Fundamentalism

Perspectives on a Contested History

Simon A. Wood, David Harrington Watt, Simon A. Wood, David Harrington Watt

• Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781611173543
• eBook ISBN: 9781611173550
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Essays considering how global fundamentalism influences our understanding of modern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam

Thirty years after the Iranian Revolution and more than a decade since the events of 2001, the time is right to examine what the discourse on fundamentalism has achieved and where it might head from here. In this volume editors Simon A. Wood and David Harrington Watt offer eleven interdisciplinary perspectives framed by the debate between advocates and critics of the concept of fundamentalism that investigate it with regard to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. The essays are integrated through engagement with a common selection of texts on fundamentalism and a common set of questions about the utility and disadvantages of the term, its varied application by scholars of particular groups, and the extent to which the term can encompass a cross-cultural set of religious responses to modernity.

Although the notion of fundamentalism as a global phenomenon dates from around 1980, the term itself originated in North American Protestantism approximately six decades earlier and acquired pejorative connotations within five years of its invention. Since the early 1990s, however, many scholars have endorsed the view that the notion of fundamentalism—as relying on literalist interpretations of the scriptures, firm commitment to patriarchy, or refusal to confine religious matters to the private sphere—facilitates our understanding of modern religion by enabling us to identify and label structurally analogous developments in different religions. Critics of the term have identified problems with it, above all that the idea of global fundamentalism confuses more than it clarifies and unjustifiably overlooks, downplays, or homogenizes difference more than it identifies a genuine homogeny.

The editor's rigorous exploration of both the usefulness and the limitations of the concept make it an excellent counterpoint to the many books that have a great deal to say about the former and very little to say about the latter. It will also serve as an ideal text for religious studies, history, and anthropology courses that explore the complex interface between religion and modernity as well as courses on theory and method in religious studies.

“America Is No Different,” “America Is Different”—Is There an American Jewish Fundamentalism?

Part I. American Habad

Shaul Magid

Fundamentalism is arguably one of the most widely used and least understood terms in the popular discourse about religion. We find it applied to all kinds of groups, religions, communities, even societies. The formal term applies to a defined group of American Protestants at the beginning of the twentieth century who viewed themselves as part of a particular spiritual trajectory that extended back at least to the 1740s in America and likely to the seventeenth century in England. ¹ In its modern context it usually refers to Protestant communities who strictly adhere to five basic principles: 1) biblical inerrancy or scripturalism; 2) virgin birth; 3) substitutionary atonement; 4) bodily resurrection; and (5) Christ’s divinity.²

Fundamentalism has more specifically been applied to various branches of Judaism both in Israel and in the Diaspora. It largely applies to three distinct communities: 1) Hasidism, 2) non-Hasidic ultra-Orthodoxy, and 3) religious ultra-nationalism (i.e., the settler movement in Israel).³ The first and second have coalesced into an umbrella group that has become known as haredi Judaism.⁴ A portion of the ultra-nationalist camp has also taken on a haredi persona under the term hardal (haredi leumi, or haredi national religious). These fundamentalist Jewish communities do not view themselves as partners. In fact, many are vehemently oppose one another. For example, the Satmar branch of Hasidism (the focus of a subsequent essay) is at war with the ultra-nationalist Zionist “fundamentalists” in Israel.⁵ And the Habad branch of Hasidism has been in an ideological war with Satmar for decades. While there is more sympathy between Habad and the ultra-nationalists, Habad does not view itself as Zionist, which is the backbone of the ultra-nationalist ideology in Israel. And even within these subcultures there is dissent. Some are more tolerant toward Zionism, others are vehemently opposed to it. Some are accommodating to secularism and even study in universities, others shun secular knowledge except as they apply it to vocational needs.⁶ Jay Harris is surely correct that fundamentalism is a subjective term, used as a pejorative, the definition of which depends on where the accuser stands in the trajectory of tradition. Yet it seems too dismissive to simply abandon the term as describing certain contemporary Jewish movements, especially in America.⁷

Almost all the studies on Jewish fundamentalism focus on postwar communities, suggesting by implication that ultra-Orthodoxy in prewar Europe, while similar in tenor and even in substance to its postwar progeny, cannot properly be called fundamentalist. This is curious for a numbers of reasons. First, it raises the question of whether Jewish fundamentalism is a post-Holocaust phenomenon. Second, given that postwar Jewry has two main centers, Israel and North America (smaller haredi communities do exist in other parts of the Jewish Diaspora), it raises the question of whether Jewish fundamentalism can exist only in 1) a society where Jews comprise the dominant culture (Israel) or 2) a society where religious freedom and disestablishment are the societal norms (America).⁸ That is, does the activism necessary to constitute contemporary Jewish fundamentalism require a level of freedom of expression that exists only for Jews in Israel and other democratic countries where freedom of religion is assured?⁹ Moreover, while Israel and the United States both offer conditions conducive to Jewish fundamentalism, each has distinctive qualities. Thus it would be necessary to view American and Israeli ultra-Orthodoxy as different not only in context but also in substance. One of the deficiencies of the many excellent studies on Jewish fundamentalism is that they generally do not distinguish between Jewish fundamentalism in Israel and in the United States. While it is true that many of the ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel have companion communities in the United States and vice versa, those communities are situated in very different social and political contexts that produce different programmatic agendas, if not in principle then certainly in practice.

In this essay and the one that follows I focus on two Jewish fundamentalist groups in the United States: Habad and Satmar. I argue that their fundamentalism agendas, while originating in prewar Europe, are products of the United States and thus particular to the American context. Here I respectfully disagree with those who argue that fundamentalism is not applicable to Judaism.¹⁰ In part my position stems from my assumption that the “American” nature of Jewish fundamentalism is as much sociological as it is theological. That is, I believe it is a mistake to look only at the theological premises of Christian fundamentalism and then determine whether they cohere with a Jewish case. Under such criteria Judaism would certainly not reach the fundamentalist bar. But the theological premises of Judaism—excluding perhaps biblical inerrancy—differ enough from those of Christianity that any comparison purely on theological grounds is unhelpful. Religious communities are not simply products of their theological convictions as much as they would like us to believe they are. They are also responding and adapting to societal conditions and are in a constant state of absorbing and reframing the ethos of the world in which they live, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. Thus, while ostensibly remaining true to their theological principles inherited from a very different societal context, religious communities can be quite innovative, even radical, in the name of continuity and tradition. In a religious tradition with the interpretive history and skills of Judaism, external values and perspectives are easily absorbed, almost seamlessly, making the novel appear ancient and the new appear authentic. The question is thus not whether insiders in these communities think they are absorbing American fundamentalist positions. Surely they do not. It is, rather, whether we on the outside can ascertain if the community’s “lived religiosity” reflects an ethos in concert with external forms of belief.

Jewish fundamentalism in America is a postwar phenomenon generated by at last three issues: 1) the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust; 2) the coalescence of Zionism around a Jewish state; and 3) the corruption of tradition via the predominance of Reform and other progressive Judaisms on American soil. Each one of these issues resonates in particular ways in the United States which served as the tolerant new home for most of world Jewry who chose not to immigrate to Mandate Palestine / Israel.

While the term fundamentalism can apply to Judaism, particularly in America, its particular context within a minority community in a free society gives it distinctive qualities. While the issues confronting Christian and Jewish fundamentalisms in America may seem similar, these fundamentalisms are also confronting very different challenges. The Jewish challenges focus on being a minority group ostensibly threatened by at least two things: 1) the erasure of Jewish identity as the final phase of assimilation; and 2) the irreparable distortion of Judaism as it was previously known and practiced through the teachings and influence of progressive Jewish movements (Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist). The major nemesis of Jewish fundamentalisms in the United States is therefore not secular America but progressive American Judaism. Making full use of the secular American landscape, the rise of Jewish fundamentalism in America has become an internal battle for the soul of American Judaism. While assimilation and the transformation of tradition are not unique to the United States, the battle lines were different in prewar Europe and contemporary Israel where traditional Judaism had, and has, a stronger foothold in society’s civil religion.

Jewish fundamentalism in Israel is different from that in America for at least four reasons. First, these battles are not being waged under the gaze of a Gentile society, and therefore Israelis are less concerned with how Jewish divisiveness in their society will be viewed by non-Jews. Second, most of the fundamentalist communities in Israel are politically empowered through representation in the Israeli Parliament and thus have at their disposal all the tools of the democratic process to achieve their goals. Third, there is no sharp division of church and state in Israel which enables fundamentalist Judaism there to affect secular Israelis more profoundly than it affects their counterparts in America. Because Israel is a society comprising mostly Jews, the pressure to view the “other” in a positive light is less pressing. This may seem counterintuitive given Israel’s precarious political reality. However, regarding internal affairs the alienation of the secular Jew from the fundamentalist Jew is sharper in Israel than in the United States where Jews, even those with opposing views, see themselves as part of a minority that needs to present a united front against the pressures and seductions of the society in which it lives. In Israel, fundamentalist groups can be both activist and separatist and receive government funding to support their agendas. Finally, the messianic or redemptive component of some but not all Jewish fundamentalisms is much more acute in Israel than in America. Notions of redemption, in both religious and secular garb, permeate Israeli religion and culture in ways quite different from the ways they do in similar communities in America.

Therefore, while the fundamentalist groups examined here and in the next essay are not exclusive to America, their existence in America is an integral part of their project. The adjective American is a description of substance and not merely of geography. America presents a religious, cultural, and legal context that enables them to express themselves in particular ways. These expressions, while certainly a manifestation of their own religious tradition, are also a specific articulation of American religion, in this case, American fundamentalism.

Millennialism and Messianism: “Premillennialist” and “Postmillennialist” Judaism

Scholars of non-Protestant fundamentalisms often list the basic principles of Protestant fundamentalism to show how their tradition can or cannot cohere with many of those principles. Hence, some argue, there can be no Jewish fundamentalism. Others suggest that while Jews cannot abide by some of the specifics of Protestant fundamentalism there are some broader paradigms indicative of fundamentalist movements that accurately describe some maximalist Jewish perspectives. Here Gabriel A. Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emanuel Sivan’s broad definition of fundamentalism might suffice. “Fundamentalism, in this usage, refers to a discernible pattern of religious militance by which self-styled ‘true believers’ attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and behaviors.”¹¹ Many of those who write about fundamentalism stress that it is not only situated in modernity but is also, in fact, a product of modernity.¹² In this sense fundamentalism is a particular construction of “tradition” that is uniquely equipped to confront modernity and offer an alternative template for human civilization. Almost all fundamentalisms in contemporary America are committed to some form of activism to oppose either secularism or liberal religion or both.¹³

Millennialism is one of Protestant fundamentalism’s founding principles.¹⁴ Millennialism is a belief in society’s close proximity to the end-time and invites either political activism to create conditions for the imminent redemption or cultivates a separatist mentality that builds walls against the impure influence of decadent society. Both of these options exhibit a highly charged sense of urgency. Dispensationalist millennialism has been influential in millennial communities. Many contemporary Protestant fundamentalists and evangelicals (a similar but not identical group) view themselves as either living immediately before the new, and final, dispensation or already part of a new dispensation.¹⁵ George M. Marsden offers a succinct definition of dispensational premillennialism.

According to the dispensationalist’s scheme of world history, the current dispensation, or “church age,” was marked by the regressive corruption of so-called Christian civilization and the apostasy of its large churches. Only a remnant of its true believers would remain pure. The kingdom of Christ would not be brought in by united Christian effort, as the social gospel had promised, but only by the dramatic return of Jesus to set up his millennial kingdom in Jerusalem. Dispensationalism thus suggests that Christian political efforts were largely futile. Believers should give up on the illusion of “Christian civilization.”¹⁶

While there are substantive differences between dispensational millennialists and nondispensational millennialists, for our limited purposes these distinctions are not relevant.¹⁷ The relevant point here is whether these terms can be adapted to Jewish fundamentalism in America. For most Jewish fundamentalists messianism is an operative and often a central tenet of their religious worldview. The messianist stances of the two American fundamentalisms under examination, Habad and Satmar, loosely cohere with the pre-and postmillennialist perspectives of Christian fundamentalism, albeit each refracts its view through its respective theological lenses.¹⁸ While dispensationalism is a category specific to Christian theological teaching, Rabbinic J...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Fundamentalists of the 1920s and 1930s
• The Idea of Militancy in American Fundamentalism
• Fundamentalism and Christianity
• “America Is No Different,” “America Is Different”—Is There an American Jewish Fundamentalism? Part I. American Habad
• “America Is No Different,” “America Is Different”—Is There an American Jewish Fundamentalism? Part II. American Satmar
• The Jewish Settler Movement and the Concept of Fundamentalism
• The Concept of Global Fundamentalism: A Short Critique
• Muslim “Fundamentalism,” Salafism, Sufism, and Other Trends
• Fundamentalism and Shiism
• Fundamentalism, Khomeinism, and the Islamic Republic of Iran
• Fundamentalism Diluted: From Enclave to Globalism in Conservative Muslim Ecological Discourse
• Islamic Education and the Limitations of Fundamentalism as an Analytical Category
• Conclusion
• Afterword
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index