11.1.7 A Goal: To Transform the Wider Society

We noted earlier that the religious identity is the supreme commitment of the fundamentalist. And from their point of view, that identity ought to also be the supreme commitment of the entire society. Thus, while fundamentalists may inhabit and promote an ‘enclave culture,’ their ultimate goal is to transform the wider society so that its norms, beliefs, practices, institutions, and laws conform to those of the religious identity. This is often understood to be the restoration of a state of affairs that once held true but has been lost or degraded with the spread of modernity (Armstrong, 2001: xi; Marty and Appleby, 1995: 426-429).

This transformative agenda is probably the most important theme that carries religious fundamentalism beyond a personal belief system and into the realm of political ideology proper. As we saw in Chapter 1, a political ideology always involves a description of the social world, an evaluation of it, and a program of change. Religious fundamentalism as a political ideology – rather than as a purely theological position – describes society as marked by the spread of beliefs and practices that sideline or contradict the religious identity; assesses this state of affairs as unacceptable; and actively strives to roll back this condition by ‘restoring’ the religious identity to its rightful place as the supreme commitment of the entire society. In some cases, this goes as far as demanding a theocracy (i.e., rule by clerics). But it often takes the less extreme form of insisting that the religious identity be given a privileged place in a society’s institutions and culture and that those occupying positions of power in our society endorse and reinforce that privilege.