Fundamentalism Around the World–What’s Really Behind It?
September 20, 2007 12:53 pm Articles by Henry Munson Available Online, FundamentalismMunson, Fundamentalism Around the World–What’s Really Behind It? -Britannica Blog, Nov. 17, 2006
Fundamentalism reflects moral outrage at the violation of traditional religious values, but can it also articulate nationalistic and social grievances as well?
Fundamentalism, as I discuss in my new entry on the subject for Encyclopaedia Britannica, is a type of militantly conservative religious movement characterized by the advocacy of strict conformity to sacred texts and a moral code ostensibly based on them. It existed long before the word did. One could speak of the Maccabean revolt of the second century B.C.E. as having a fundamentalist impulse insofar as it insisted on strict conformity to the Torah and Jewish religious law. Similarly, Calvin’s 16th-century Genevan polity and 17-century Puritanism could be called fundamentalist insofar as they insisted on strict conformity to the Bible and a moral code based on it.