The Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925 could not have happened without the influence of Fundamentalism. When I use this word with an uppercase F, I refer specifically to an American religious movement that rallied behind a series of publications known as The Fundamentals (1910-1915). A total of twelve inexpensive volumes covered a variety of topics ranging from the inerrancy of Scripture to the doctrine of atonement. A further defense of premillennial dispensationalism set Fundamentalists apart from other conservative groups. At its core, however, the movement rose up in opposition to theological liberalism.
Critics and outside observers portrayed Fundamentalism as a militant struggle against social progress.[i] On this interpretation, for instance, the anti-evolution movement of the 1920s was seen as an attack on modern science that had nothing to do with the merits of Darwinian theory or its ethical implications.
This way of understanding the conservative impulse within Christianity was exported to militant Islamic movements after World War II. One popular definition from sociologists Jeffrey Hadden and Anson Shupe characterizes generic or global fundamentalism as “a proclamation of reclaimed authority over a sacred tradition which is to be reinstated as an antidote for a culture that has strayed from its cultural moorings.” [ii] Alienation was supposed to link these seemingly disparate groups. Just as conservative Bible believers felt isolated by the arrival of the modern scientific paradigm, so Muslims felt isolated by the arrival of the modern secular state.
There are at least two major problems with the Hadden-Shupe thesis. First, American Fundamentalism was, for the most part, a religious movement. Concerned believers set their sights on the rising tide of secularism within their own community of evangelical Protestants. They took their Fundamentals to be an antidote for a church that had gone astray. Influence on culture was only a secondary goal.
A second and larger point is that the language of Hadden and Shupe’s definition masks a critical difference between American Fundamentalism and militant Islam. Fundamentalists were certainly instrumental in creating Tennessee’s anti-evolution legislation, which in turn triggered the Scopes Trial. The act prohibited teachers from presenting anything contrary to “the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible.” This certainly looks like an attempt to reinstate a sacred tradition, but it was done within the context of an existing political structure. Militant Islam, as witnessed in the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the attacks on 9/11, has an entirely different approach.
Moreover, essays in The Fundamentals were written by people committed to rational argument and empirical science. Only a very narrow segment of Fundamentalists could possibly fit the stereotype of anti-intellectual radicals seeking to plunge Western civilization into a theocratic dark age, and yet this is precisely the goal of militant Islam.
We need only compare The Fundamentals to Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones (1964) to appreciate the difference between these two movements. Both publications were meant to serve as manifestos for their respective faith traditions, and yet their diagnoses of what went wrong and their prescriptions for change were light years apart. From within the overwhelmingly Muslim nation of Egypt, Qutb argued for the violent overthrow of its secular government. And that was only the beginning. Qutb’s writings continue to have had a profound influence on the Muslim world.
Exporting the “fundamentalist” label to these post-colonial Islamic movements might have seemed compelling at one time, but only on the shallowest of levels. Here were people who loved their Qur’an and wanted it to play a larger role in the life of ordinary Muslims. Did this not resemble the back-to-the-Bible movement of the 1920s? It soon became apparent that the jihadists wanted so much more. Nonetheless, their motives and methods were pinned on Bible-believing, church-going groups in America. If radical Islam sought the collapse of liberal Western democracy then, by mere dint of labeling, conservative Christianity must pose a similar threat. Both movements could now be demonized as religiously motivated threats to the progressive agenda.
The reluctance to mark a distinction between conservative Christianity and militant Islam stems from a refusal to take their respective texts seriously. The New Testament and the Qur’an (and the supplementary hadith) embody diametrically opposite views on the role of violence in religion and the role of religion in society. The Book really does make the difference.
