Fundamentalist Tendencies Research Articles

Transformational Dialogue and Christian Identity in a Multi-Religious Context: Nigeria in Focus

Dialogue within a multi-religious context presupposes the recognition of the many identities that are involved in mutual encounter and exchange. The understanding, shape or interpretation of each identity plays a critical role in the nature of the dialogical process as well as the outcome of the dialogue itself. This article re-assesses the Christian identity in the dialogue between Christians and Muslims, with a focus on how this plays out in the Nigerian context. It explores how a distinctive African worldview can shape the Christian identity towards an increased relationality, solidarity, and interdependence. Furthermore, the article critically investigates fundamentalist tendencies within Nigerian Christianity, and finally addresses how ‘a personalist approach’ could foster better intra- and inter-religious encounters in Nigeria in a manner that preserves identity while remaining open towards the other (Christian or religious).

Evangelical “Others” in Ulster, 1859–1912: Social Profile, Unionist Politics, and “Fundamentalism”

AbstractThis article considers the existence of a distinctive form of fundamentalism in the northern-Irish province of Ulster. It does so by examining the Protestant minorities that grew significantly in the decades after the Ulster revival of 1859. These evangelical others are important because their members were more likely to have fundamentalist tendencies than those who belonged to the main Protestant churches. The existing scholarship on fundamentalism in Northern Ireland focuses on Ian Paisley (1926–2014), who was a life-long adversary of Irish republican separatism and a self-identified fundamentalist. Yet, the focus on Paisley draws attention away from the potential origin of fundamentalism in the early twentieth century that is associated with religious revival in the early 1920s and the heresy trial of a “modernist” Presbyterian professor in 1927. George Marsden's classic study defined fundamentalism as an American phenomenon, yet, with Paisley and developments in the 1920s in mind, he noted that “Ulster appears to be an exception.”1 To what extent was that true? Was there a constituency of potential fundamentalists in the north of Ireland in the early twentieth century? If there was, did the social and political circumstances of the region and period produce a distinctive Ulster variety of fundamentalism?

SOME FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEMS WITH FUNDAMENTALISM: A LUTHERAN PERSPECTIVE

When the word fundamentalism appears in any form of written, oral, or visual media, it generally evokes negative reactions. Often associated with fanaticism, fundamentalism is known for religious commitment taken to its extreme. It is frequently stated that fundamentalists are people who resort to violence and who simply cannot appeal to reason or democratic ideas. This is an oversimplification. It is also wrongly assumed that fundamentalism is found solely in other religions, not Christianity. Fundamentalism and fundamentalist tendencies – although nuanced – are alive and thriving in Christianity as well.

Fundamentality or fundamentalism? About some aspects of higher education in Russia and terminology

The article is devoted to the problem of fundamentalism and the crisis of the education system in Russia. The authors demonstrate the subjective perception of the crisis of education either as a public institution in general or as a specific education system in specific historical circumstances. The study aims to establish or refute the existence of fundamentalist tendencies in the contemporary Russian educational discourse, as well as to identify the validity of using the term “fundamentalism” with regard to the philosophy of education and pedagogy. The research methods included case studies, comparative textual analysis, as well as historical-cultural and comparative methods. The authors note that the term “fundamentalism” was coined in science at the end of the 19th century. It had a completely different meaning, namely, a literal interpretation of a religious text within the framework of a particular tradition. The authors analyze a set of specific situations associated at first glance with the erroneous use of the term “fundamentalism” in Russian scientific articles to mean a generalization of the fundamental and academic nature of education, as well as substantiate the attitude according to which the application of this characteristic is not erroneous at all, but is a manifestation of some features of a specific form of fundamentalism, namely, academic fundamentalism.

The Phenomenon of Conscience in Social Work

The Phenomenon of Conscience in Social Work

Religion: A Source of Fundamentalism or A Safeguard Against It?

This article contributes to critical reflection on the political study approach towards the relations between religion and fundamentalism. In the context of post-secularism, in which the cognitive and moral role of religion for politics is quite widely recognised, the aim is to discuss three hypotheses. The first one argues that, contrary to what the majority of the subject’s literature maintains, fundamentalism is not only a strictly religious phenomenon, but a specific attitude, able to evolve equally well on both religious and secular foundations. The second one implies that secularisation encourages, at least to an equal degree, both profane and religious fundamentalist tendencies. The third thesis asserts that religion, in its nature, constitutes a potential safeguard against fundamentalism. In the course of analysis, the pertinence of the above hypotheses are generally demonstrated. However, it is also indicated that the third point constitutes a mid-range theorem, accurately describing the contemporary specificity of Christianity, and especially Catholicism.

Fundamentalist mindset

ABSTRACTFundamentalism has increasingly become a part of the political discourse in western countries and is to a large degree associated Islamic Jihadism. Fundamentalism has, however, been a concern in all religions, especially in Christianity where the term has its origin more than 100 years ago. Fundamentalism is also a concern in professional organisations and this paper starts with a discussion of the relation between fundaments and fundamentalist tendencies in psychoanalysis. This is then related to fundamentalism on a larger scale in religious and political contexts. A central question is how adherence to fundamentals, understood as basic principles for a profession or a religious-political movement, may develop into fundamentalism and how this again may develop into more violent forms. It is argued that fundamentalism develops in historical and societal contexts that involve oppression, atrocities and suffering that can set in motion unconscious processes and that these can attain expression and form in religious–political ideologies. These ideologies can give solutions by among others strengthening societal division and splitting and by identifying scapegoats. Psychoanalytic understanding of mass psychology and unconscious processes at group levels are developed to understand present Islamic and other forms of fundamentalist movements in the European context.

Interpretation und Bündnis. Anregungen von Klaus Heinrich und Gianni Vattimo für eine nicht-fundamentalistische Re-Interpretation des christlichen Narrativs

This article asks for the genuine resources of the Christian narrative against fundamentalist tendencies within (Christian) religion. It presupposes that critical reflection on religion and reflection within religion cannot be separated from each other: Critique of Religions and illumination processes within them must always be combined. In the first chapter I examine three types of fundamentalism according to three main questions highlighted by the philosopher Klaus Heinrich concerning identity, language, and self-destruction. In the second chapter, I refer to these questions by looking at important motives of Gianni Vattimo’s re-interpretation of Christianity. In the last chapter I ask whether the motives picked up in Heinrich and Vattimo can find their centre within the biblical term covenant.

Interpretation und Bündnis

Abstract This article asks for the genuine resources of the Christian narrative against fundamentalist tendencies within (Christian) religion. It presupposes that critical reflection on religion and reflection within religion cannot be separated from each other: Critique of religions and illumination processes within them must always be combined. In the first chapter I examine three types of fundamentalism according to three main questions highlighted by the philosopher Klaus Heinrich concerning identity, language, and selfdestruction. In the second chapter, I refer to these questions by looking at important motives of Gianni Vattimo!s re-interpretation of Christianity. In the last chapter I ask whether the motives picked up in Heinrich and Vattimo can find their centre within the biblical term covenant.

Framing the Islamic State on Al Jazeera English and the BBC websites

Abstract This study examines the media coverage of the Islamic State (IS) currently vying to establish a caliphate in the Middle East. The websites of Al Jazeera English (AJE) and the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) were scrutinized in order to determine how they framed IS. This study suggests eight framing devices to this media coverage: the Islamic fundamentalist; religious differences/intolerance; crimes against humanity; the aggressive nature of IS; the aggressive nature of coalition forces; a desire for peace; religious tolerance; and humanitarian. Results suggested that both AJE and the BBC frame IS as an aggressive entity with fundamentalist tendencies, whose main agenda centres on fighting against those who stand in its way. The study also highlights how the coalition forces are similarly framed as having an aggressive nature, although this aggressiveness is warranted, since they are ‘the forces of good fighting against evil’. Results also suggest that IS is framed as an extremist organization that exhibits considerable religious intolerance. Coverage by AJE and the BBC also tended to humanize the victims and to dehumanize those who were victimized.

Zombie Alleluias: Learning to Live in the Space Between Worlds

This essay was delivered as the Baer Seminar on Pastoral Care at an alumni/ae reunion of Princeton Theological Seminary on October 22, 2013, and at a Princeton Seminary alumni/ae gathering at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, on February 10, 2014. It considers an increasing fascination with zombies in recent American cultural life as a means by which individuals attempt to cope with anxieties related to the rise of political and religious extremism in the post-9/11 landscape. Building on Freud’s recognition of fundamentalist tendencies within the human psyche and his sense that modern persons are living psychologically “beyond their means,” it calls for an empathic embrace of the complexities of what Donald Capps deems the “ecumenical self” as a path toward engaging personal threats within and without.

‘FUNDAMENTALISM IN AFRICAN TRADITIONAL RELIGION’: A REFLECTION ON SOME POINTS FOR CONSIDERATION

This article explores the possibility that, although there is no full-blown ‘African fundamentalism’, certain fundamentalist tendencies can be detected among adherents of African Traditional Religion. After a summary of typical features of ATR, two area are identified within which fundamentalist tendencies are manifested: the family or clan and public debates driven by (pan-)African nationalist movements or ethnic nationalism. In the latter case the tendencies are often seen purely political, but it is argued that in the African context there is no clear distinction between religion, culture and politics. Moreover, the colonial heritage colours the way in which fundamentalist tendencies are expressed in Africa. In each case various examples are given and assessed to determine whether the tendencies can be called fundamentalist. Finally, the question is asked whether there can be fundamentalism without a scripture. It is suggested that, since ATR has no scriptures, ancestors take the role of ultimate authority.

On procreating today

This work reflects on the suffering and difficulties that men and women often experience during the process of procreation, beginning with the decision to suspend the use of contraception. The shared project that a child represents involves difficulties that are also a consequence of the culture in which we live: subject to early tests, ultrasound scans and so on, a planned pregnancy is dominated, throughout its development, by the secondary process of monitoring. A delay in conception, at times deriving from intolerance towards a body that does not immediately fulfil one’s own desires, sets in motion the diagnostic inquiry. During this time, while the long‐awaited moment of conception is further delayed, the desire for a son/daughter changes in quality and intensity. In a substantial number of cases, infertility remains unexplained, a situation in turn characterized by the fear that not knowing implies. Although the excessively simplistic and limited notion of psychogenic infertility has faded, a residue of unexpressed horror, difficult to frame even in analysis, persists in the couple. The end of the diagnostic inquiry means that assisted conception must be eventually faced. Fortunately, nowadays in psychoanalytic culture the fundamentalist tendencies that, in the past, led to forecasts of catastrophe, have subsided. Yet this remains a highly problematic area with many questions and few answers.

Sacrificing the Career or the Family?

This article addresses the question of women's agency in traditionalist religion, through a study of self-narratives by women in the Orthodox Jewish community of Antwerp, Belgium. Women who study or work outside the boundaries of their community were interviewed about their experiences in negotiating gender ideologies by moving in and between the `secular' and `religious' spaces of higher education, work and home. Various subject positions emerged in terms of either rejecting, separating or reconciling dominant community norms regarding women's proper role with personal trajectories of self-realization and individual autonomy. On the one hand, the results confirm the possibility of women's agency within religious-traditionalist settings and in that sense subscribe to some recent feminist theoretical challenges to secularism. However, it is argued that the younger generation faces more restrictions in negotiating religious and secular gender-role expectations in the Antwerp context. Their prospects depend on the dynamic between global fundamentalist tendencies and local liberal state policies of multicultural accommodation.

Systemy relacji między państwem a kościołami i związkami wyznaniowymi

The systems and models of relationship which are presented lead to a unanimous conclusion that the present globalizing world leaves no room for intolerance; however, the integrist and fundamentalist tendencies keep reviving. The concept of civic society, the state of law, the standards of the EU and Council of Europe provide a clear indication for states to develop such relations with respect to the law on religious denomination that will prevent religious minorities from being, or feeling, discriminated against. The establishment of standards which are friendly for all churches and religious associations is only the beginning, though. The next stage involves political activity and the interpretation of the regulations allowing for the elimination of discrimination from the realm of actual relations.

The Sphere: Reading a gender Metaphor in the architecture of modern cults of identity

This article investigates the spherical form and its derivatives (ribbed dome, tumulus, grotto) in modern public architecture in terms of the interrelationship of gendered metaphors and the representation of political identities. Starting with Boullée's Temple of Nature/Reason of 1793, it follows the use of these architectural bodies as metaphors during the French Revolution. The smooth sphere, invented by Boullée for the Newton Cenotaph to signify in stereometric abstraction a scientific cosmos, then became a signifier for the Nation, marking the androcentric universality of a new ‘sovereign’– the People – that excluded women. The grotto signified the ‘other’ of revolutionary reason, linked to the symbolical field of a female earth/vulva. Grotto and tumulus then became part of memorial architecture in the nineteenth century as images of national mother earth to which the fallen hero returns. In the 1920s and 1930s sphere, tumulus, grotto and ribbed dome reappeared, representing the enemy systems of mass democracy, Fascism and revolutionary Russia. As images of totality they are nonetheless constructed within the fields of signification that are shaped by the symbolic order of gender difference. Has the degree of metaphorical gender polarization observed in these architectural ‘discourses’ something to do with the fundamentalist tendencies of collective identities?