The phrase ‘fundamentalism is evil’, spoken from the platform of the 2004 SoF Conference in Sheffield, led Robin Smart to ponder a bit more about what we mean by fundamentalism.
Ghazala Anwar sof 70 March 2005 Thinking about Fundamentalism In schooldays of more than fifty years ago, if I recall correctly, my learning paid little heed to the word fundamentalism other than it was used to describe those Christian Protestant churches in the United States of America which had to some extent during the 18th and 19th centuries broken away from the established churches in the ‘old European world’. These break-away churches, it seemed, were not only giving their branches of Christianity their own names and rigidly adhering to what one could describe as selected basic principles of the Christian Bible.
Despite the universally accepted fact that the Bible contained some historical inaccuracies and some clear signs of contradiction, some of them were even proclaiming that the Bible was sacrosanct and unquestionable in every single word.
Some of the branches had been formed with a specific aim towards certain sections of the population, be it race or social position. Some came fairly close to asserting that Jesus was an American and some have magically received further editions of Holy Writ equal in importance to the Bible. Being humans of course some have fallen by the wayside, with all the evidence suggesting the branch of religion was merely an avenue to all or any of the delights of sex, money and power by the leaders.
The 20th century also saw the increasing use of the word fundamentalism in respect of non-Christian churches.
Rarely were media references to these groups a report of admiration. I do not think it would be unfair to the not very well informed man on the Clapham omnibus to say that he would describe a fundamentalist as one who ties dynamite round his chest and then enters the camp of his enemy before lighting the blue touch paper and not retiring. As regards Christian fundamentalists, I venture to suggest he would not be too positive in his comments but might stretch as far as to describe them as ‘a bunch of nutters’.
So, to get back to the question, what is a fundamentalist? The only embracing definition I have found is the definition decided at a conference of conservative Protestants in Niagara in 1895. They named their five points as: 1. The verbal inerrancy of Scripture 2. The Divinity of Christ 3. A substitutionary theory of the Atonement 4. The physical resurrection 5. The bodily return of Christ Clearly this definition would not be universally applicable today. It refers only to members of the Christian religion and in no way embraces all those branches of Christianity that nowadays have earned themselves the title of fundamentalists or the almost indefinable area loosely referred to as Evangelical – countless independent churches which are self-appointed and autonomous. As to fundamentalism in religions other than Christianity, all the main religions of the world have, like Christianity, countless branches, with some branches despising another branch with the same intensity that one branch of Christianity will despise certain other branches. So where do we go from here? The answer seems to be a bit of lateral thinking and to formulate a definition which does not name any religion at all but rather looks at the human actions involved, to assess what by any reasonable judgement would be considered unacceptable in society.
So let us forget anything about things like believing in the inerrancy of any particular scripture or a belief that by singing a lullaby to a carrot on Tuesday nights you would upon death enter paradise, and put forward the proposition that fundamentalism is: 1. Any religious association that will jointly or singularly take any action to the prejudice of any member of that association who explores, associates with or joins any other religious association. 2. Any religious association that will jointly or singularly use either physical, economic, or mental coercion upon any person or persons to join their association. 3. Any religious association that will jointly or singularly carry out any acts to the physical, economic or mental prejudice of any other association or member of such an association for whatever reason, except in the course of lawful defence to a previous unlawful attack.
I cannot pretend that this definition is the best one could ever formulate. However it is a start and I firmly believe it is the correct approach to making a definition. Yes, number 3 leaves plenty of scope for argument and possibly, to a lesser degree, both 1 and 2. However there are a lot more (probably all of them) intelligent people than I in the Sea of Faith and presumably the editor is hoping for a sackful of letters taking the definition further.
A phrase spoken from the platform at the 2004 Sheffield conference was ‘fundamentalism is evil’. I cannot be certain that I was the first person vigorously to nod agreement for when I had finished my nod a glance around the hall appeared to endorse my agreement. I think I also heard more than a few ‘hear hears’. Of one thing is certain, from which we cannot back down: we cannot believe that ‘fundamentalism is evil’ until each and every one of us that says it, knows what we are talking about.
Robin Smart is a member of SoF Steering Committee.