RELIGIOUS FREEDOM OR RELIGIOUS
FUNDAMENTALISM?
This year, 2007, we
are celebrating thirty years of IRLA Congresses. I was privileged to have been
involved in organizing the first such congress in
The most visible religious
liberty enemy thirty years ago appeared to be totalitarian communism. A decade
or so earlier, the Roman Catholic Church at Vatican II had officially accepted
the concept of religious liberty for all people. At that time the word
“integrism” appeared, referring to opposition to religious change in general
and, more specifically, to religious liberty. “Fundamentalism” was hardly
mentioned in religious liberty circles.
In assigning me my
topic, the word or has been placed
between religious freedom and religious fundamentalism, implying quite rightly
that freedom and fundamentalism are mutually antagonistic or even largely exclusive.
And yet, historically,
the word fundamental has sounded positive and trustworthy. When we speak of the
fundamentals of a situation, policy, or even religion, we try to refer to its basic
nature or ethos, that which characterizes a concept or belief , gives it
meaning, and without which there is really no stability and bed-rock foundation
on which to stand and build a structure, including freedom.
However, for some
years now, the related term, fundamentalism, has taken a turn in, what I would
call, a sinister direction, away from freedom to think, to create the new,
toward wearing a confining—not to say paralyzing—ideological strait-jacket.
When dealing with religion, the intellectual fundamentalist corset becomes even
more strait-laced!
Originally,
fundamentalism began to be used in the
Since then, it has
become clear that the term fundamentalism
has considerably shifted its denotation. Today, religious fundamentalism has
penetrated all major religions, the most obvious being Islam, and has become a
dangerous world-wide phenomenon. It is essentially a reaction, at times
violent, against most things “modern”, including democracy, and repudiating
“secularization”.
Most human societies
in our world today are generally favorable to change and pluralization. The
fundamentalist, in contrast, is opposed to change in general, and more
specifically, to pluralism of world-views. He wants one view--always his own
view—to have exclusive validity, and therefore domination and control. His
world-view or religion protests, even with anger and violence, against the
sweeping changes that have already overwhelmed some societies or threaten to do
so. Fundamentalism, as an ideological organizing system of thinking , expresses
resentment against the secularization of
society, with its resulting moral permissiveness and amoral consumer-oriented
materialism and globalization.
The cumulative
effects, directly or often indirectly, of the 18th century
Enlightenment, the American, French, and Russian political Revolutions, and the
scientific revolution of the past couple of centuries, have resulted in
diminished attention being paid, especially in the industrialized West, to
moral and ultimate issues, such as sin, salvation,
afterlife. The focus has shifted more and more to gaining the most now from
concrete material opportunities. The trend, at least in theory, if not always
in practice, is toward toleration and freedom, to “live and let live”, favoring
flexibility in dealing with socio-political and cultural issues.
Religious
fundamentalism, it seems to me, is in its essence not a doctrinal issue, but a
basic outlook directed toward the current world order, protesting, it would
appear, against laissez-faire societies. The resulting protest becomes often
vehement, inflexible, pitiless opposition to anything new, and tramples on the
human rights of the exponents of different opinions and progressive change.
Fundamentalism makes its case not only in the media, but in blood every day,
from misguided zealots who blow up abortion clinics in the name of Jesus, to
doctrinaire fanatics who blow up peaceful villagers or city dwellers in the
name of Allah.
Despite all the
differences of creed and kind, observers can point to some consistent threads
running through the tapestry of fundamentalism: the quest for purity and
perfection, the search for absolute certainty, tradition and authenticity, and
the predilection for a total, global world view that controls, or at least
strongly impacts all aspects of life. The attention it gives to tradition and
the past is often an illusory attempt to “restore” that which historically
never really happened nor existed. This false dream characterizes many
expressions of fundamentalism. It is wrong to idealize the past, as though life
in the distant past was wonderful, with everyone healthy, well-fed, sober,
moral, justly treated, free, happy, and at peace.
The paradox of the
modern world is that while scientific standards are becoming more and more
precise and demands for objectivity ring in our ears, moral standards are
becoming vaguer, more situational, and increasingly imprecise. The breakdown
of traditional morality, followed by
growing social permissiveness, and the economic and cultural exploitation of
One key reason for the
growth of contemporary fundamentalism is marginalization.
This occurs when any group—by race, ethnicity, language, religion or economic
status—is made to feel irrelevant to decision-making and feels excluded from
participation in society. This is increasingly the case with the poor in
today’s world. The speed of travel and almost
instant worldwide communication have placed the poverty, misery, and
unequal social structures of whole groups of people in close proximity to
wealth and special privilege. Fundamentalism can then become attractive as a
form of protest by those who feel hopelessly marginalized and exploited.
An increasing number
of people groups feel “out of the loop”. Having won independence and
nationhood, many citizens of younger nation states hunger for the esteem they
believed would come with national identity. They feel humiliated by economic,
cultural, and occasionally military hegemony exerted over them by more powerful
states. The resentment of the marginalized may well be the most prolific
breeding stable for fundamentalism, and tends to push religious liberty to the
back-burner.
It would appear that
many religious fundamentalists view the human rights oriented secular nation
both as a danger and failure. They say, it has not achieved social justice. It
has not provided family stability, sobriety, respect, and honor. Often the
result, or at least the reality, of secular national government appears to be
greatly increased crime and divorce rates, drug culture, pornography,
homosexuality, and rampant corruption in business and political life. With this
in mind, for the fundamentalist, religious liberty and political democracy,
become of little importance, a non-essential luxury.
Though we might agree
with some of the fundamentalist critique, I believe that their “medicine” is
worse than the “sickness”! There is, as already indicated, an element of
mythology and historical blindness in the fundamentalist thinking and solution.
While its adherents are basically against change, they do favor one selected
change: going back to the “golden age” of tradition and perfection. This going
back can vary a great deal: Fundamentalist Muslims want to go back about a
thousand years, for Christians “going back “ can vary greatly—to the nineteenth
century, to the so called united Christendom of the Middle Ages, to the time of the church fathers, or to the first
century. Some fundamentalist Jews dream of the past theocratic period and
temple.
Fundamentalists seek
in their own various ways to “traditionalize”, to go back to the past, the
theology of the pioneers, the legendary heroism of the Teutonic knights, the
fortitude of the Voortrekkers in southern
Many fundamentalists
seek one major reactive change: they want to place their religious views at the
center of life in the home, government, courts, media, schools, even the
military—in short, everywhere. Thus, religious fundamentalists today have both backward looking world views, and a
present mind-set. The latter tends to be inflexible, and requires everybody
to march in lock-step to the required religious tune. And woe unto him who does
not!
There seems to be in
religious fundamentalism an almost inevitable progression (though probably
“regression” might be a more accurate term) toward religious extremism,
disregard of human rights and religious liberty, and ending up in totalitarian
alliance of religion and state.
Fundamentalism does
have its complexities and paradoxes, It can be divergent and even move in
contradictory ways. Any day’s newscasts can show that fundamentalists can act,
or react, in different, even diametrically opposite ways. Fundamentalists can
very well hate and fight other fundamentalists. That is part of the picture.
While many believers
may share with fundamentalists a “high view “of Scripture, it seems that
religious fundamentalists tend to quote their Scriptures selectively, be it the
Torah, the Bible, the Quran. They often use an out-of-context proof-text
approach. Many devout fundamentalists, without much reflection, take passages
and apply them simplistically, without seeing the entire perspective, to very
different present-day situations. Some fundamentalists even rationalize extreme
interpretations of their Scriptures in order to justify the suppression of
other opinions, to support violence and terror, and proclaim the “glory of
suicide martyrdom” that kills innocent people.
From a Christian
perspective, God inspires His prophets, not in order to provide support for
intolerance and rigid, implacable dogmatism leading to persecution, but rather to give spiritual inspiration, hope,
the gift of love, and reasoned guidance. The truth that comes from God through
His chosen messengers leads to salvation, and, in the words of Jesus, “makes
you free indeed”. Yes, humanity is involved in a “cosmic war”, where salvation
and eternal life are at stake. But, there is no physical war—no conquest, no
jihad, no crusade, no poisoning of peoples’ minds with hate, no extermination
struggle between believer and infidel, but a spiritual contention between truth
and error. There is no place for obstinate, merciless, violent intransigence,
and harsh punishments. All such human-to-human conflicts are ultimately
counterfeit controversies, distractions from the spiritual struggle for hearts
and minds.
The fundamentalist
mindset is finally unacceptable, because in conflict with the dignity of the
human person, a free moral agent with the right to be committed to his or her
beliefs and convictions. There is, as I see it, in fundamentalism a built-in
resistance to freedom, reason, learning, and creativity. It opposes itself to
the God who gave us all these gifts. Fundamentalism, wherever found, reveals
its taste for bigotry, fanaticism, rigidity, and exclusiveness at a time when
the world is crying out for bridge-builders and peacemakers. It revels in
control, and justifies its refusal to dialog and learn, by its suspicions of
other opinions and other faiths. I must reject religious fundamentalism because
it feeds “religious hatred” and starves religious freedom. While seeking to
preserve the truth about God, fundamentalism ultimately gives a terribly
distorted view of God’s character. Religious fundamentalism is in contradiction
with a God of love and freedom.
Sixth IRLA World Congress