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Fundamentalism and the Modern World

A return to the Dark Ages? Or a modern rebellion against secularism?

Either way-as we’ve so painfully learned-we ignore this phenomenon at our grave peril. by A dialogue with Karen Armstrong, Susannah Heschel,

Jim Wallis, and Feisal Abdul Rauf

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Karen Armstrong: Fundamentalism has erupted in every single major faith worldwide, not just in the Islamic world. The term “fundamentalism” was coined here in the United States, at the turn of the 20th century, when Protestant Christians said that they wanted to go back to the fundamentals of their faith. Sometimes Jews and Muslims, understandably, find it slightly offensive to have this Christian term foisted upon them, because they feel they have other objectives. It also suggests that fundamentalism is a kind of monolithic movement expressing the same kind of ideas and ideals.

Nevertheless, the term has come into popular parlance and tends to stand for a group of militant pieties that have erupted in every single major faith worldwide during the 20th century, first in Protestant fundamentalism. But also we have fundamentalist Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Confucianism, Hinduism.

Fundamentalism is not simply extremism. Fundamentalism is not simply conservatism. Billy Graham, for example, would not be accepted as a fundamentalist by those who call themselves fundamentalists, nor would

he call himself one. The Saudis, in Saudi Arabia, may be traditionalists but they’re not, strictly speaking, fundamentalists.

We often see the words “fundamentalist terrorism” or “fundamentalist violence” put together. But only a tiny proportion of the people who might be called fundamentalists actually take part in acts of terror and violence. That’s a very important distinction to make. Most people

are simply struggling to live a religious life, as they see it, in a world that seems increasingly inimical to faith.

So what is fundamentalism? Fundamentalism represents a kind of revolt or rebellion against the secular hegemony of the modern world. Fundamentalists typically want to see God, or religion, reflected more

centrally in public life. They want to drag religion from the sidelines, to which it’s been relegated in a secular culture, and back

to center stage.

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Armstrong: Typically, fundamentalists have proceeded on a fairly common program. Very often they begin by retreating from mainstream society and creating, as it were, enclaves of pure faith where they try to keep the godless world at bay and where they try to live a pure

religious life. Examples would include the ultra-orthodox Jewish communities in New York City or [Christians at] Bob Jones University or Osama bin Laden’s camps.

In these enclaves, fundamentalist communities often plan, as it were, a counteroffensive, where they seek to convert the mainstream society back to a more godly way of life. Some of them may resort to violence.

Why? Because every fundamentalist movement that I’ve studied-in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-is rooted in a profound fear. They are convinced, even here in the United States, that modern liberal secular society wants to wipe out religion in some way or is destructive to faith.

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Jim Wallis: I was raised in an evangelical church in the Midwest-some might have called it a bit fundamentalist. Sometimes there are blurry lines between “evangelical” and “fundamentalist.” When I was in high school, I was interested in a girl in our church. My family was more evangelical, and hers was very fundamentalist. I offered to take her to a movie, which was often forbidden in my church culture. But I chose The Sound of Music. Who could go wrong with Julie Andrews? I thought. I was wrong.

As we left the house, her father literally stood in the doorway blocking our exit and said to his daughter, “If you go to this film, you’ll be trampling on everything that we’ve taught you to believe.” She fled downstairs to her room in tears.

The man knew that his religion was to make him different from the world, which is a fair point. I wished he would have chosen to break with America at the point of its materialism, racism, poverty, or violence. But he chose Julie Andrews.

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Conventional wisdom suggests that the antidote to religious fundamentalism is more secularism. That’s a very big mistake. The best

response to bad religion is better religion, not secularism. The traditions we are looking at are religions of the book, and the key question is, how do we interpret the book? In Christian faith, we have

the interpretation of Martin Luther King Jr. and also that of the Ku Klux Klan. Better interpretation of the book, in my view, is a better response to fundamentalism than throwing the book away.

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Armstrong: When people feel that their backs are to the wall and they’re fighting for survival, they can, very often, turn to violence.

So fundamentalism often develops in a kind of symbiotic relationship with a modernity that is felt to be aggressive and intrusive.

Fundamentalism is not going back to the Dark Ages. We often treat fundamentalist movements as though they’re harking back to some impossible, archaic, distant golden age. This is not true. These are essentially modern movements that could have taken root in no time other than our own.

The great changes of modernity mean that none of us can be religious in the same way as our ancestors. We are, all of us, having to develop

different forms of seeing our faiths. Every generation, ever since religion began, has had to reinterpret its traditions to meet the challenge of its particular modernity. But the challenges have been particularly great, especially during the 20th century. Fundamentalism

is simply one of the attempts to rethink faith. The Ayatollah Khomeini

was essentially a man of the 20th century. Instead of harking back to the Dark Ages, he was really introducing a revolutionary form of Shi ´ism that was, in fact, as innovative as if the pope had abolished the Mass. But most of us didn’t understand enough about Shi ´ism to appreciate that.

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It’s no good ignoring fundamentalism with secularist or liberal disdain, as unworthy of serious consideration, hoping that it will somehow go away. Fundamentalism is an essential part of the modern scene and will be with us for some time. The fact that it is so ubiquitous, that it has erupted in almost every place where a modern, secular-style society has tried to establish itself-that again tells us something important about modernity. It suggests a great disenchantment that we must take seriously or ignore at our peril.

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Armstrong: What we must all be striving for, whether we are religious or secularist, is the compassion that our religions teach us and that our own Western society prizes so highly. We regard ourselves as a compassionate, tolerant society that respects the rights of others. We

got this from the Abrahamic religions, from all three of these faiths.

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There has been a religious resurgence. Fundamentalism has been part of

that resurgence. But ultimately fundamentalism represents a defeat, because when people are so fearful, so threatened, they tend to accentuate those aggressive aspects of their faith or their scripture and downplay those that speak of compassion and justice. But, in our response too we must also stress compassion, the importance of reaching out, understanding even those forms of religiosity or ideology that we find abhorrent. Because in that struggle to understand, I am convinced we’ll find a deeper sense of the Divine.

Karen Armstrong is a former Catholic sister who teaches at Leo Baeck College, a seminary for reform Judaism in London, and author of many works, including A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; The Battle for God; and most recently Buddha.

Susannah Heschel holds the Eli Black Chair in Jewish Studies at Dartmouth College and is the author of numerous books, including Abraham Geiger and the Jewish Jesus and Insider/Outsider: American Jews and Multiculturalism.

Feisal Abdul Rauf is imam of the al-Farah mosque in New York City and founder of the American Sufi Muslim Association. He teaches Islam and Sufism at the Center for Religious Inquiry at St. Bartholomew’s Church

and at New York Seminary. He’s the author of Islam: A Search for Meaning and Islam: A Sacred Law: What Every Muslim Should Know About the Shari’ah.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners.

From http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=magazine.article&issue=soj0203&ar ticle=020310