television is banned and literature regulated as much as possible reinforcing the ghetto mentality of all concerned.
In the Jewish case historical factors also play a part in this separatism as throughout most of their history Jews have found themselves to be in a minority in foreign lands and as such their boundaries have to a great extent been defined for them. Now, in most countries, membership of a Jewish group is voluntary and as a consequence many Jews have moved out of their close knit communities and embraced, to a greater or lesser degree, the secular world. (see Webber 1987 pg 103). This is especially true in the post-holocaust era and the threat that this poses to orthodox Jews is obvious with the reinforcement of oppositional boundaries by some factions becoming equally inevitable.
Moving into the Islamic fundamentalism found in the state of Iran, we find that the context is so radically different that parallels may seem hard to draw. The fact that the fundamentalists wield almost total executive and religious power within the state and indeed form the institutions and judicial systems therein, means that obviously they cannot separate themselves in the same way. However the separation is programmatically the same as the Christian and Jewish fundamentalist experience but simply on a larger scale. In the previous chapter I discussed the form that this elimination of modern elements took within the state of Iran and the oppositional boundaries erected against the West after the revolution, so I shall not repeat it here. In this context though it is important to note that the Iranian experience demonstrates vividly what can happen when fundamentalists are able to exercise real power and impose their will upon others, rather than having to fit in with a wider, more powerful majority.
It is clear that a more violent and rejectionist form of separatism is difficult to conceive and in common with their Christian and Jewish counterparts, this and all the other family resemblances looked at so far result from the next transportable theme of fundamentalist thought which I identify as the primary place afforded to sacred scripture.
Sacred Scripture
There have been many listings of the fundamentals that constitute United States Protestant fundamentalism, but invariably they are broken down into just five. (Barnes 1993 pg 236). Four of these, namely, the deity of Jesus Christ, the virgin birth, Christ’s substitutionary atonement on the cross, his physical resurrection and the historicity of his miracles, all are derived from the first and most important fundamental, the inerrancy of scripture.
Implicit in this belief that their sacred texts are the inspired word of God and an irrefutable account of science, religion and morality, is the exclusivist position of all fundamentalists that theirs is the only true religion. Some fundamentalists in the United States even go as far as saying, "Non-Christian religions should be attacked destroyed and replaced by . . . . Christianity". (see David 1983 pg 88).
Once again we see the oppositional character of fundamentalism in this view and also in the vehement criticism of modern biblical scholars who attempt to reconcile the essentially pre-modern belief systems contained within the Bible with modern science or simply reject the former in favour of the latter. Not for the first time this illuminates tensions in the fundamentalist position who on one hand claim that all human science is intrinsically corrupt, while on the other hand using science to their own ends. This dichotomy affects all three of the religions we are examining and I shall take my illustration from Islam. Sheikh al-Sharawi a leading figure in Middle East Islam was asked about whether angels and other unseen spirits (Djinn) were a reality. He replied that they are because it says in the Qur’an that this is so. Science is wrong to contradict this and is in no position to even comment. But he added that one day man will invent an ‘angelscope,’ similar to a telescope, which will enable us to see them. (Lazarus-Yafeh 1993 pg 48). The tension is clear, for here we have a rejection of the scientific method allied to a belief that science will find the truth.
A further aspect of this is seen in the fundamentalist’s rejection of the historical development of theology as a whole (Ibid pg 49). For Islam and Christianity this means that they disregard any writings from their own tradition other than the Qur’an and Bible respectively, whilst for Jews the oral tradition is separated out from the (Old ) Testament and given much less reverence than one would find in the majority of Judaism which has a very powerful, non-literal interpretative tradition. In a sense the fundamentalist Jew Protestantises his faith by bringing the emphasis fairly and squarely upon the perceived, ‘Word of God.’
In fundamentalist groups these scriptures are subjected to a great degree of interpretation and here again we see tensions in the logic of their position. Often the interpreter is a charismatic personality whose prescriptions are binding upon all the faithful, but this begs the question that if scripture is the timeless and complete word of God, why does it require so much interpretation? Whilst one might argue that the concept of trying to take a non-literal text literally is flawed and can only result in confusion, the fundamentalist would argue that the meaning is precise and true, but that many of us are too caught up in earthly matters to be able to see it. Therefore we need these truths pointing out to us by a more knowledgeable person. Hence the profusion of Bible schools in the United States and the central role given to the Pastor in each church. The strict rules for living these scriptures stipulate often lead to an extraordinary regard for the traditions and practices outlined in their teachings. For example, observance of the Passover my be followed by fundamentalist Jews to such an extent that some members of the Haredim will refuse to eat at their less strict parents houses, despite the immense pain this can cause both parties, simply because their parents may follow less precise cleansing rituals. (Aran 1991 pg 307).
In the eyes of many fundamentalists the use of interpreted scripture is not simply restricted to rules for living, but is also held by the fundamentalist to be a prescription for contemporary political action. Again there is a split here between the American model and the other religions due to their distinctive eschatology but it is highly pronounced in the Jewish and Islamic contexts discussed. For example, the passages in the Torah where God gives the, "land from the River of Egypt to the Great River," (Genesis 15: 18 - 19), provide the blueprint for Zionist actions in this century and preclude any compromise with other people of the region when viewed as the infallible and timeless word of God. The disastrous consequences of the present moves by the Gush Emunim to build new settlements in areas like Har Homa are still unfolding as I write and threaten any realistic hopes for a comprehensive peace settlement in the region.
Closely related to this and springing from the view of pre-modern scripture as directly relevant in contemporary society is another transportable theme of fundamentalist thought which sees the world as having fallen away from a pristine moral condition and desires a return to lost values. Interestingly, in the context of the United States this is a two fold fall, firstly from the Garden of Eden and secondly from a perceived ‘golden era’ before modernism when family values were strong and people were more God fearing. The fact that modernism is the great enemy makes this desire for a return to pre-modern times understandable. Add to this the fact that all these fundamentalists rely upon essentially pre-modern ideologies and the desire seems inevitable, however this desire does carry with it its own eschatology, which manifests itself as the various forms of millenarianism.
Millenarianism
Millenarianism is an adjunct of eschatology the study of the last things which as a term derives from the book of Revelation in which there is described a penultimate battle between the forces of good and evil, followed by a thousand year reign of Christ with his chosen by his side and culminating in the apocalypse and the final defeat of Satan. From this strictly Christian origin the term has more recently become used to denote a particular kind of salvationism across a variety of religions.
Perhaps the most useful definition of millenarianism comes from Norman Cohn who viewed as millenarian any group that views salvation as; Collective, In the sense that all members of the group will benefit. Imminent, in the sense that it will come soon and quickly. Terrestrial, in that it will take place on this earth and not in some otherworldly heaven. Total, in the sense that it will be complete and Miraculous, in that it will require a greater power than man to institute or aid the institution of that salvation. (Cohn 1957 Chpt 1).
Millenarianism has, throughout history, been a common theme to all of the religions in this study, dating back at least to Elijah (2 Kings 2.11) who became seen as precursor to the messianic age by many Jews. This belief is also present in the New Testament (Mark 6.15; 8.28. John 1.21-25 etc) and is equally strong in the Shi’ite Muslim tradition of Iran where the Mahdi features heavily within myth and folklore. (Keddie & Monian 1993 pg 512-513). Indeed Khomeini appealed to these powerful sentiments in his bid to gain power and was seen by many as precursor to the Mahdi, chosen by God to start the process of ushering in the millennium. (Sivan 1985 pg 187).
The emphasis upon scripture which all fundamentalist groups possess has the result of making them extremely precise in their beliefs. So much so that all United States fundamentalists can be viewed as pre-tribulation, dispensational, pre-millenarians. That the rapture will come soon adds great urgency to the need to evangelise as Christ’s arrival is imminent and the unsaved will be doomed to eternal damnation under the rule of Satan. Hence we are all in the time immediately before the tribulation. Dispensationalism is the belief that God dispenses salvation in distinct ways at different periods in history with this age being the ‘Church age’ where salvation is bestowed by the grace of God and obtained by belief in Jesus. (Ammerman 1991 pg 6-7).
The distinction between pre-millenarianism and post-millenarianism is of vital importance to the way groups interact with the outside world. For the post-millenarian the thousand years peace on earth will be instituted by man with Christ arriving only at the end to take up his throne in order to fight the apocalypse. For the pre-millenarian Christ will institute the millennium himself. This has great political consequence in that for the post-millenarian politics is an active tool for change. If man is to institute the millennium then he must actively work towards this. For the pre-millenarian, temporal reform of political institutions is not possible as the earth is sliding into chaos and degradation that only Christ can overcome. Indeed in a perverse kind of way, this degradation is often welcomed as it can be seen as bringing closer the last days. A striking example of this is the attempt by the Gush Emunim after the 1978 Camp David Peace Accord to blow up the Dome of the Rock, the third most holy site in Iran in an apparent attempt to usher in the new age. (Segal 1987pg 47-57)
This distinction has meant that, almost without exception, the major conservative Christian politicians in the United States - Bob Dole, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King, Pat Robertson, etc - have all come from the Pentecostal, charismatic or evangelical groups which are all post-millenarian in outlook. The fundamentalists however are pre-millenarian and this has added to their separatist tendencies as examined under a previous sub-heading.
In the Shi’ite Islam of the Ithna Ashari, the fundamentalist is also pre-millenarian and their concept of Mahdiship comes from the usurping of the right of Ali to the Caliphate, with the twelfth Imam believed to be in a state of occultation (ghayba) awaiting the time when he will return with sword in hand to impose justice upon the world. (Choueiri 1997 pg 14). Obviously the Iranian revolution was political as well as religious in its intent, but there is no contradiction here between the pre-millenarian belief that the world is in terminal decline and the desire of Shi’ites for temporal political change. As Khomeini was seen as precursor to the Mahdi it was perfectly legitimate for him to precipitate the revolution because this was, for them, the beginning of the last days. This was not man’s doing but direct intervention of God. Presumably if their United States counterparts were to be convinced that Jesus had returned to earth, they would support him in the same way.
For the Jewish fundamentalist there is a split in the two groups I have studied. On the one hand the Haredim who reject the Zionist state as unjustifiable because it was instituted without a Messiah and go as far as to describe anyone involved in the state or politics as ‘Amalekites,’ the traditional archetype of pure evil in the Jewish tradition (Rappoport 1993 pg 448). This group follows a highly separatist code as we saw earlier. On the other hand we have the Gush Emunim who tend to view the state as legitimate not least because it is committed to regaining land for the Jewish people. (Ibid). Unsurprisingly the Gush Emunim are post-millenarian while the Haredim are pre-millenarian in ideology and this adds weight to my contention that this distinction has vital political ramifications.
Having examined the roots of fundamentalism, the contexts in which it arises and the ideological and practical forms it manifests itself in, I now propose to move on to the perception among many that this oppositional character takes the form of violence against others. This certainly seems to be the perception of Western press reports as we find the term fundamentalist is most often heard on our television screens accompanying pictures of massacres in Algeria, bombs in Israel, attacks on tourists in Egypt and a plethora of other violent incidents. In America the term fundamentalist often seems to denote a similar tendency in the eyes of the media, whether in relation to the siege at Waco, or Doctors being shot by anti-abortion protesters. In short the common view is that fundamentalists are violent and evil. But, is this true and can it really be considered a transportable theme of fundamentalist ideology and action?
Fundamentalism and Violence
In the United States model there is noticeably little violence emanating from fundamentalist groups although the link in the public perception is great enough that the two are often related together in many ways. Indeed it is very difficult to find any evidence of outward violence among Protestant groups in the United States beyond the level in the population as a whole and even that is not organised or institutionalised in the sense attributed by this common perception. Although there are ‘far right’ groups in the United States who do exercise violence and who are strongly Protestant in their outlook, it is not their religion that predisposes them to violence. These groups tend to be fighting against the state for reasons of liberty and their perception that the American way of life is under threat. For this reason it cannot be seen as religious fundamentalist violence.
Other fundamentalist groups in the States who are said to be violent at times, under examination appear not to be on any real scale. A scholarly examination of fundamentalist tendencies within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons) is just one example of the equation of fundamentalism with violence from academic sources, which adds to the view of newspapers and the man in the street that this is a genuine relationship. (Driggs 1990 pg 386). The facts do not really bear this theory out and although it is true that, "a handful of deranged individuals," have been responsible for murders and violence, (Van Wagoner 1986 pg 215-219), it is also true that the overwhelming majority of Mormons consider the ownership of firearms as against their faith and would never consider such actions. (Quinn 1993 pg 241).
In the United States context it seems to reasonable from the lack of hard evidence, to conclude that fundamentalists are outwardly passive, a stance which probably stems from the doctrine of pre-millenarianism and the separatism this engenders, both of which I have examined previously. This does not deny the fact that many fundamentalist sects will protect the groups own integrity, even if this results in their death. One need only think of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas to see how this might happen in practice.
In the Jewish context there does seem to be a split in the type and motivation of violence between the Haredim and the Gush Emunim with the former employing almost exclusively, "defensive and enforcement violence," (Sprinzak 1993 pg 463-469) aimed at maintaining their own integrity in the manner described earlier. By contrast the violence of the Gush Emunim has been focused outside the group and mainly against the Arab world. That they have their ideological roots in the 1967 Six Day war indicates that they see their role as a conflict with God against anyone standing between them and their destiny. To an extent defensive but finding themselves in the front line of Jewish expansion through settlements, the Gush Emunim developed a vigilante theory whereby any attack upon them would be responded to quickly and forcefully. With the Intifada in 1987 the level of this vigilantism increased markedly and led some Jewish fundamentalists, such as Rabbi Kahane to unrestrained violence and indeed a whole ideology based upon violent means (Ibid pg 477-487).
My earlier analysis of the Shi’ite revolution in Iran concluded that this particular manifestation of fundamentalism was extremely violent, both in conception and in practice and so we see marked contrasts between the three groups I have studied ranging from the outward passivism of some to the unrestrained violence of others. Because violence is not a strong feature of the original United States Protestant model and because it is by no means ubiquitous in other manifestations I feel it is improper to cite it as a transportable theme of fundamentalism. It is somewhat ironic therefore that the one aspect of fundamentalist thought people are given in popular Western culture, turns out to be the least useful if we seek a proper understanding of these groups.
Epilogue
We have seen in the course of this enquiry that the term fundamentalism is one which can be applied to conservative Christian, Jewish and Islamic peoples who have elected to fight modernity, the predominant cultural norm of our times. The ideologies of the modernist and the fundamentalist are diametrically opposed at the very core, with the modernist feeling that religions together with their sacred texts can be examined in the context of the times and with the tools of science, while the fundamentalist claims that modern culture can only be viewed through sacred scripture and that when considered from this position it is obviously decadent and immoral, possibly even amoral.
It is this oppositional relationship, derived from the clash between pre-modern sacred texts and modern secular rationality, that defines a fundamentalist and it is the combination of the themes discussed throughout this enquiry which mark fundamentalist groups out from other conservative religious groups who may, to a greater or lesser extent, share this oppositional character.
The way in which fundamentalisms manifest themselves across the religions I have looked at are varied and numerous within each particular religion, to say nothing of the variety across the religions as a whole. With unique sociological, religious and historical factors, each case has its own subtleties and nuances. In the United States the presence of a civil religion and its resulting denominalisation, together with the low population density across a vast land area, has meant that many small autonomous groups are prevalent. This is in stark contrast to the mass movement which saw the revolution in Iran become a reality. In Israel the unique marriage of culture, faith and history that defines Jewishness and the political situation in which these people find themselves in means that ‘pure’ fundamentalism is hard to discern and its variations from other manifestations can only be understood in context.
For these reasons applying the term fundamentalism beyond its original historical context is not without its problems and yet we have seen that family resemblances do indeed occur and that they are useful in highlighting a particular and increasingly talked about reaction to modernity. The cases presented here can be used to construct an, "ideal type," in the Weberian sense that it will be emptied of its cultural religious and historical context revealing a core applicable to all.
The sub headings I have used in the first chapter - namely, Secular Rationality, Relativism and Individualism - are designed to show the aspects of modernity that an ‘ideal type’ fundamentalist is ideologically opposed to. This opposition comes from the fundamentalist’s understanding of their identity as ontological, by which I mean that they see themselves as being pointers to a non-temporal transcendental ‘greater plan’ for all mankind which is revealed to them as truth in its unadulterated and complete form. Although prepared to use science and technology to their own ends, ultimately they see all worldly things as secondary, finite and of little importance when compared to the eschatological uprooting that their millenarianism foretells. The sub headings in chapter two - namely Evangelism, Separatism, Millenarianism and reverence of Sacred Scripture - reveal those facets of belief and practice to which the ‘ideal type’ fundamentalist will adhere and all of these facets are used as strategies, both for the purpose of fulfilling perceived destiny and also as a means to preserving a distinct identity in a hostile world.
Mary Douglas’ grid/group approach is useful here in showing that the stronger the oppositional boundaries, the more the group must be controlled (1966 Chpt. 1). The ‘in group’ must be defended from the ‘out group’ with vigour, hence the veiling of women and summary execution of criminals is associated with fundamentalism and hence also the separatism that is ubiquitous in these groups.
It has become clear that fundamentalism is not simply a single discrete idea but a continuum of closed ideologies in which social coherence and cognitive coherence are related. Fundamentalism is therefore a tendency which provides people with an absolute delineation of right and wrong in an increasingly relativist, modernist and secular world. The fundamentals of each religion are employed as fortifications against the relentless onslaught of modernism. As the onslaught increases the parapets get higher and the embattled fundamentalists react by retreating further into their own world or lashing out at the enemy, safe in their certainty that the end is nigh and with it salvation will come.
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Bibliography
This bibliography contains only those books journals and other sources referred to directly within the text of this enquiry.