11.1.8 A Working Model for Religious Fundamentalism

These seven principles give us a working model of ‘religious fundamentalism’ as a political ideology. When discussing this, however, it is important to keep two important qualifiers in mind:

(a) Not all religious believers are religious fundamentalists. Many believers approach their religious identity more as a site of community and/or ritual than dogma. Others see the truths of a religious tradition as closer to the truths we find in poetry or literature than those we expect from, say, investigative journalism or rigorous historical writing. These ways of thinking bear little connection to the ‘family resemblances’ we outline above.

(b) Even those who are religious fundamentalists do not always make a political project out of their faith position. Therefore, fundamentalism in itself is not necessarily a political ideology. One can hew to a fundamentalist theology – say, the idea that a religious text is literally, factually true – while being fully prepared to live in a diverse society in which many different belief systems co-exist and in which political and social institutions do not reflect this belief system. In other words, a religious fundamentalist can accept living in a broadly secular society and not strive to transform it. This would rule out, at a minimum, their adhering to principles (1) and (7) from our list above.

Fundamentalisms abound. There are Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, and even Buddhist variants. The remainder of this chapter, however, takes a closer look at what are arguably the two most influential expressions of religious fundamentalism as a political ideology in the world today: the Christian right and Islamism.