FUNDAMENTALISM (from Peter Cameron’s “Fundamentalism and Freedom” (Doubleday; Sydney: 1995.)pp 6-7

There is a story in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov about Christ coming back to earth during the time of the Spanish Inquisition. It’s called ‘The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor’, and in it Christ appears in Seville the day after a hundred heretics have been burned at the stake in a great auto-da-fe. He appears as he did during his lifetime, and the crowds recognise him at once, and he heals the sick. At the steps of the cathedral he meets a funeral procession for a little girl, and he has compassion on the mother and brings the child back to life. Just at that moment the Grand Inquisitor is passing and sees has happened and orders his guards to arrest Christ and throw him into prison. And that night the Grand Inquisitor, an old man who has served the Church throughout his long life, visits Christ in the dungeons and talks to him.

It is in fact a monologue, because Christ remains silent throughout. And the Grand Inquisitor tells Christ that he will have him burned at the stake the next day, as the worst of heretics, because he has come back to undo the work of the Church.

The point is that the Grand Inquisitor understands perfectly, well that Christ came originally to offer freedom to mankind: he wanted man’s free, unforced love, in place of the ancient rigid law. This lies at the heart of the temptation scene in the desert. If Christ had agreed to turn the stones into bread, he would have had no difficulty in persuading men to follow him – people everywhere would have flocked to him. But Christ rejected that option – he resisted the temptation. He refused to coerce mankind, he didn’t want blind obedience: he preferred freedom – without freedom it would all be worthless.

But, says the Grand Inquisitor, that was a mistake. Man doesn’t want freedom, he wants simply to be happy; and the only way to make him happy is to deprive him of his freedom. Man’s greatest need is to find someone to whom he can hand over this gift of freedom as quickly as possible, and that, says the Grand Inquisitor, is where the Church stepped in. The Church, not Christ, had man’s happiness in mind., the Church had the good sense to correct Christ’s work, to take away man’s freedom, and to give him the bread he asked for. What mankind craves is simply someone to obey.

As I said, throughout this monologue Christ remains silent. When the Grand Inquisitor has finished he waits for a reply – he longs for Christ to say something, however bitter, however ter ­rible. But suddenly Christ gets up and comes over to the old man and softly kisses him on his aged, bloodless lips. That is all his answer. The old man shudders. He goes to the door, opens it, and says to the Prisoner: ‘Go, and come no more’. And he lets him out into the dark alleys of the town: the Prisoner goes away.

Now Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor is a very good example of what we now call a Fundamentalist. The only uncharacteristic thing about him is that he is fully conscious of the implica ­tions of his philosophy: he actually intends to correct Christ’s work, to rewrite Christianity. Most Fundamentalists persuade themselves that they are imitating Christ, even to the extent of making the farcical allegation that they share his attitude to the infallibility of the Bible. But that apart, the Grand Inquisitor illustrates perfectly the following features of Fundamentalists- a distrust and fear of freedom; a belief in the importance of authority and in controlling what people believe; a corre ­sponding preference for obedience rather than love; a desire to give people what they want rather than the truth: a refusal to allow themselves to be in the least disconcerted when they are confronted with the true nature of their religion; and a readiness to persecute and exclude anyone who is of a different persuasion.

To reduce that to convenient headings, the Fundamentalist is uncomfortable with freedom, truth, and dissent.’ and very much at home with authority, obedience, and conformity But the most striking feature of the Fundamentalist is that, whether he is conscious of it or not, his approach results in the total contra ­diction of what he professes to believe.

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p. 10 ff

They will be fearful in the face of any challenge to their security and brutal in their reaction; they will seek to bolster their security by persuading others of its validity.; and those others will be persuaded because of their own increasing sense of insecurity in the modern world.

…the key concepts being security and power …the Fundamentalist is usually both a bully and a coward. …the potential bully in them responds eagerly to authority and looks forward to the time when they will exercise that authority; while the most bullying of the bosses tend to shelter behind the more cowardly and get them to do their dirty work for them.

…security for the convert … The Fundamentalist deals in absolutes. … “We have the answer. The answer is to ask no questions. Everything is set out ion the Holy Book. Simply obey and you will find happiness – in other words, security.”

… Argument, debate, the possibility that they might be wrong – these are not on the agenda. In any other walk of life they would be regarded as unhinged. Very few of them have ever been exposed to the simplest form of biblical criticism, yet they feel qualified to tell people who have spent half a lifetime on the subject that they are barking up he wrong tree. It’s rather like witchdoctor medicine confronted with real medicine. The primitive reaction is one of fear, suspicion and hostility – out with the spears and shields. And the witchdoctors themselves, of course, have vested interests to protect: their positions of control and authority. naturally they resist.

…Fundamentalists need an enemy; an enemy both gives them their own identity and unites them. …they stand for nothing positive at all – simply obedience to rules and the condemnation of those who break them.

…Fundamentalists are impervious to rational argument. They are convinced that they are God’s chosen instrument and that their victims are agents of the devil. They need to be convinced of this, because it is what gives them purpose to their lives. Fundamentalism’s real purpose is not to save but to condemn: for the dissenter or for the outsider it is dangerous almost be definition.

… the danger is manifested in the methods used. No holds are barred. All is fair in holy war. The end always justifies the means. …appropriate is the Old Testament norm, according to which the apostate who deviates from true doctrine contaminates the people of God and must be weeded out and burned.

The pattern therefore is one of private hearings, and stacked committees, and kangaroo courts, or – more simply and more devastatingly – a behind-the-scenes verdict and a sentence of ostracism with no possibility of appeal.

… a closed system of rules and obedience, and authoritarian control, and rigid conformity. Instead of a religion of love which proceeds by invitation, it is a religion of fear which proceeds by intimidation.

…Fundamentalism is wrong, it is a distortion of Christianity, in fact it is its complete contradiction. … it masquerades as the truth. Christianity is not a matter of obeying commandments, or of obtaining salvation through the acceptance of an authoritative holy book, or of believing in certain propositions like a physical resurrection. the irony is that what Fundamentalist Christianity teaches is exactly the sort of thing which the founder of Christianity came to warn people about.

…Fundamentalism … thrives on protective stupidity.

…fear in the face of any challenge to the status quo; indoctrination in order to prevent dissent, and brutality in suppressing dissent; the exaltation of authority and rules and control and manipulation; and certainty on the part of those in charge that they possess the truth, hand in hand with an actual perversion of the truth into mere expediency.