We Are All Fundamentalists Now?
Science & Spirit Magazine has a commentary by David Gibson that looks at the history of the term “fundamentalist” in America. Gibson postulates that the term “fundamentalism” may have become so over-used as to be useless as an adjective.
“If anything is certain about the word “fundamentalist,” it is that, with the possible exception of “fascist,” no epithet is more commonly invoked today, more pejorative, or more misunderstood. Anyone who seems too bull-headed to concede what “everyone else” considers the obvious fault in their position will reflexively be dismissed as a fundamentalist – an obtuse obscurantist who refuses to yield in the face of overwhelming reason. That is, if they haven’t already been dismissed as a some kind of fascist.”
The article then tries to discover who qualifies for the term “fundamentalist” in today’s world, and cites the groundbreaking academic study “The Fundamentalism Project”, a five-volume overview of fundamentalism throughout the world.
“Their research went a long way toward understanding fundamentalism largely by exploding many myths … ‘For all the current focus on fiery Islamic extremists, religious fundamentalists are not confined to any particular faith or country, nor to the poor and uneducated,’ they wrote. ‘Instead, they are likely to spring up anywhere people perceive the need to fight a godless, secular culture – even if they have to depart from the orthodoxy of their traditions to do it. In fact, what fundamentalists everywhere have in common is the ability to craft their messages to fit the times.’”
But in his effort to defang the term “fundamentalist”, Gibson re-interprets it to mean any group un-comfortable with the modern world in any manner whatsoever, including modern Pagans.
“Given that thrust, the logical question is how different fundamentalists are from mainstream society. Who isn’t uneasy with the “progress” enshrined by modernity? Who doesn’t long for the simplicity and organic holism of long ago eras conjured by the likes of Tolkien? … there are many otherwise secular folk who, while showing disdain for organized religion, hark back to some mythical time to reconstitute a religious system – paganism, Wicca, Heathenism, Druidism, take your pick – that never really existed, or at least not in anything like the modern form. Such “vintage religion” might smack of fundamentalism if viewed from a certain angle.”
One wonders which “angle” that is, since most of the qualifications for fundamentalism that Gibson lists in his article (authoritarian, male-dominated, sharp boundaries, good vs evil, inerrancy) don’t apply in any real sense to the bulk of modern Pagan religions. So why single them out? The reference to Tolkien is a clue, but the bigger “tell” is when he lets loose on relativism.
“In The American Interest, published last fall, the eminent sociologist of religion Peter Berger teased out the provocative parallels between fundamentalism and relativism, he wrote that because both embrace absolutist positions…”
You see, David Gibson is not only a journalist, but is also a left-leaning Catholic author (relativism is a bugbear of the current Pope). A quick re-read will show that not once is any aspect of Catholicism painted with the “fundamentalist” brush even though Hinduism, Protestantism, Islam, Atheism, and Paganism are. One wonders if he ever looked in the mirror when he ended the article with “perhaps we are all fundamentalists now”. Did he mean everyone except the Catholics?
One response so far
It was my understanding that the term “fundamentalist” was first invented for and applied to certain evangelical Protestant Christian groups who subscribed to a literal interpretation of the Bible as the “fundamentals” of the Christian faith. The term evolved to mean any group, of whatever religion, who emphasized “the need to fight a godless, secular culture” with stricter and more literalist interpretations of their respective sacred texts and traditions. In this sense, they may argue internally over what exactly those “literal interpretations” are, but that’s still distinct in my mind from relativism, especially since, as Gibson himself points out, such groups often focus on “delineating black-and-white verities” as a main strategy against the perceived relativism of “godless secularism.”
In my experience, members of the Neopagan community move in the opposite direction, embracing increased tolerance and diversity as expressions of sacredness and spirit manifesting within secular culture, breaking down the notion of a strict us-them divide. On the other hand, I have met a few Pagans who come across as just as “fundamentalist” as any Christian in their insistence on the exclusive “Truth” of a polytheistic “Old Religion”… but that just goes to show that fundamentalism isn’t inherent within a system of belief, but is more an approach to applying such a system to modern life.
The contradictory nature of fundamentalism is, I think, not so much a form of relativism as their often heavy use of modern technologies and media in order to spread their anti-modernity message, without recognizing the relationship between such media technologies and the very social systems they denounce. Catholics certainly aren’t immune to that tendency, though perhaps they are more likely to be accused of being archaic and “out of touch” with modern needs and concerns.