Fundamentalists to the Right, Left and Middle...

by Stephen Schoenhoff

Recent increases in public displays of socialism, it seems, are giving corresponding rise once again to pejorative use of the word "fundamentalist" to describe Christians. While the principle inventors of the term, rags like the New Yorker or the New York Times, seem now to rather eschew its use, nearly everyone else in the blogosphere from probloggers to commenters wield the word with ever-increasing fervor and conviction. In the current revolutionary climate, beware he who dares let his faith out the door with him in the mornings!

The long term trend is easily verified by a quick search of NYTimes.com or Google News followed by an open google or two. The current meaning becomes clear when you hit Wikipedia, already the universal definitions goto for the e-generation. Evidence this paragraph from Wikipedia's entry on "Fundamentalism":

Many scholars see most forms of fundamentalism as having similar traits. This is especially obvious if modernity, secularism or an atheistic perspective is adopted as the norm, against which these varieties of traditionalism or supernaturalism are compared. From such a perspective, Peter Huff wrote in the International Journal on World Peace:

According to Antoun, fundamentalists in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, despite their doctrinal and practical differences, are united by a common worldview which anchors all of life in the authority of the sacred and a shared ethos that expresses itself through outrage at the pace and extent of modern secularization.

Far from providing reliable, unbiased knowledge, this stuff reads like the 20th century propaganda that it is. Note the carefully loaded language. “Many scholars...” How many exactly, one can't help but wonder. Then the terms "traditionalism" and "supernaturalism" are glibly equated with Judaism, Christianity and Islam. This disrespect is followed smoothly by a quote clearly selected to create an association with international world peace. i.e. The self-evident reasonableness of adopting "modernity, secularism, or an atheistic perspective ... as the norm" is broadly implied. I mean, who isn’t for world peace after all (international world peace no less)? Clearly the worst of all evils is to be a fundamentalist.

Let us ignore for the moment the egregious way in which this approach brutally levels the real and differing tenets of each of these "traditionalist," "supernaturalist" faiths. Turning the whole notion on its head, one might write in some international journal of world righteousness and reconciliation that there are fundamentalists in modernism, secularism, atheism, socialism or other expressions of philosophical materialism as well. One might go on to say that despite their doctrinal and practical differences, they are united by a common worldview which anchors all of life in the primacy of the material, denies the relevance of the spiritual and shares an ethos of outrage at the reluctance of people of faith to submit to the secular State and abandon their traditional liberties.

Absurdities abound. It seems a far more logical, not to mention egalitarian and humane use of the word to simply allow it to mean what it means. Fundament is another word for foundation; by natural linguistic extension, a fundamentalist believes foundations come first. On this basis then, as a right-handed fundamentalist cellist, I know that no matter how intricate and advanced the virtuosity required by any given composition, I must stay close to the fundamentals of cello technique or my audience will suffer. Any writer or photographer worth their salt would be a professional fundamentalist. Certainly builders believe in foundations first. The best athletes, attorneys, architects and anesthesiologists all understand the importance of the fundamentals of their game.

But alas, with nary a free thinking hesitancy, "religious fundamentalist" is slung here, there and everywhere as an epithet loaded with pejorative taint whose discharge so often aimed at American Christians is usually accompanied with kneejerk reliability by the equally dreaded descriptor "right wing". "Fundamentalist extremist" is a synonym for "terrorist," pretty much a synonym for "islamic fundamentalist," nearly always subconsciously equated with "muslim." Look the word up online and modern dictionaries will inform you blandly that fundamentalism is either (a) "a form of Protestant Christianity" or (b) "strict maintenance of the ... doctrines of any religion or ideology, notably Islam." (www.answers.com/fundamentalism)

Some form of the "...or ideology,..." in that last quote is usually a minor sidenote in most definitions of fundamentalism, a guilty nod to common sense perhaps. The typical first definition, that of Fundamentalism as a dangerous form of low church Protestantism in particular and religion in general is pushed hard in nearly every English dictionary published since the 1930s. A search of Samuel Johnson's 1828 Dictionary of the English Language yields no such word as "fundamentalist" or "fundamentalism" and the word "fundamental" is defined as "serving for the foundation; that upon which the rest is built; essential; important," hardly, it would seem, a quality worthy of such universal partisan contempt. Likewise a perusal of Noah Webster's 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language will find no such word as "fundamentalist" and besides a defintion of the word "fundamental" that is similar to Johnson's adds this meaning, "a leading or primary principle, rule, law or article which serves as the groundwork of a system."

It seems to me that based purely, fundamentally if you will, on the unadulterated etymology of the word, anyone who strives passionately to achieve excellence or even just competence in any field at all is a fundamentalist. Anyone who does anything systematically must surely be a fundamentalist if fundamentals are the primary principles that serve as the groundwork of a system. Even those who do not do things systematically but do them nonetheless must start somewhere, and are therefore fundamentalists by default.

Ah, you say, I've read the whole Wikipedia article on Fundamentalism, what of the Fundamentalists of the Scopes Trial? Certainly, the famous "Monkey Trial" is fundamental to the evolution of American usage of the word. It marked the onset in earnest of that long cold-blooded feud between the Dawkinses and Falwells of the world, at least as charicaturized in the political cartoons of the 20th century's fourth estate. Talk about fundamentalist conservativism--for more than three quarters of a century the intellectual clones of those early media secularists have been trying to hold to the same line. Using the word "fundamentalist" the way they did from the Scopes trial onward was unfair, mean-spirited and ideologically-driven then. Now it's merely shrill and tired.

In the egalitarian spirit of our times, in the name of progress, in the name of humanity, in the name of logic for the love of Pete, I say enough of these intellectual pretensions. Some of us believe in God; others believe only in what they do in this life. But if any of us strive to build on the first things we deem to be true, whether or not in other respects we stand to the left, right or middle of center, we are fundamentalists, pure and simple.