Quinby’s Essay on “Unsettling the Fundamentalist Mindset” provides yet another look into the plethora of ways in which apocalyptic notions and the fundamentalist mindset come into play in a broad-range of real-world situations. The entire patriarchal structure of American families, in which the task of child-rearing ( as a natural consequence of child-bearing) is assigned to the mother and the task of bread-winning and family-protection is assigned to the father, rests on patriarchal gender dualism. The entire gender structure of religion rests on the omnipotent fatherly male-god figure, with several male potentates who are in direct communication with him, local male priests and reverends, and finally the male head of the family household who controls the women and children of the family. This leaves the female in a position of susceptibility and powerlessness. She is, in a sense, an undesirable object as far as the male is concerned. The male struggles for the one true God’s paternal love, in the fundamentalist sense, but does not seek the affection of the Jezebel’s on earth—which may or may not include his wife. In fact, this is a quintessential struggle for fundamentalist men—as Jurgensmeyer warns us. Men are constantly seeking spiritual enlightenment, love from God the father—but are also bound by their biology to seek out women, whose very existence they are told to believe is sinful. This clash between biological instinct and religious duty has often created a sense of pent up sexual frustration amongst fundamentalist men, and is one of the primary reasons, as Jurgensmeyer cleverly puts it, as to ‘Why Men throw bombs’.
