The Fundamentalism Project

"The Fundamentalism Project" was a research project done in the early 90s, analyzing movements considered "fundamentalist." Its goal was to draw out generalities that describe the phenomenon, why it begins, how it ends, and so forth. They compared fundamentalisms in all forms of politics, ethics, religion, etc., in society; it was also cross-cultural with no historical connectedness so that the observed similarities could not possibly have germinated one another.

(Somewhere in the five volume work,) author and professor Martin Marty published this list on the qualities of fundamentalism:

1. religious idealism is basis for personal and communal identity;
2. fundamentalists understand truth to be revealed and unified;
3. it is intentionally scandalous (outsiders cannot understand it and will always be outsiders);
4. fundamentalists envision themselves as part of a cosmic struggle;
5. they seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in light of this cosmic struggle;
6. they demonize their opposition and are reactionary;
7. fundamentalists are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage they stress;
8. they are led by males;
9. they envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the distribution of power.

Most evangelicals no doubt read this and see themselves represented by it. It therefore is very interesting when, at least for me I can turn around and notice that those who hold to Duluthian doctrines, are just as sufficiently described above. Only, in this perspective I am an outsider, looking in. We all have these qualities depending on perspective. This list therefore cannot be used for pointing fingers or finding wrong-doing. It's just so that we can understand our brothers in what they're saying and what they're doing.

You may also enjoy reading this article, a report by Marty recounting the process of selection of the fundamentalist movements to study. Out of this material I have made five general summaries (in bold) applicable at this time to free grace issues:

Fundamentalism is born when conservatism is newly faced with a modernizing influence:

It was hypothesized that for a conservatism or traditionalism to become fundamentalist, it leaders must perceive a threat that they tend to call modern (or some cognate term). They may refer to putative embodiments of modernity or modernism, such as “the West,” “the imperialist,” and “the secular humanist,” or to more abstract phenomena, such as “pluralism,” “relativism,” and “moral erosion.”

Fundamentalism has less to do with defending traditions as most people casually assume:

Although modernists had evidently earlier regarded fundamentalisms as belonging to culturally fossilized strata of humanity, those movements have turned out to be very much alive everywhere. They are innovative, adaptive, and at home with technology. Many fundamentalisms may look like “old-time religions” and may convince themselves that they are traditionalist, yet most are eclectic and selective as to what they would retrieve or repristinate from the presumed past and old texts.

Fundamentalism is more than being only conservative:

In the American Protestant case, the word was invented—and chosen over conservatism, traditionalism, and the like—to be precisely and pointedly a sign of differentiation and verbal aggression. As some sociologists point out, leaders of movements at certain stages want their groups to be stigmatized. Stigmatization is part of the group bonding experience.

It maximizes risk in extending trust and hope (and therefore experiences the most disappointment), when extending it with the outsiders who are the most like themselves:

In both cases, however, fundamentalisms are Manichaean in the sense that they sharply differentiate between the realm of their god and their satan, between the elect people and the outsiders, between “us” and “them,” allowing for no middle ground. Because of this characteristic, fundamentalisms may and often do resist some features of political life, including compromise. In fact, fundamentalists tend to be more disdainful and wary of the moderates within their own religious complexes than they are of liberals or representatives of other faiths, who are unmistakably “other.”

Their aspiration is to be the dominant cultural influence in their realm of relevancy:

It helps explain why fundamentalisms are so concerned with such apparently trivial symbolic issues as prayer in public schools and the display of religious symbols on public property. Such matters have little to do with profound faith or moral development; instead, they indicate fundamentalists’ perceptions of who is staking claim to a culture that “they” have temporarily taken from “us.”

I suppose I'm already in trouble, I think (if this material has any truth), according to this next statement (below). I am not smart enough, after only a few days of thinking and reading, to apply and prepare by changing my offense. Marty describes the willingness-factor of fundamentalists to make themselves available for the study:

It occurred to some of us that the project’s offense, in the eyes of some critics, lay not so much in our use of the term fundamentalism as it did in our comparison of various movements. In fact, the one feature that kept otherwise sympathetic fundamentalist scholars from participating in the study—which many of them said they regarded to be fair-minded and full of positive intent—was the fact that their movements would rather not be compared with any others.

{1} Too Bad We're So Relevant (Marty’s Stated Meeting Report to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995, at the conclusion of the 6-year Fundamentalism Project)

More reading material by Marty