What is Fundamentalism?
PART ONE When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what 1 choose it to mean neither more nor less. Lewis Carol. In this chapter we shall look into the history of the term “Fundamentalism”. We have used it thus far as a synonym for Evangelicalism, because, whether the critics know it or not, it is Evangelicalism that they are attacking under this name. But the title is one which most British Evangelicals have always declined. However, as we have seen, it is currently used in very varied senses. I have yet to meet two fundamentalists who can agree on an exact definition of fundamentalism, wrote a correspondent in The Times, and the same must be said of antifundamentalists too. Remembering these facts, we must now try to decide whether the use of the word by either side in this debate is really helpful. ORIGINS OF THE TERM There is no mystery as to what the term meant when it was first coined. It was the title taken by a group of American Evangelical
Fundamentalism is the strict adherence to a set of beliefs, in most cases religious. The term is often applied to certain sects of Christianity, but is common to most World Religions. Often, fundamentalism is referred to in a derogatory way and is paired with extremism and its negative associations. Fundamentalists do no find their beliefs extreme, but rather basic or fundamental. In Christianity, most fundamentalists are those who support a strict reading and following of Biblical texts. Churches considered to practice fundamentalism are those that tend to read most biblical texts as the undisputed word of God, which cannot be negotiated or watered down, as they claim many modern versions of Christianity do. Such churches exist in most Christian sects and may be promoted as “back to the basic” or “bible-based” churches. As the Bible is the source of God’s word, there can be no argument in fundamentalism for disputation of the Word. Criticisms levied against Christian fundamentalism cl
Fundamentalism has become a much-used term today—in politics and in the academia. And there are in vogue various types of the so-called fundamentalists—political, religious and cultural. But before cataloguing these various tribes of fundamentalists, it is important to clarify what precisely is meant by fundamentalism. The Oxford English Dictionary says the term, fundamental, pertains to “the basis or groundwork, going to the root of the matter”. But the word “fundamentalism” has a particularly Christian connotation which, according to the dictionary, is: The strict maintenance of traditional orthodox religious beliefs or doctrines especially belief in the inerrancy of Scripture and literal acceptance of the creeds as fundamentals of Protestant Christianity. The BBC English Dictionary is more to the point: Fundamentalism is belief in the original form of a religion, without accepting any later ideas. The context in which the term has been coined is, therefore, specially Christian. Foll
” Answer: The word fundamentalism is somewhat hard to define, and there are many definitions on the Internet with little in common with one another. The word is used both as an adjective (e.g., fundamental Islamist) and as a noun (e.g., the Fundamentalist movement). The adjective is used to describe any religious impulse that adheres to its basic tenets, often in a authoritarian way without making a distinction between church and state. In modern times this adjective is often used in a derogatory sense. This article will deal with the Fundamentalist movement found in Christian Protestantism during the 20th century. The Fundamentalist movement had its roots at Princeton Theological Seminary by graduates from that institution. The word was first used in association with religion when two wealthy church laymen commissioned ninety-seven conservative church leaders from all over the western world to write 12 volumes on the basic tenets of the Christian faith. They then published these writi
The spectre of “fundamentalism” is haunting Europe. In every faith-tinged controversy, from the Danish cartoons to the French hijab, from British multiculturalism to Dutch language-rules, the word and the idea are wielded with vigour though often without discrimination. Perhaps it is time to step back from such immediate arguments and ask what fundamentalism (particularly religious fundamentalism) is. At first sight it may seem evident that fundamentalism amounts to little more than a militant form of piety that leads to a rebellion against modern secularism. But as Malise Ruthven explores in his study of the topic (which traces the first use of the term to evangelical Christians in the United States in the 1920s), and as several openDemocracy writers (Gilles Kepel, Faisal Devji, Fred Halliday, and Sami Zubaida among them) point out, religious fundamentalisms are a very “modern” phenomenon. They operate to facilitate an engagement with modernity, and are thoroughly intertwined with sec
