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August 6, 2010
Fundamentalism, at least in its U.S/Australian Christian form is related to the outdated values and repressive code of small-town Australia; it has an inclination toward the lowbrow and the vulgar; is s marked by authoritarianism; is characterized by a lack of historical consciousness and the inability to engage in critical thinking; is identified by literalism, primitivism, legalism, and tribalism; and is linked to reactionary populism and the "paranoid style."
Is this a liberal stereotype of fundamentalism as a "cultural system"? One plausible argument is that religious fundamentalism can be seen as a counter-movement, or backlash, to the onwards march of secularisation, a process which ultimately leads to the political and public marginalisation of religion in liberal democratic societies. Karen Armstrong writes in the Harvard International Review:
Religious fundamentalism represents a widespread rebellion against the hegemony of secularist modernity. Wherever a modern, Western-style society has been established, a religious counterculture has developed alongside it in conscious rebellion. Despite the arguments of politicians and intellectuals, people all over the world have demonstrated that they want to see more religion in public life. The various fundamentalist ideologies show a worrying disenchantment with modernity and globalization. Indeed, every single fundamentalist movement that I have studied in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is rooted in a profound fear of annihilation. All are convinced that the modern, liberal, secular establishment wants to wipe out religion. Each fundamentalist group has sprung up independently; each even differs significantly from other fundamentalists within their own faith tradition. But at the root of all these movements is the same visceral dread that is rapidly being transformed in some quarters into ungovernable rage. This should not surprise us; culture is always contested, and the proud secularism of Western modernity was almost bound to inspire a strong religious reaction.
Jeff Haynes argues that secularisation, implying a significant diminishing of religious concerns in everyday life, has been one of the main social and political trends in Western Europe since the Enlightenment (1720-80). It was long believed that as a society modernises it inevitably secularises - that is, in becoming more complex, a division of labour emerges whereby institutions become more highly specialised and, as a consequence, are increasingly in need of their own technicians. To many, secularisation was one of the most fundamental structural and ideological changes in the process of political development, a global trend, a universal facet of modernisation. Everywhere, as societies modernised there would be a demystification of religion positing a gradual, yet persistent, erosion of religious influence. The end result of secularisation is a secular society, that is, where the pursuit of politics and public policy takes place irrespective of what religious actors do or say. Secularisation has gone hand in hand with separation of power between church and state.
Opponents of the secularisation thesis argue that the current era is characterised, not by the decline of religion, but by the widespread resurgence of religious ideas and social movements, which is one of the most unexpected events at the end of the twentieth century. The social upheaval and economic dislocation associated with modernisation leads to both secularisation and a renewal of traditional religions as a response to a general ‘atmosphere of crisis’.
Religious fundamentalism is nearly always premised on a rejection of the values associated with liberal democracy. Christian fundamentalism appears to be an anti-modernist backlash against science, industrialization, and liberal Western values: religious fundamentalists, feeling their way of life under threat, aim to reform society in accordance with religious tenets. The fundamentalists’ fear is that modern society wants to purge itself of religion. The terror and alienation of fundamentalist Protestantism is shown in its apocalyptic vision, which sees the world as so wicked and perverted that God has to smash it in a final, fearful cataclysm.
Christians are ‘fundamentalist’ in the sense of wishing to get back to the fundamentals of the faith as they see them. The ‘born again’ worldview is embedded in certain dogmatic fundamentals of Christianity, with emphasis placed on the authority of the Bible in all matters of faith and practice; on personal conversion as a distinct experience of faith in Christ as Lord and Saviour (being ‘born again’ in the sense of having received a new spiritual life); and, evangelically, in helping others have a similar conversion experience.
The features of the Christian fundamentalist movement in Australia are:
(1) a desire to return to the fundamentals of a religious tradition and strip away unnecessary accretions
(2) an aggressive rejection of western secular modernity;
(3) an oppositional minority group-identity maintained in an exclusivist and militant manner;
(4) attempts to reclaim the public sphere as a space of religious and moral purity;
(5) a patriarchial and hierarchical ordering of relations between the sexes’.
Karen Armstrong says that fundamentalism becomes more extreme when attacked because the assault convinces fundamentalists that the establishment really does want to eliminate them. She says that:
fundamentalism is inextricably tied to the modern world, and, rather than being merely a temporary aberration, it is here to stay. Fundamentalist movements may hearken back to a Golden Age, but they are essentially modern and could have taken root in no time other than the present. Christian fundamentalists may claim to be reading the Bible in a traditional way, but their literalist approach is essentially the product of the scientific age. In the premodern world, Jews, Christians, and Muslims all relished highly allegorical readings of Scripture, which, as the Word of God, was infinite and capable of multiple interpretations. Until the invention of printing made it possible for every Christian to have his or her own Bible and until universal literacy made it possible for them to read it, nobody could subject the Bible to the close and detailed reading employed by fundamentalists today.
Though a part of the modern world they reject the modern ethos. Armstrong adds that the ideologies of Christian fundamentalists reveal fears and anxieties that no society can safely ignore.
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But of course the ultimate product of modernization and the secular world-view is capitalism which by its very nature inevitably reduces everything to rubble.
All previous expressions of human culture, and the natural world too.
It is therefore tragically ironic that many "conservative" religionists pretend that capitalism is the most "advanced" form of culture ever seen on this planet.