Page 279 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1580 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Skinner, Q. (1978). The foundations of modern political thought. New and without causing confusion be used to characterize
York: Cambridge University Press. forces in other religions. On the side of the critics are fac-
Solt, L. F. (1990). Church and state in early modern England 1509–1640.
New York: Oxford University Press. tors such as these: it seems unfair and perhaps imperial
Stokes, A. P. (1950). Church and state in the United States: Historical to borrow from an American domestic movement a term
development and contemporary problems of religious freedom under the
Constitution. New York: Harper & Brothers. to impose on other religious movements that draw on
Tierney, B. (1982). Religion, law, and the growth of constitutional thought, vastly different sources. Second, the term is often seen as
1150–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pejorative, stigmatizing. In addition to that, it does not
Tracy, J. D. (Ed.). (1986). Luther and the modern state in Germany.
Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers. always have a cognate term in the languages identified
Treece, H. (1994). The Crusades. New York: Barnes & Noble Books. with other religions. Fourth, it may license comparisons
Wardman, A. (1982). Religion and statecraft among the Romans. Balti-
more: Johns Hopkins University Press. that unfairly lump together disparate movements that
Wood, J. E., Jr. (1966). Religion and freedom. Journal of Church and lose their identity when so classified.
State,8(1), 5–13. Over against these, defenders of the usage recognize
Wood, J. E., Jr.,Thompson, E. B., & Miller, R.T. (1958). Church and state
in scripture, history, and constitutional law. Waco, TX: Baylor Uni- that the term is simply established, in textbooks and
versity Press. media, in statecraft and scholarship, and argue that efforts
are better aimed at clarifying the term than trying to abol-
ish it. In addition, they point out that similar categories
of words travel from language to language, situation to
Religious situation. Words like colonialism, revolution, conser-

vatism, nationalism, and others are all “born” somewhere
Fundamentalism in the West and travel to other settings and languages.
Third, fundamentalism is a genus, and scholars or com-
eligious fundamentalism, often confused with con- municators can clarify issues by pointing to species: the
Rservativism or traditionalism, is a name for a move- Islamic fundamentalism of theWahhabi movement might
ment in any religion that retrieves “fundamental” elements have formal congruences with the Jewish fundamentalism
of that religion and projects them into new formulations of Gush Emunim or a party of Protestants in Northern
in reaction to challenges from modernity, however that is Ireland, but the content of their claims differs vastly.
defined.This reaction may lead to protective withdrawal Finally, no other term has come forward to foster com-
by groups in some cases, at least in early stages. In prac- parative analysis. Thus “Islamist” works only for Islamic
tice, however, leaders of such movements attract follow- movements.And comparisons are valuable, since only by
ers to engage in militant action against whatever it is that isolating them do certain features stand out.
they regard as a profanation or that stands in the way of
their battles for their God. Since fundamentalisms appear Features of the
in Protestant Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam, Fundamentalist Movements
they can be seen as both local and global assaults on The word “fundamentalism,” in religious contexts at least,
both secular and settled religious orders, be they conser- is not to be found in any dictionaries published before the
vative or liberal. 1920s.When Baptist Protestants in the United States dur-
ing intradenominational struggles in the early 1920s
The Problem of the Word coined it and when Presbyterians took it up, lexicogra-
“Fundamentalism” phers had to take note of it and defined it as a Protestant
Scholars agree that the first use of the term occurred in movement devoted to biblical literalism.What they may
American Protestantism early in the twentieth century. not have noticed is that in the same decades such move-
Some question, therefore, whether the word might fairly ments were developing in India in what have become