Selections from Martin Marty’s “Fundamentalism Project”

Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby, “Introduction” and “Conclusion” in Fundamentalisms Observed (1991) and Marty, “Fundamentalism as a Social Phenomenon” in Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 42.2 (1988): 15-29.

Marty’s understanding of fundamentalism is the water I swim in. The Fundamentalism Project, true to its aim, now holds the status of an encyclopedia. I suspect if you asked a group of well-informed undergraduates, they would produce a definition of fundamentalism something like Marty’s. It’s a testament to the intellectual force of his comparative approach. It’s also a strong incentive to innovate.

For Marty, the term “fundamentalism” captures the family resemblances in a global array of religious phenomena. Acknowledging that the term “fundamentalism” isn’t going away anytime soon, he uses it to designate “fundamentalism-like movements” rather than any particular substantive thing. This is a key part of Marty’s argument: unlike earlier substantive definitions (such as James Barr’s equation of Protestant fundamentalism with biblical inerrancy), Marty isolates similarities among fundamentalisms across many religious traditions. First, he identifies what “fundamentalism” is not: 1) it is not conservatism, classicism, or orthodoxy, 2) it is not a vestigial remnant of earlier times, 3) it is not synonymous with certain substantive elements, doctrines, or particular tenets of a faith (e.g. inerrancy), 4) it is not the only kind of opposition to “secular rationalism,” 5) it is not just anti-science or anti-rationalist in perspective, 6) it is not opposed to modern technology or media, 7) it is not in decline or likely to fade away, 8) it is not always composed of activists, militants, terrorists, or belligerents, 9) it is not a way of compensating for economic or intellectual deprivation. Next, Marty suggests the traits fundamentalist-like movements share: 1) they are always reactive against “modernity,” 2) they are selective in choosing “fundamentals,” 3) they are “scandalous,” meaning they cause offense to groups outside themselves, 4) they are always exclusive and separatist, 5) they are always oppositional, 6) they are absolutist, 7) they are anti-developmental and anti-evolutionary, 8) they are anti-relativistic and anti-hermeneutical, 9) they consider themselves “agents of the sacred power, person or force which gives life to their group,” and 10) they are teleological. In short, fundamentalism is “a tendency, a habit of mind, found within religious communities and paradigmatically embodied in certain representative individuals and movements, which manifests itself as a strategy or set of strategies, by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve their distinctive identity as a people or group” (Conclusion 835).

George Marsden famously defined fundamentalism as “militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism.” To play Marsden against Marty a little, one might say that Marty considers fundamentalism “militantly anti-modernist” religion. For Marsden, the “modernism” against which early Protestant fundamentalism militantly rebelled was a very specific set of theological positions and changes in American culture. Marty’s fundamentalists hostile to modernity itself, opposing a varied set of political, cultural, and intellectual conditions wherever they can assume the name of “modernity.” Militancy unites Marty’s fundamentalists in their oppositions to various modernities around the world. They are “religious idealists” who coalesce around a personal and collective identity, then fight back, fight for, fight with, fight against, and fight under (Intro ix-x). This is not to say that Marty caricatures fundamentalists as terrorists. Rather, it is to observe that he categorizes fundamentalism as an internal disposition, “a tendency, a habit of mind… which manifests itself as a strategy, or set of strategies… to preserve… identity” (835).

Obviously, such a perspective takes little interest in objects, practices, bodies, media, or materiality. The conclusion essay gapes in wonder at “fundamentalism’s seemingly innate understanding of, and effortless manipulation of, modern mass media of communication (and propaganda)” (832). Fittingly for its internalized understanding of fundamentalism, this presents media as something fundamentalists understand innately and manipulate effortlessly. In this understanding, internal fundamentalism spreads by using inert media instrumentally. As the parenthetical remark about propaganda suggests, this model emphasizes content and the meaning-making activities of religious agents. Fundamentalists qua agents use media to deliver their militant mental habits to as many people as possible. They do so with quasi-magic effortlessness, innate understanding. In my future dissertation, I want turn the tables. I want to ask what kinds of mediation made Protestant fundamentalism possible. I want to examine the articulations of power, techniques of the body, networks of objects, and technologies of mediation that made it possible for something called “fundamentalism” to emerge in early 20th-century America.