| Anthropology of Fundamentalism |
| ANTHROPOLOGY OF FUNDAMENTALISM
Richard Antoun 2001. Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic, and Jewish Movements. Fundamentalism is not a religion or even a specific creed but �an orientation to the world, both cognitive and affective. The affective, or emotional, orientation indicates outrage and protest against (and also fear of) change and against a certain ideological orientation, the orientation of modernism� Norman Cohen, ed. 1990. The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: A View from Within, A Response from Without James Davison Hunter: 3 responses of religion to modernity: 1. disengagement (e.g. Amish, other �communalistic� movements) 2. accommodation 3. resistance �All fundamentalist sects share the deep and worrisome sense that history has gone awry. What �went wrong� with history is modernity in its various guises. The calling of the fundamentalist, therefore, is to make history right again� �This means that all fundamentalisms are characterized, to varying degrees, by a quality of organizing anger� Antoun Fundamentalism is typified by � Scripturalism: writings as �proof texts� to justify belief and practice. �Yearning for certainty� � Totalism: religion is relevant to and integrated with every aspect of life � Selective modernization � �Traditioning�: mobilizing or even creating tradition (a �mythical past�) for purposes of explaining, structuring, and legitimating present-day actions Norman Cohen, ed. George Marsden: �My own offhand definition of a fundamentalist is �an evangelical who is angry about something.�� �My more careful statement of this definition with regard to classic fundamentalism is that a fundamentalist is an evangelical Protestant who is militantly opposed to modern liberal theologies and to some aspects of secularism in modern culture� Jerry Falwell: �Fundamentalism is born out of a doctrinal controversy with liberalism. The ultimate issue is whether Christians who have a supernatural religion are going to be overpowered by Christians who have only a humanistic philosophy of life. Fundamentalism is the affirmation of Christian belief and a distinctively Christian lifestyle as opposed to the general secular society� Eugene Borowitz: �liberal religion intrinsically affirms religious pluralism�each individual�s and each generation�s right to find a better approach to God� [or not God] Fundamentalisms �freeze� tradition and deny diversity Niels Nielsen 1993. Fundamentalism, Mythos, and World Religions �Common to fundamentalists is an intolerant absolutist and atemporal moderl that ignores the history of religion and consequently allows no dialogue within religions or between them� In fact, the enemy is history, compromise, pluralism, liberalism, and secularism�and fundamentalists are militants in the struggle against these forces Case study: Nancy Ammerman 1987. Bible Believers: Fundamentalists in the Modern World � insistence on being different: �separation from the world� � compromise and accommodation are among the most dreaded words in the fundamentalist vocabulary � convinced of their own superiority, even versus other Christians including evangelicals � Attempt to build a culture� �Within the church and its affiliated institutions, believers construct Fundamentalist subculture as distinctive as any ethnic one� � Fundamentalist culture pervades the home and ideally all other corners of members� lives, giving them a biblical flavor � Authority of the pastor � Repeated message that the world �is in a sorry state, that divorce and delinquency are rampant, that movies and television are full of pornography, that the teaching of evolution and secular humanism has taken over the schools, and that despite its proud heritage as God�s chosen nation, the United States is in grave danger of destruction��defensive, threatened � Averse to any degree of uncertainty: �Assumption of orderliness and knowable truth pervade the everyday conversations of believers� � All truth is in the Bible, and all of the Bible is true � For many, almost every waking moment is taken up in some religion-related activity �The world fundamentalists have constructed is by definition, then, a world of opposition� �Ironically, in the very act of making claims of singular moral authority, fundamentalists must be heard in the pluralistic arena of American politics. Their ideas about the nature of public morality must compete with other ideas, mostly in the forum of mass media. Although they assert that there is only one right way to live, the individual who hears that message receives it along with dozens of other messages about what is best for people or for the nation� �As long as there is a modern world characterized by seeming chaos, there will be believers who react to that world by refusing to grant it legitimacy� Hunter: �The success or failure of a fundamentalist campaign, then, can be measured by the degree to which the cultural meanings imposed or reimposed are accepted as the official and legitimate public reality� Ammerman: �Whenever fundamentalists have lost a battle [with modernity], they have responded by withdrawing to establish their own alternative institutions� |