246 CHAPTER 12
HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Despite its backward-looking emphasis and evident anti-modernism, religious fundamentalismis verymuch a creature of themodernworld. Indeed,most commentators treat it as a distinctively modern phenomenon and deny that it has historical parallels. Possible exceptions to this include the German preacher and Anabaptist, Thomas Müntzer (1489–1525), who led the Peasants’ War, and the French Protestant reformer, Jean Calvin (1509–64), who founded a theocracy (see p. 247) in Geneva that allowed him to control almost all the city’s affairs. Similarly, the Puritans, a loose collection of anti- episcopal Presbyterians, played a major role in initiating the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, and demonstrated their ‘this-worldly’ concern to establish a new political and social system by sailing to North America to found a New England. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), the leader of the New Model Army and a convinced Puritan, abolished the English monarchy and established, in its place, the Commonwealth, which became for a while the head and champion of Protestant Europe.
KEY CONCEPT RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM The word ‘fundamentalism’ derives from the Latin fundamentum , meaning ‘base’. The core idea of religious fundamentalism is that religion cannot and should not be confined to the private sphere, but finds its highest and proper expression in the politics of popular mobilization and social regeneration. Although
often related, religious fundamentalism should not be equated with scriptural literalism, as the ‘fundamentals’ are often extracted through a process of ‘dynamic’ interpretation by a charismatic leader. Religious fundamentalism also differs from ultraorthodoxy, in that it advances a programme for the moral and political regeneration of society in line with religious principles, as opposed to a retreat from corrupt secular society into the purity of faith-based communal living.
Subsequently, this style of fundamentalist religion went into decline, as, in Europe in particular, Christianity entered a period characterized by its gradual, long-termwithdrawal from the public or political sphere.This was in line with the so-called secularization thesis . At its minimum, secularization was reflected in the decline of the prestige and power of religious teachers. It also typically involved the decline or end of, among other things, state support for religious bodies, religious teaching in national schools and legislative protection for religious doctrines. Over time, in many cases secularism came to be backed up with legal or constitutional force, a lead being taken by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which, in guaranteeing freedom of religious worship, ensures that the
state cannot encroach on religious matters. This process reached its peak in the twentieth century, most notably in communist states such as the Soviet Union and China, where systematic attempts were made to suppress religion in all its forms. Nevertheless, there has been distinct evidence of a revival of religion in the period since the late twentieth century. New, and often more assertive, forms of religiosity have emerged, and religious movements have gained a renewed potency. Moreover, in its fundamentalist guise, this religious revivalism has assumed an overtly political form. This shift in emphasis was most dramatically demonstrated by the 1979 ‘Islamic Revolution’ in Iran, which
Secularization thesis: The theory that modernization is characterized by the spread of worldly or rationalist ideas and values in the place of religious or sacred ones. Religion: A body of beliefs about some kind of, usually ‘other worldly’, transcendent reality; religions may be monotheistic, pantheistic or nontheistic.
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