“Given its protean and elusive nature, a simple definition of Fundamentalism risks being too simple-minded. The movement of those we call fundamentalists is too new historically for there to be a clear and agreed upon definition. In fact, we argue in this book for the benefits of ambiguity…”
—Charles B. Strozier
In our struggle to perceive things objectively, scientifically, and completely—in our perennial attempts to quantify, to contextualize, and to understand, and in our illustrious quest for evasion of generalizations, absolutisms, platitudes, and statements of offense, we—the intelligentsia—make one indelible and inexcusable oversight: the lack of any application of what might be diminutively termed as “common sense logic” to the problem of increasing religious fundamentalism worldwide. I believe it is this very same pitfall, this repetitive omission of common sense of the intellectual elite which characterizes some of the statements made in “The Fundamentalist Mindset”. The quote I began this post with is cited as evidence of this realization. I doubt any student of history will tell you that fundamentalism (and those who practice it, i.e. the fundamentalists) is “too new historically, for there to be a clear and agreed upon definition”. This is quite obviously illustrious propaganda to the effect of: “We don’t wish to make any absolute statements regarding who and what the fundamentalists really are, so we aim to be vague and ambiguous—vilifying the abstract concept, but in the end, incriminating no one”.
The fact of the matter is that fundamentalism has been around for as long as organized proto-Christian religion, since several decades after 0 A.D. There have always been those who will pervert, radicalize, and contort the moral edicts of religion into a cacophony of apocalyptic nightmares; a crescendo of politically motivated but religiously indoctrinated terrorist violence which threatens the last strands of sanity and peace in our otherwise abject modern sphere. From the persecution of religious minorities in the bible, to the persecutions of Christians and Jews in the Pagan Roman era—to the opposite in the Byzantine Empire—from the crusades of Islam and Christianity to the Zionism of the Jews and the Jihad of the Muslims—there has ALWAYS been a specter of religious fundamentalism haunting humanity. The medieval times were also called the dark ages (I suspect) because of this very truth; the extent to which religion has permeated society, or an era, as a dominant form of truth, is also the extent to which that society, or that era, is impoverished and stunted in its growth.
This theory may not always hold water, but I believe it holds quite well when applied to the theocratic nations of the middle east, as well as to the religiously centered lives of denizens of Europe in the middle ages. During the middle ages the Church exerted all its authority and managed to restore budding scientific progress to its ancient place of ridicule and mysticism. The work of the Ancient Greeks (and many others besides) was lost to the incessant need of the Church to assert its supreme authority (Truth with a capital ‘T’) over the scientists who also claimed they knew of a way to explain nature’s secrets. Thusly was most of civilization’s progress to that date, ALSO lost. The renaissance was really a renaissance of Ancient Greek ideals—and only occurred when the specter of religious absolutism, fundamentalism, and theocracy were finally dismantled (or at least reduced significantly), and humanity was thus allowed to breathe again. From this turning point and onwards, western societies began to progress towards a more secular worldview, and religion soon became (after WWII) generally incompatible with secular life. Religion had lost its power on the masses at that point in time, but NOT on everyone.
The story of the fundamentalist mindset properly begins with the proverbial death of God (as asserted by Nietzsche) following World War II, but has its roots however in the pagan roman empire, as well as the opposite—the Religious (Christian, Jewish, and Islamic) medieval ages. It was at this time that the ideology of fundamentalism largely became a cult-phenomenon, devoid of much impact on the masses. Currently however, we are seeing a reversal of this trend: an increasing number of born again and evangelical Christians and of Jihadist and otherwise radicalized Muslims throughout the world threatens the balance of a secular morality, and of western civilization at large. Aside from the obvious historical credence which negates Strozier’s pleas for (intellectually benign) ambiguity, it is also the increasing trend towards fundamentalism (especially from the Middle East) despite wholesale secularization of (western) culture which renders the lack of a “clearly defined definition [of fundamentalism]” as a potent danger to our Civilized world. What we do need from the intellectual elite, rather than an apology for writing about the touchy subject of fundamentalism in the first place, is a form of moral absolutism to counter that which is presented in fundamentalist ideologies: A pronounced verdict on the ills of such beliefs when they are shown to result in terrorism and other forms of mass violence—a heed to avoid the use of abstractions and ambiguities in defining the concept and potential dangers arising from the credo of the religious fundamentalist.
Many of the claims and analyses presented by Strozier are otherwise scientifically legitimate and describe well the motivations and psychological underpinnings of religious fundamentalism. Dualistic thinking—i.e. grouping reality into friend and enemy, for and against, good and evil, God and Satan, blessed and cursed—is most surely a pronounced side effect of the fundamentalist mindset. An apocalyptic orientation, which allows for the subject to have “distinct perspectives on time, death, and violence” is also essential for the proper perverse worldview which permits one to abandon traditional time constructs and civilized notions of law and individual rights in favor of the paranoia associated with Armageddon an the apocalypse. The idea that within one’s paranoia, rage, dualistic thinking, possible acts of violence and disregards for the humanity of others are all legitimated and “given direction” also seems to accurately describe how terrorists (the most dangerous of those we call fundamentalists) are able to believe themselves religious while committing heinous acts of mass murder which totally disregard the humanity of their victims.
In the classification of the roots of the fundamentalist mindset, the essays provided in the book with the same name are spot on. In the proper contextualization of the meaning of these findings however, the authors make the mistake of absolving fundamentalists of moral judgment, vilifying the abstract notion of fundamentalism, rather than incriminating those who have purported its ideologies and caused widespread violence—urging that we treat fundamentalism as an ambiguous abstract rather than the mass effort at undermining (mostly Western) civilization which it represents.
As a side note, the apocalyptic group “Earth First!” –a radical apocalyptic environmental group –represents another sort of fundamentalism which is emerging from the political left today. The rising threat of global environmental catastrophe due to the loosely proved and highly propagandized, allegedly anthropogenic, phenomenon of “Global Warming” is present due to the crazed semi-apocalyptic/fundamentalist view of those who espouse its mantra. If you don’t believe me, I direct you towards this completely REAL video which was made in support of efforts to “Go Green”. No Pressure.
Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail!
Eco Fascism at its Finest (video)
Whilst warrior Christ was busy establishing his banal utopia in the fiction aisle of our Doomsday curricula, Charles Strozier was profiling a darker side of “things that must shortly come to pass” in his essays on the apocalyptic roots of the fundamentalist mindset. What struck me the most, beyond his concise and tactful histories of various fundamentalist touchstones (including Left Behind), was the powerful psychology of paranoia he illuminates in ‘The Apocalyptic Other.’ His clinical conclusions, particularly the case study of his patient Harriet, lend credence to the power of paranoia to overwhelm the complexity of a victim’s life and reduce it to facile, frightening dualities. But what occurs if a society suffers this pathos, radicalizing reality and leaving its inhabitants to cope?
The ultimate marker of the fundamentalist mindset, as described by Strozier et al. in their eponymous collection, is the “radical dualism” that permeates both the individual and group consciousness. Certainly, the Manichean tendency of polarizing reality as good or evil is emblematic of how many fundamentalist movements – self-proclaimed and historical – have interacted with their world. But what the essayists neglect to mention (thus far, at least) is just how prevalent dualism is in our world, and how deep it often runs; not only amongst fundamentalists of all stripes, but across all spheres of society and history. Perhaps, in the apocalyptic scenario they diagnosed as having three distinct motivations, there lies a fourth, seemingly contradictory vein: the longing for unification of self and world, space and time, and God and his creation; the apocalypse as a bridge between subject and object. To reconcile and be one with the whole of existence has forever been the heart-task of humanity. Though the fundamentalist mindset relies on dualism to fill in the moral, spiritual, and psychological gaps that exist in the world as is, they look ahead to an existence free from all separation, united with their God.