Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism originally referred to an American Protestant Christian movement occurring at the turn of the 20th century. Since then the term has been adopted by scholars to refer to a worldwide movement that includes various faith traditions. The usefulness of the term lies in its ability to capture the form and functions of a great many religious groups and to define the essence of their agendas. As used by scholars, the term is meant to describe, not evaluate.

At the heart of fundamentalist movements is their revolt against modernism and their call to return to the fundamentals of their faith traditions, fundamentals defined either in sacred texts such as the Bible and the Qur'an or in the practices of a faith tradition's founder or original community. Fundamentalism refers, then, to protests against developments associated with modernism, protests that are often energetic, sometimes aggressive, and occasionally violent.

Fundamentalists feel that certain developments associated with modernism undermine religious identity and their own religious worldview. They believe these developments undermine the ability to lead a morally pure life and, in some cases, a life that prepares for the afterlife. Their concern is not with developments in technology and science per se but only with those developments that challenge their religious worldview or have moral implications—as when Darwinian evolutionary theory challenged the creationist theory derived from a literal reading of Genesis.

In North America, the term fundamentalism has often been used interchangeably with the term evangelism—though more so at the beginning of the fundamentalist movement than in recent times. Evangelism refers to the winning or saving of souls. To evangelize, then, means to lead others to becoming saved. North American fundamentalists are, then, all about being saved and saving others—saved by believing in Jesus as the Lord and saved by accepting the Bible as the literal and inerrant word of God.

To be saved, it is not enough to attend church or to try hard to lead a good life. Being saved, say the fundamentalists and evangelicals, entails no less than a total commitment to Christ and a total belief in the Bible. To be a North American Protestant fundamentalist is, then, to embrace a biblical perspective that is clear, free from contradiction, and rejecting of alternative, nonfundamentalist worldviews. Being [Page 175]ecumenical is not, then, a part of the fundamentalist agenda. Therefore, North American Protestant fundamentalism, like other forms of fundamentalism around the world, runs counter to the dominant worldview in most societies today, a worldview that values pluralism and accepts there being multiple perspectives on what is true and valuable.

Nor is it a fundamentalist agenda to promote a separation of religion and state, a separation that has been central in North American and European democratic traditions. This is even more evident in Arab regions of the world where Islamic fundamentalism works to unite societies under Islamic law and under Islamic religious leadership.

Worldwide fundamentalism has, then, been both separatist in spirit and integrationist in political life. That is, while fundamentalists speak of the need to separate one's self from the unsaved and from this sinful or corrupt world; they also speak of the need for human kind to become a single, religious community.

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