Notes on "Pious Passion"
Notes on Pious Passion
Complex considerations on a difficult question
(
Note: I've found it, I've found it, la-la-la-la-la ... er, um--yeah. Sorry, I was having a "Sesame Street" moment. Never mind. At any rate, I have, indeed, located the missing volume, Martin Riesebrodt's Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran
, a 1990 German text translated by Don Reneau and published in English by the University of California Press.)
Riesebrodt's
Pious Passion looks at the question of religious fundamentalism; specifically, comparative and contrasting issues of American Protestant fundamentalism from 1910 - 1928, and Iranian Shiite fundamentalism from 1961 - 1979. It's a dense, mind-numbing read, but worth every page one manages to push through; the reader is asked implicitly to pay close attention to the details of context; the book becomes overwhelmingly confusing otherwise.
To start with the topic brought immediately to mind a couple of pages from the introduction, including a rough flow chart (p. 17 -
see attached image file). It begins following a common line--
• Rapid social change -> Crisis consciousness -> Religious revitalization and search for authenticity -> Regress to the revealed and realized ideal order
--and then splits into two separate columns. On the left-hand side, and without any necessary coincidence to the political spectrum, is a path that is benign at least, and can even become constructive:
• [Regress to revealed and realized ideal order] -> Utopian regress -> "Analogous" authenticity -> "Spirit" of the ideal order -> Historical-evolutionary thinking -> Social reform or revolution (Ethic of conviction)
The right-hand side is more complex, progressing first from the
regress to the revealed and realized ideal order to
mythical regress to
"identical" authenticity. These correspond typologically to the
utopian regress and
"analogous" authenticity, but the route diverges from
"identical" authenticity along two paths, comparing
literalism (sacred text) against the
experiential (grace), with the former leading to a
"rational" and the latter to a
charismatic fundamentalism. Both of these paths lead back to another typological correspondence, that of
antievolutionary thinking. which leads to
fundamentalism as a
statutory ethic.
Now, what does all this actually mean? That's the problem here--citing the text to explain the chart would cover
pages.
As a first step ... take up the identification of fundamentalism with biblical or koranic literalism. Fundamentalist thinking is marked by a profound experience of crisis. The cause of the crisis is society's desertion of eternally valid, divinely revealed, and textually literal received principles of order, which had once been realized in an ideal community--the "Golden Age" of original Christian, Islamic, or other communities. Overcoming the crisis is possible only by a return to these divine statutory prescriptions. Fundamentalism thereby distinguishes itself both from traditional and utopian strategies, both of which likewise lay claim to an authentic realization of the revealed principles of order. Yet literalism and authenticity in the given cases have different functions.
Traditionalistic literalism represents an aid to the orientation to and affirmation of a certain sanctioned way of life. As a rule it also creates an inner, and possibly outer, world of imaginary idols and saints, to whom the faithful analogously relate themselves. Fundamentalist literalism, in contrast, reflects an ideology fighting a cultural struggle, one in which literalism, or the way of life associated with it, is disputed. In this sense fundamentalism is--if not revolutionary traditionalism--then at least mobilized and radicalized traditionalism.
Fundamentalist literalism also distinguishes itself from social revolutionary or reformist projections of the future that likewise seek legitimacy through an appeal to divine law, revelation, or an ideal original community. This identification with an ideal original order can be effected in either mythical or utopian terms. As myth it has the function of a restorative surmounting of a crisis. The "Golden Age" is to be recreated through a return to its principles of order as handed down verbatim. As utopia, in contrast, the ideal order serves the purposes of a "progressive" social reformist or social revolutionary surmounting of the crisis. Not the letter but the "spirit" of the ideal order as it was once "mythical" thinking is characterized tendentially by a statutory ethic; "utopian" thinking, in contrast, is supported by a radical ethic of conviction. As with all typological distinctions, borderline cases and other variations are conceivable. (The) fundamentalist concept (is applied) to those positions that can be categorized, however roughly, as "mythical" . . . .
. . . . Further, fundamentalism refers to a social phenomenon, not only in the banal sense that its origins are somehow social and its intellectual posture represents a mass phenomenon but also in the sense that it promotes above all new processes of socialization and community formation. In contrast to most of the definitions (of fundamentalism) . . . (this) does not limit fundamentalism to religious-political movements but encompasses a number of distinct organizational forms and attitudes toward the world. Consequently, fundamentalism contains a multiplicity of types that should be kept distinct from one another because they are often difficult to compare sociologically. (Riesebrodt, 16-17)
It would be easy enough to continue on with the long textual citation, but what this leads to is a chart, "Typology of Fundamentalist Organizational Forms" (p. 19), that breaks six forms of fundamentalism into two categories.
The primary difference is
world flight and
world mastery. Under "world fleeing", Riesebrodt includes:
• Symbolic separation (subculture)
• Spatial separation (commune)
Under "world mastering":
• Religious movement
• Social or protest movement
• Secret society
• Political party
Now, quite obviously, it
should go without saying that not all of those movements needs must give rise to fundamentalism; rather, fundamentalism can manifest itself in these forms and, perhaps, more.
Additionally, it should be mentioned that Riesebrodt is as much
proposing a definition of fundamentalism as he is relying on it. The introduction reads very nearly like a broad defense of a dissertation, containing critiques of established working definitions and peppered with first-person references, especially at what could be construed as important but subjective milestones in the character of the narration:
Because "fundamentalism" has become established, it makes little sense to replace it by another term. Nor would anything be gained by its replacement. The problem lies not in the concept itself but in its capacity to generate necessary distinctions. We need a clear definition of relevant criteria, not more neologisms, which proliferate in the literature.
An attempt to make the conception of fundamentalism more precise confronts the immediate problem of integrating academic and colloquial usage. If we define the fundamentalism concept too narrowly, to make it operable sociologically, there is the danger that everyone will formulate their own definitions that no one else will follow. Conceived broadly, in correspondence with colloquial usage, it remains sociologically amorphous. For that reason my definition encompasses a typological differentiation that refers to the broad understanding of the concept as it has become widely established in the academic literature on religion. This path seems to me preferable both for pragmatic reasons and from a theoretical point of view. (Riesebrodt, 15-16)
Complex issues, indeed. That's actually the run-up to the longer citation above. Naturally, uncertainty among diverse academic disciplines (e.g. historians, sociologists, political scientists, &c.) about certain definitions does nothing whatsoever to help define colloquial usage that accuses fundamentalism of evangelicals and others whose identity proves too contrasting for the tastes of the accuser. And certainly elements of the developmental phases show themselves elsewhere. While "antievuolutionary thinking" coincides superficially with the American fundamentalist fixation against Darwinism specifically and scientific research in general, the notion of antievolutionary thinking refers more toward the historical paradigm applied. The American President George W. Bush--he is an evangelical Christian
and his thinking seems largely with the "anti-" side of the comparison between "historical-evolutionary" and "antievolutionary" thinking, and while a borderline case can be made, it would be very difficult (even if we do not account for his political power at the moment) to establish Mr. Bush as a fundamentalist ... well, perhaps there
is some coincidence with laying "charismatic" fundamentalism , an "identical" authenticity derived through shared grace, rightmost on the chart. And therein lies an interesting test question: is President Bush a world-mastering fundamentalist? The specific case seems more difficult to make, though by the time we arrive at the charismatic-fundamentalist progression to antievolutionary thinking, the thematic case may seem nearly a lock to his critics. I mean, to take his word for it, the guy's a prophet. For many people, that pretty much spells the case for fundamentalism, but were we to look more deeply into the history of what
is American Protestant fundamentalism, we would find that modern prophecy is a very prickly bush to wander through, as it could be construed under some circumstances to undermine biblical inerrancy at least.
And these are just a few of the problems in identifying fundamentalism; at once I reiterate my agreement with the topic post and also offer this as a testament to the complexities of fundamentalism; almost any definition we apply will be inaccurate in a way we don't like, either including or excluding a body social or politic despite our sentiments otherwise.
_____________________
• Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Don Reneau, trans. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1998. (1990, 1993)
Image Link -
• http://www.sciforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=3206
