Fundamentalism in Comparative Perspective Read Online Free PDF Page A

why else point to "fundamentals"? Of course, most fundamentalists might think of the heritage as a "package deal," and may argue that they cannot yield on even a small point lest a larger one be compromised. Yet they are selective about what from the past must be seen and insisted upon as fundamental.
Catholicism is an elaborate and intricate system of belief and behavior patterns and elements. The Catholic fundamentalist may

 

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overlook the grand fundamentals such as the Trinity, or this or that Christological view. She will instead select items that will "stand out," such as mass in Latin, opposition to women priests, optional clerical celibacy, or support for papal dismissals of "artificial birth control." These selective retrievals issue in the application of the term ''fundamentalist."
So it is also with American Protestants, on whose soil the self-chosen term first prospered. When challenged by "modernity" outside Protestantism and "modernism" (e.g., biblical criticism, evolutionary thought in the seminaries) the party that called itself "fundamentalist" did not reach back toor, of course, denycentral teachings such as the doctrine of the Trinity of the Chalcedonian formula of Christology. It rarely mentioned the sacraments, over which the movement was itself divided and where it had to allow diversity. It chose a different set of teachings and assigned them "fundamental'' status. This move includes at least two characteristic features, our next two fundamental points.
6. Fundamentalists seek authority. This may reside in exaggerated views of hierarchical authority, such as papal infallibility. It may refer to a law book, or a story, or a classic event. Almost always there will be an insistence on an authoritative set of texts, a canon that is an inerrant utterance of the final truth about reality. Without such an assured, specifiable authority as that provided by shari'a or "the inerrant Bible," it would be difficult to hold a movement together, to ward off outsiders, or to have a good argument. While the text is usually regarded as sacred, secular philosophies such as Marxism are able to produce movements of selective retrieval which appeal to authoritative texts as a way to start and sometimes finish arguments.
7. The other common feature of the fundamental insistences, be they doctrinal, practical, behavioral, or cultural, is that they offend, they "cause scandal." The Greek word for offense is skandalon, which evokes the idea of tripping or trapping. Fundamentalist teachings or insistences are chosen and designed to "trap" those who would evade them, to "trip" those who would transgress them. They are not chosen in order to commend the movement to the outside world.
Thus, when television cameras close in on Iranians who stone an

 

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adulterous couple or sever the hand of the guilty pickpocket after trial, "outsiders" feel revulsion and alienation. They are supposed to. When Protestant fundamentalist denominations fight on camera over the "literal" saga of the prophet Jonah being eaten by a great fish, which spews him up days later, the outsider laughs and scorns, and one would expect public relations' experts within the movement to minimize the scandal of the teaching. Instead, these experts want the larger public exposed to such a teaching.
One might use the image of the castle. One needs thick walls, fastnesses, a "keep" for the people within. One needs towers and battlements from which to try to keep others out, or drawbridges over which the party within can make forays to clear space and keep enemies at a distance. And there must be a moat, into which those who would transgress from either direction would sink.
8. Let us talk about the moat. Fundamentalisms resist ambiguity and ambivalence. You have to be "this" or "that." To borrow from sectarian philosophy or theology, there is a temptation even in cultures that do not know the name to be ''Manichaean." This means that the universe is