Religious, and in particular, monotheistic religious, fundamentalism is a social and political cancer. Like all cancers, it tends to metastasize, or spread, to otherwise healthy recipients. If untreated, cancer can be fatal.
Religious fundamentalism - be it in the form of Islamism, the Jewish fundamentalists within the Israeli settlement movement in the West Bank and Gaza, or the fundies who make up the base of the religious right (as well as Bush's base) in the U.S. - is likewise a social and political cancer in that it causes severe harm to democracy, secularism, and civil society. This is true in both socially and economically advanced democracies and in the developing world.
Because this topic is large, with many examples, I propose to post a series of diaries here on this theme. This is my first. I should add that I first started thinking about this topic during the Reagan years, when the "religious right" led by the "Moral Majority" was wanting to impose its narrow beliefs on the entire country. I despised them and their constant attacks on "secular humanism" and all forms of relativism then, but wanted to understand how they acquired the influence that they had. My thinking about this topic then was shaped by the Bush II years, with its religious/ideological/corporate connections and push toward a "war on terror" along with religious fundamentalisms amongst the other monotheistic faiths and a sense of a grand religious/cultural clash pushed by extremists on all sides.
So, to begin, I will repeat my position: religious fundamentalism is a social cancer.
In the hands of the political right wing, religious fundamentalism has been an instrument with which to bludgeon political opponents; it has been part of their smear campaign, used to discredit a once proud word such as "liberal" or a noble concept such as "tolerance."
But to consider its meaning further, I want to start with a very useful analysis from the (now defunct) organization Women Against Fundamentalisms
In an article from 1994 in this organization's journal (Journal no.5 1994. pp7-9.), Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis write about the applicability of the term "fundamentalist" to religious examples beyond Protestant Christianity, which is where the term originates, offering the following.
By fundamentalism we are not referring to religious observance, which we see as a matter of individual choice, but rather to modern political movements which use religion as a basis for their attempt to win or consolidate power and extend social control.
They add (in response to an article by Jan Nederveen Pieterse, who argues that "fundamentalism" is inappropriate for describing non-Christian religious examples)
While it is important to be aware of different words used in different historical, cultural and linguistic contexts, the appropriation of fundamentalism from its strictly Protestant origins to a term used across religious movements, is inevitable in anglophone discourse. In any culture, references to religious movements are clothed in the language of the dominant religious influence. No other word was so readily available for appropriation in transatlantic discourse but its use has spread far beyond that. Rather than abandoning it, it would be more useful to import it back into English usage in relation to the self rather than the other. In other words instead of using it only to describe an outside threat, an 'alien other', it could be held up as a mirror to the dominant culture - to the huge influence that the various groupings that Pieterse discusses have on American politics and the ideology of the right. Even in England, relatively small sects such as the Plymouth Brethren have had a disproportionately large influence. With some well placed lobbying they managed to get teaching on HIV and Aids -removed from the National Curriculum, as a compulsory subject. Compare that with the persistent and relatively unsuccessful demand for voluntary aided status for private religious schools which are not Christian (mostly Muslim, but also of other minorities including black Christian sects). in a Christian country such as Britain, even one that is by no means fundamentalist, the space for white Christian fundamentalists to Push their demands is consider able.
The spectre of fundamentalism has been used selectively in areas like the Middle East by both Israel and the US. All those who object to Pax Americana can be tarred with the fundamentalist brush. However, just because the word is used by discredited proponents does not mean that it is not valid. Jan Pieterse himself points out that fundamentalism is used very selectively as a bogey when it is in conflict with Western security interests. Many would not abandon the ideas of solidarity and mutuality embodied by the term socialism even though it was coopted by authoritarian states, nor the concept of empowerment, now used by the World Bank and the IMF. The struggle to rescue the language of human rights, not only from a liberal capitalist ethic in which it originated but the specific aims of the American security establishment, was most poignantly demonstrated by the hundreds of groups lobbying the UN Human Rights conference in Vienna with their tales of torture and dispossession. Many of them came from countries allied with the USA - indigenous peoples from Latin America, dissidents from South Korea. Language is an area of contested meanings. Usages shift and change according to context - and historical developments.
Fundamentalist movements arise in all major religions and are a reaction to the crisis in/of modernity. As we have written in the introduction to Refusing Holy Orders
The recent rise of fundamentalism is linked to the crisis of modernity of social orders based on the belief in the principles of enlightenment, rationalism and progress. Both capitalism and communism have proved unable to fulfil people's material, emotional and spiritual needs. A general sense of despair and disorientation has opened people to religion as a source of solace. Religion provides a compass and an anchor; it gives people a sense of stability and meaning as well as a coherent identity.
Also, in response to Pieterse, these authors observe a common ground in discourses within all fundamentalist movements:
The sense of danger from outside, irrespective of whether the religious collectivity is a minority or majority; the claim of purity and authenticity; the right to interpret the religious text and to insist that this is the only true version of it; the imposition of social control on members of the collectivity and the drawing of boundaries of legitimacy of the collectivity; and above all the use of state media and other resources to capture power or maintain control.
In many respects, though, fundamentalist movements do not present themselves as homogeneous phenomena. Fundamentalism can align itself with different political trends in different countries. It can appear as a form of orthodoxy - a maintenance of traditional values - or as a revivalist radical phenomenon dismissing impure and corrupt forms of religion 'to return to original sources'. It can grow among persecuted minorities or among the powerful with backing of international resources. The fundamentalist gospel can rely heavily on sacred religious texts, but it can also be more experiential and linked to specific charismatic leadership.
Examining the concept of nationalism might help us to understand better the multiple, contemporary meanings of the term fundamentalism. Both cover such a variety of movements in very different historical circumstances. Though many have examined nationalist discourses such as Gellner and Anderson, they have not waved a wand to reduce the phenomenon to a series of discourses about it. Yet to say that Nelson Mandela and Radovan Karadic are both nationalists, is to state the near impossibility of defining it. Here is one definition, describing some of the characteristics of nationalism:
The discourse of nationalism is pail of the post enlightenment discourse of modernity, of progress of human capability: but as a discourse of modernity it bears the distinct marks of an earlier age. Consequently, nationalism has everywhere a deeply divided relation to 'community'... On the one hand, nationalism must speak the language of rationality, of the equality of all individuals, and of 'construction', the possibility of making the world as we want it; on the other it needs the language of blood and sacrifice, of historical necessity, of ancient (God-given) status and attributes - which is part of the discourse of community, as it were, and not of individual rationality.
This analysis is very insightful, and underscores a series of important points. These include that fundamentalism is not the equivalent of religious faith, and that fundamentalism is, in essence, as much a political movement as it is a religious one. As these authors show, fundamentalism - a reactionary response to modernity which seeks certainty and relies on appeals to authority - can be found in all religious systems. And their analysis of the social and cognitive framework of fundamentalism (i.e., the sense of danger from outside, the right to interpret the religious text and to insist that this is the only true version of it, and the imposition of social control on members of the collectivity) all strike me as very accurate.
These principles are embodied in the true believers of the fundamentalist persuasion, believers such as Wendy Watson of Oregon's Restore America, a participant in the recent Family Research Council's Action's Values Voters Summit. She was quoted as referring favorably (and likely in a decontextualized way) to a quote by John Adams that "our Constitution was made only for a moral and a religious people, and is wholly inadequate to any other government." From this, Watson made the leap to "Because we have this illusion, this deception of separation of church and state, and it shows that without morality, without religion, without Christ in our culture, the Constitution, it doesn't do what it is set up to do."
Of course, someone like this would be disinclined to consider another John Adams quote such as from a letter to Thomas Jefferson in which Adams wrote that he would " almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"
They are also exemplified in the recent case of aggressive preaching by evangelicals at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, and of the
firing of the Air Force Chaplain
- a Lutheran minister - who had complained about the aggressive tactics of the evangelicals at the school.
Many of us were raised with the religion of our parents, and many of us have continued practicing it. Some of us have not. Some of us have chosen new spiritual directions. Or some of us have put religion in all forms aside. Nevertheless, we are all part of a world in which religion, as well as religious belief, plays a major role.
However, religious fundamentalism - in all of its forms - is, by and large, a destructive force. It causes bigotry and intolerance, results in draconian, punitive laws, and censors and represses elements in culture which it does not understand. It creates divisions, such as along racial, ethnic, gender and sexual orientation - not to mention interreligious - lines. It leads to mindlessness in politics and to a disingenuous pandering, by corrupt leaders to their "base" of followers, given that it is based on a symbiotic dynamic of demagogic leaders and sheeplike followers.
The solution, or best "treatment" for this cancer, as best as I can tell, is rationalism, secularism, and the separation of church and state. It is a moral and intellectual response which acknowledges the religious impulse while also pointing to the many flaws of a fundamentalist mindset. As scientists continue to uncover the facts of the evolution of homo sapiens and as we thus come to know ourselves better as a part of nature, and as women's equality comes more into global focus, we need to use this knowledge and this awareness of change to counter the dangerous and repressive myths of those who claim a monopoly of religious truth.