The term ‘Fundamentalism’ has become a popular term within academic circles and the media to speak about particular forms of religious behaviour from many varied religious traditions. However, much popular usage of the term carries negative connotations, and fails to understand the perspective of these groups. This essay will seek to examine the features of fundamentalism, critique the term’s usage when applied to various religions, and examine the rise of fundamentalism in the twentieth century.
 

Features of Fundamentalism

The term ‘fundamentalism’ has come to encompass such a broad cross section of religious traditions that formulating a narrow definition of the term is impossible. When we view ‘fundamentalism’ in religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, several broad characteristics begin to emerge that can be identified as belonging to fundamentalist groups.

The first of these features is an attachment to a central symbol. This symbol becomes central to the belief and practices of the group. A fundamentalist group will make this symbol the absolutely dominant factor; Christian fundamentalism attaches itself to the Bible, Muslims to the law codes contained in the Qur’an, and Jews to God’s promises of a geographical land inheritance.

This attachment to a central symbol is not necessarily straight forward. For example, Christian fundamentalists share the same outlook towards their scriptures as all Muslims; that is, being exact records of direct revelation from God, they are divinely inspired, perfect and beyond question. Simply accepting broad attachment would inaccurately label all Muslims as fundamentalists.
This problem is partially overcome by the nature of these symbols. These symbols are often highly complex and have such far reaching implications that a compromise needs to be made in their usage. Fundamentalist groups will pick out certain ‘fundamentals’ from these symbols that they wish to take hold of and project into the future. Catholic theologian Karl Rahner refers to this as a “selective retrieval from the past.” This gives group members a sense that they have found absolutes that are easily marked.  Examples of this can be seen in various world religions. As it is not possible to keep all the laws contained in the Qur’an, an Islamic fundamentalist group will pick out certain laws that they wish to emphasise. Likewise, with the numerous possible doctrines that can be extracted from the Bible, Christian fundamentalists will emphasise certain specific doctrines. This is not necessarily based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, but on an absolute belief that the scriptures are inerrant. A Christian fundamentalist group may allow a wide figurative interpretation of a text if it is deemed necessary to maintain the essential truth of the bible. For Jewish fundamentalists, they ignore much of what God said or did throughout history and emphasise the fact that God literally spoke to Moses and the prophets, promising an eternal inheritance of land to the Jews; “See, I have set this land before you; go in and take possession of that land that I swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and their descendants after them.”

A second main feature is that of non-negotiability. If absolute truth comes from a central symbol, then for a fundamentalist group, the ‘absolute truth’ does not need to be worked out as it has been fully revealed to them. There is only one ‘absolute truth’ and being completely known, it is non-negotiable. Those who do not share the same religious viewpoint are therefore not true members of the faith at all. Within this is a strong sense of opposing forces, such as good and evil. There is no middle ground, and anyone with differing views has compromised the ‘absolute truth’ and is therefore an enemy. This prevents any dialogue with those from other religions, or with those from groups within the same religion. This view is in part a reaction towards modern trends in the study of particular religions. This is seen in the hostility towards the methods, results and implications of much modern critical study of the Bible.
 
The third main characteristic is that of militancy.  If a non-negotiable truth is known, then it is important that others know this truth. Therefore, fundamentalist groups tend to place a high emphasis on the act of evangelism. Members are encouraged to evangelise at every opportunity. Various methods may be used in this task. Islamic fundamentalist groups have a long tradition of using military force in this respect. This can be seen in the example of  Abd al Wahhab, who around the turn of the century, combined military force with religious enthusiasm in an attempt to bring about a return to the original ‘purity’ of Islam and a reuniting of the whole Arabian Peninsula under a fresh Islamic state. The western media have taken great delight in portraying the typical Islamic fundamentalist group as a terrorist organisation. Some Christian fundamentalists have displayed similar tendencies, such as the sixteenth century Swiss reformist, Ulrich Zwingli, who believed that his views should be spread by whatever political or military means necessary.

This militant element of fundamentalism often takes on a restorationist nature. Fundamentalist groups in their opposition to modernity, often desire to restore the world to a state which they believe once existed. This is often to a time of a perceived ‘golden age’ when life was free from such evils as modern technology and critical thinking. This tendency left Bernard Ramm to view fundamentalism as an “attempt to shield itself from the enlightenment.”

A fourth major feature of fundamentalism is the existence of agreement among members. If the truth is revealed to a fundamentalist group, then an individual’s membership of the group entails agreement with this truth. Therefore, when a fundamentalist leader selects what particular ‘fundamentals’ should be projected into the future, he  will select those that will best keep the group together and keep opposing forces out. As these groups often arise as a response to a particular crisis, these ‘fundamentals’ will always be such that a compromise on the ‘fundamental’ issues is impossible. This agreement among members enables groups to offer a united front to the outside world, and facilitates the militant nature of the groups.

The final feature I wish to emphasise of fundamentalism is is that it is strongly reformist in nature. It opposes current directions in religious thought, and attempts to return to the ‘pristine clarity, simplicity and appeal of the (religion’s) Founder.’ This does not mean that all reformation movements throughout history have been fundamentalist movements, though most fundamentalist movements are reformist in nature. For the Christian fundamentalist, this reformist nature may be either doctrinal or spiritual, while for the Muslim fundamentalist this nature is likely to be seen in the call for a strict implementation of Islamic norms and values (the Shari’ah or Islamic ‘religious law’) throughout all areas of Islamic society.
 

Fundamentalism in different world religions

In the defining certain characteristics of fundamentalism, we have made the assumption that the concept is transferable to various world religions. I believe that there are problems inherent in this assumption.

The fundamentalist movement first received its name from a twelve volume series entitled ‘The Fundamentals’ which began publication in 1909. From this developed a list of five basic fundamentals of the Christian religion which included:

    ‘1. The inspiration and infallibility of Scripture.
    2. The deity of Christ (including His virgin birth).
    3. The substitutionary atonement of Christ’s death.
    4. The literal resurrection of Christ from the dead.
    5. The literal return of Christ in the Second Advent.’

These fundamentals are the product of a branch of American Christian Protestantism. They are a response to forces that were believed to be hostile to the truth of Christianity at that time, such as Darwinistic thinking, higher biblical criticism and secularism. Therefore, the term ‘fundamentalism’ has it’s origins in a particular western society, and was formulated for usage in a particular Christian context at a particular time in history and presupposes a particular relationship between church and state. This points to several problems that exist when attempting to transfer the idea of fundamentalism to religions other than Christianity.

The first major problem is that of the unpopular and negative connotations that the term has come to carry. Fundamentalism has become such an unpopular term that groups attempt to avoid with it’s connotations of being intolerant, extremist, fanatic, rigid, literalist, narrow-minded, reactionary, militant, and the like. The concept of fundamentalism is rarely applied to religions outside of Christianity where the ‘fundamentalist’ is often portrayed as an out of touch fanatic, and Islam where ‘fundamentalists’ are often portrayed as terrorists. Writers tended to avoid applying the term to religions such as Buddhism or Hinduism. Wieseltier strenuously argues that there is no such thing as fundamentalism in Judaism. He suggests that what some in the west regard as fundamentalism is only a restorationist reaction to the changing relationship between religion and politics in Judaic society.

The second major problem is that when the term is applied to other religions, we find that there is no suitable corresponding term for ‘fundamentalism’ in that culture’s language. This is evident when examining Arabic or any other of the Islamic languages. Lawrence states that the Arabic language has ‘neither a neologism nor a revalidated term by which to (talk of fundamentalism)’. No suitable word exists, or is about to be adopted by the language to describe this western concept.

It appears that this problem is in part due to the absence of a clear concise definition of the word in the English language. The nebulous nature of the term makes it almost impossible to translate into languages that serve different cultural contexts in different societies. It would also seem that, coupled with the sociological changes this century, there are problems in using the term even for the religion that it was initially used.

This leads to the issue of outside application. The term’s application to other religions has usually come from outside that religion, and has often been made by western observers. This problem is evident when referring to ‘Islamic fundamentalists’. Despite the almost universal acceptance of this term’s usage in western circles, Lawrence claims that there is;

    ‘no group . . . . in the contemporary Arab Muslim world that calls itself fundamentalist. .
     Fundamentalism is not, never has been, nor ever will be a term used by most Muslims
    to describe either their own religious outlook or the religious outlook of other Muslims
    with whom they disagree.’

Lawrence goes on to suggest that if we are to take the view that we “cannot use terms that are inappropriate to a culture without practising a kind of guileless, intellectual imperialism”, then ‘Fundamentalism’ as a concept  transported from a particular western cultural context, finds itself without  a place in the Islamic cultural fabric.

The third major issue is the manner in which such groups emerge. Fundamentalist groups emerge as a response to a perceived threat. As specific threats tend to differ across different cultures, so too does the specific response to these threats differ. Christian fundamentalists began as a reaction to the threat of liberal theology and science. Therefore, their response was an intellectual and highly individualistic in nature. This was not an issue in Islam. Their primary concern was over western influences penetrating Islamic society. In this case, the response was social and nationalistic in nature. The elements that shaped these two respective fundamentalist movements have resulted in a different in differing styles of movements. What they do have in common is that they stress those elements that are most distinctive to that particular religious tradition, such as the Qur’an, Sunnah, and social and political concerns for the Muslim, and soteriology and doctrinal orthodoxy for the Christian.
 

The rise of Fundamentalism in the twentieth century

Fundamentalist movements have undergone rapid development throughout the twentieth century. There are several various reasons for this development.

The first reason for the rise of fundamentalism is that it is intellectually attractive to segments of society. Fundamentalist groups tend to arise when an accepted world view becomes disrupted by forces are out of a groups control, to which that group can not withstand, such as the mass media or modern medicine. Christian fundamentalism arose as a response to the intellectual and theological debate between conservative and liberal forces at the turn of the century. It was a popular intellectual response to a change in thinking throughout society that was perceived as a threat. The popularity of this response can be traced to the attractiveness of it’s theological starting point, with it’s emphasis on the inerrancy or truth of scripture, and the simplicity and uncomplicated nature inherent in the reading of scripture as a “transcript without mystery.” Within this view is a ‘didactic emphasis’ that view the scriptures as containing teaching or being teaching. This position allows the reader to participate directly in the subject matter of scripture, and urges the hearer  to communicate this teaching with others.

The second reason is that of a constantly changing environment. An opposition to modernity is common to all fundamentalist movements. Fundamentalist groups portray modernity as a threat to society. The Christian opposes pressure from inside their culture, the Muslim opposes the outside pressure from the west.  This makes fundamentalist movements who are restorationist look good and enable them to attract adherents. It is the fact that they live in an evil and irreligious world that they are able to survive in such an irreligiousness setting. In the uncertain world, the fundamentalist offers certainty; members have a definite truths that are easily marked.

Fundamentalist movements have developed a great appeal to the resentful margenalised; that is, those people who are marginalised and know it. It’s militant nature gives hope to those who are on the outer of society. This can be seen in Islamic fundamentalism. It’s reformation stance has enormous appeal to;

“former rural ignoramuses, shopkeepers, clerks, teachers, craftsmen, all of whom have been drawn into the urban cockpit and struggle to maintain rural values in defiance of the European life-style aped by the technological and bureaucratic elites among their countrymen.”
 Fundamentalism has powerful appeal to the masses, and is able to get large numbers of people working personally, devotionally, and militantly, in its favour. It feeds on Islam strong political emphasis and its concern that religious prescriptions be implemented in all areas of social life. When unfamiliar situations loom, such as unemployment, the promise of paradise through martyrdom through the Jihad seems a more attractive prospect than public freedom offered by western democracy.

Fundamentalism has appeal in a time of crisis. Such groups arise when a religious tradition splits and becomes disrupted. This is apparent in the rise of the Shia from an Islamic split. A fundamentalist often comes from traditional background within the tradition. It is when someone from within the tradition looks like becoming a potential apostate, renegade, or improviser. It was not so much Darwinistic thinking that resulted in the creation of Christian fundamentalist groups, but the attempt to reconcile Darwin’s evolutionary theories with biblical creationism. Despite the decrease in overt conflict between fundamentalism and science, the fundamentalist sees no lessening of tension on the matter.

Another possible reason for the rise in fundamentalism is eschatology, or theology of end times. Rausch takes the view that premillennial eschatology, where Jesus Christ physically returns to the earth to bring about a thousand year reign of peace as being central to the fundamentalists beliefs. Barr is less certain about central the role of eschatology. This premillennial view seems in line with the restorationist elements of fundamentalism that desire that this evil world be rebuilt, with  the scriptures as the sole basis for society.
 

In Conclusion
 
One of the strengths of fundamentalism is that it has survived and continued to attract adherents despite the many changes throughout the century. The form of the movement has been flexible enough to respond to the different challenges that have arisen. When the need arose, fundamentalism could be intellectual, separatist militant, or political. It has managed to hold on to absolutes in an age of relativity, and continued in it’s rejection of secularism and modernity.

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