50 Key Concepts in Theology

‘Post Feminism’ (Edinburgh University Press, 1995)

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Fundamentalism
A term that refers to religions or other social groups that demand strict and
literal adherence to a sacred text or dogmatic principles.
The term ‘fundamentalism’ was first used to describe the conservative
Protestants’ strict adherence to what they regarded as the literal reading of the
Bible. Now we speak of fundamentalisms of all kinds – secular and religious.
Fundamentalism is the belief in an absolute authority, normally derived
from a literal reading of a sacred text. Fundamentalisms have an overriding
concern with authority, law and rule-based ethics. For fundamentalists the
question of truth is not vague or uncertain: the truth has been revealed in an
unambiguous way and any questioning of the truth must be a form of heresy.
Fundamentalisms are generally male-dominated, anti-gay, racist and
xenophobic.
A basic feature of fundamentalist religion is the control of official
teaching, which is handed down by the religious hierarchy. In Christian
fundamentalism, for example, there is no scope for the individual believer to
deviate from the doctrine of substitutionary atonement – although this
doctrine is only one interpretation of the biblical texts. The fundamentalist
model does not allow for any other view than the official one. Exploration of
alternatives is treated as apostasy.
In the modern period it became commonplace for people to talk about the
decline of religion. Marx believed that Christianity would simply wither away
as socialism lifted the scales from the eyes of the proletariat. In the 1960s
even Christian theologians started to talk about ‘religionless Christianity’ and
‘secular Christianity’. But Christianity has refused to conform with the
prophecies of its demise. While liberal churches have indeed declined,
fundamentalist churches have thrived. It seems that the advance of secular
humanism has not been welcomed by everyone.
It is a puzzle to know why, in an age saturated with secular and anti-
religious teaching, fundamentalisms of many kinds have flourished in the
major world religions. It is perhaps too simple to say that in an age of post-
modern insecurity, unstable identities and uncertain truths, fundamentalism
offers a consoling security – although this is probably partly true. Karen
Armstrong argues that fundamentalism is a deeper response to modernity and
secularism: ‘Fundamentalists feel that they are battling against forces that
threaten their most sacred values … Those who relish the freedoms and
achievements of modernity find it hard to understand the distress they cause

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religious fundamentalists.’
Others – such as Slavoj Zizek – have suggested that the rise of
fundamentalism can be accounted for by Freud’s theory of ‘the return of the
repressed’. Repressed psychological material does not disappear, but
resurfaces in a displaced form in neurotic or psychotic behaviour. According
to this analogy, the growth in fundamentalism represents the return of basic
religious behaviour which had been suppressed by modern scientific thinking.
We tend to think of our age as one of increasing liberal democracy, global
capitalism and scientific development. Following 9/11 and the growth in
religious extremism, future generations may judge the phenomenon of
fundamentalism to be the more significant. We live in an age, as Yeats put it
in ‘The Second Coming’, when
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
THINKERS
Curtis Lee Laws (1868–46), editor of the Baptist journal, The Watchman-
Examiner, invented the term ‘fundamentalism’ to describe certain
conservative Protestant religions.
Slavoj Zizek (1949– ) argues that fundamentalism is part of a pattern of
global ideologies that includes liberal democracies as much as Middle-Eastern
theocracies. In the West, argues Zizek, liberal democracy functions as our
fundamentalism, our non-negotiable, absolute truth. And it is in the name of
this democratic fundamentalism that the USA can invade other sovereign
states, subvert normal standards of justice and commit acts of torture against
its enemies. One of the unexamined dogmas of liberal democracy, argues
Zizek, is its blind faith in capitalism.
IDEAS
Foundationalism: the view that knowledge is only possible if it stands
upon a foundation of established truths or basic beliefs.
The Fundamentalism Project has gathered scholars from around the

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world to document and analyse the phenomenon of fundamentalism.
Pluralism: the belief that there is more than one version of the truth.
Relativism: the view that there are no absolute truths and that things are
only true in a given cultural context.
BOOKS
Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism,
Christianity and Islam (HarperCollins, 2001)
Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby (eds.), Fundamentalisms Observed
(Chicago University Press, 1991)

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