We’re all fundamentalists now

We’re all fundamentalists now « The Theology of Joe

We’re all fundamentalists now
In ethics on July 26, 2010 at 9:27 pm

I’m increasingly believing that we’re all fundamentalists – and wondering how things would look if we started from that assumption rather than that we’re the ‘normal’ ones and those other people are the extreme fundamentalists.

Fundamentalism is a strange phrase, but it is normally used to describe people who hold to a creed so closely that they exhibit extreme behaviours. This contrasts to their fellow religionists who we describe as ‘moderate’ or ‘liberal’ – normally implying that they have lives more similar to the mainstream as we would understand it.

But how about if we redefine ‘fundamentalists’ as being individuals who believe that they are right and others are wrong. Everyone without exception can be described as then being a fundamentalist – even those who claim that there is no objective truth except that there is no objective truth. Sometimes those who are most lacking in grace are those who have already decided that there is no such thing as religious truth when experiencing people who hold an exclusive creed.

Whilst we might not all want to propagate and transform other people to conform to our personal fundamentalism, the truth is most of us (I’d argue all of us) actually hold strongly to certain fundamentals. But like a kaleidoscope, our personal fundamentalism is an intersection of many different beliefs, as individual to us as a fingerprint.

If that is true, none of us represent the mainstream. None of us can claim the high moral ground. None of us can assume that we’re speaking on behalf of the majority or that our beliefs are obviously correct. If that is true, we are as much fundamentalist when we claim that it is self evident that we should always be able to see a woman’s face as a burka wearer is to hold that it is immodest.

Freedom is not something which is designed to be only enjoyed by a majority. It is only truly expressed when it is enjoyed by a minority that everyone else disagrees with. Because at the end of the day, you are a religious minority and so am I – and the chances are that in some part of the world and/or in some time period, we would have been in an oppressed minority.

If we accept a new paradigm that we are a community of fundamentalists, we have to accept a level of humility because society is not just divided into them-and-us but them-and-them-and-them-and-them. More than that, to protect the interests of the minority we disagree with is to protect ourselves. To allow someone to do something we find offensive is the only way we have any hope of our own existence and our own fundamentalism into the future.