Available:*
Library | Material Type | Call Number | Child Count | Shelf Location | Status | Item Holds |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Science | Book | BL238 .A28 2003 | 1 | Stacks | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
After the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, religious fundamentalism has dominated public debate as never before. Policymakers, educators, and the general public all want to know: Why do fundamentalist movements turn violent? Are fundamentalisms a global threat to human rights, security, and democratic forms of government? What is the future of fundamentalism?
To answer questions like these, Strong Religion draws on the results of the Fundamentalism Project, a decade-long interdisciplinary study of antimodernist, antisecular militant religious movements on five continents and within seven world religious traditions. The authors of this study analyze the various social structures, cultural contexts, and political environments in which fundamentalist movements have emerged around the world, from the Islamic Hamas and Hizbullah to the Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries of Northern Ireland, and from the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition of the United States to the Sikh radicals and Hindu nationalists of India. Offering a vividly detailed portrait of the cultures that nourish such movements, Strong Religion opens a much-needed window onto different modes of fundamentalism and identifies the kind of historical events that can trigger them.
Reviews (2)
Choice Review
Extreme religious organizations prepared to use violence against modern secularist governments provide the focus of this comparative study of world religions. The authors look to the historical and cultural environment, analyze ideological and organizational characteristics, and discover structural variables to explain their origin, growth, and decline. They define fundamentalism as "a discernible pattern of religious militance" composed of self-styled true believers. Their broad scope includes Pentecostal, Southern Baptist, Catholic charismatic, Catholic traditionalist--all those outside of the mainstream. Opposition to modernity unites their common opposition to secularist majorities. Fundamentalists are minority, fringe groups operating outside of the power structure. The authors insist that there is a difference between fundamentalist movements seeking to reassert religious influence in an increasingly secular world and cults centered on individual charismatic figures. They conclude that fundamentalists are unlikely to expand in open societies where the need to compromise decreases radicalism. They warn of increased resort to violence in response to governmental oppression or in chaotic situations. Economic reforms and the introduction of democracy will diminish extremists' effectiveness. The authors assert the need to study religion because of its great significance in contemporary politics. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. General readers and undergraduate collections. M. S. Power emeritus, Arkansas State University
Library Journal Review
Decades of study here result in what may be the single most cogent sociohistorical analysis of the modern religious phenomenon called fundamentalism. Almond (political science, emeritus, Stanford), R. Scott Appleby (director, Kroc Inst. for Peace Studies, Notre Dame), and Emmanuel Sivan (history, Hebrew Univ.) bring their expertise to bear on a mass of published and primary research, most particularly that of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences' five-volume Fundamentalism Project. The authors note that fundamentalism is a historical rebuff to the principle of church-state separation-a reaction to the secularization and marginalization of religion in modern society. Six meaty chapters analyze and provide a new theoretical framework for representative fundamentalism from virtually every large, established religion. The authors examine ideological and organizational characteristics; explain the conditions that affect fundamentalism's rise, continuation, and disappearance; and define the relationship of emergent systems to the world. The final two chapters test their model against the comparative history of the several movements followed throughout the book and consider the prospect of fundamentalism in the 21st century. This foundational work is essential for academic and major public libraries, particularly those that own the volumes of The Fundamentalism Project.-William P. Collins, Library of Congress (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments |
Introduction |
Chapter 1 The Enclave Culture |
Chapter 2 Fundamentalism: Genus and Species |
Chapter 3 Explaining Fundamentalisms:Structure, Chance and Choice |
Chapter 4 Wrestling with the World:Fundamentalist Movements as Emergent Systems |
Chapter 5 Testing the Model:Politics, Ethnicity, and Fundamentalist Strategies |
Chapter 6 The Prospects of Fundamentalism |
Appendix to Chapter 2 |
Appendix to Chapter 3 |
Appendix to Chapter 4 |
Notes |
Index |