RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM Origins and development of religious fundamentalism

RELIGIOUS FUNDAMENTALISM

Origins and development of religious fundamentalism Religious fundamentalism: • is a creature of the modern age, despite its resistance to modernization. • seems to appear in troubled societies undergoing crises of identity. • is affected by processes of secularization, postcolonialism and globalization. • can be found in certain sects of all major religions.

Principles of religious fundamentalism Religious fundamentalism is as much an ideology as it is a style of politics. It tends to recognize certain principles as essential truths, and is characterised as having the following values: • • religion as politics the fundamentalist impulse anti-modernisation militancy

The family of fundamentalists • Although all religions have spawned fundamentalism, Islam and Protestant Christianity are most prone, as both hold that believers have direct access to spiritual wisdom. • Each fundamentalist group is conditioned by the social, political and economic structures of where they have emerged. • Different groups associate themselves with different political causes.

Religious fundamentalism in the global age • Religions have often had a global orientation, particularly those spread as a tool of colonialism. • Religions that embrace evangelicalism often have a stronger global orientation. • There is little doubt that accelerated globalization has inspired fundamentalism, but this process may ultimately prove to also be the antidote to fundamentalism.