I was planning to write an article in which I say something critical about “fundamentalism”. However, I decided I first needed to write an introductory article saying something about my use of the term. In You’re not as Crazy as I Think I caution against the use of terms like “fundamentalist” and “liberal” as means to label and marginalize people and their views. Since that is always a danger, I thought I would a brief post illumining the rhetorical function of the “fundamentalist” appellation so that we are careful not to fall into that trap of allowing the term to function merely as an epithet. I previously engaged with Alvin Plantinga’s analysis of the term in my article “Laughing at Fundamentalists“. In this article I’m going to quote Plantinga’s analysis more fully:
“On the most common contemporary academic use of the term [fundamentalist], it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ‘son of a bitch’, more exactly ‘sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ‘sumbitch’. When the term is used in this way, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you call someone a sumbitch, would you feel obliged first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use): it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ‘stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ‘sumbitch’ simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity….; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation is that the term has certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine’.” (Warranted Christian Belief (OUP, 2000), 245.
It hardly need be pointed out that any term which means nothing more than ‘stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine’ merely functions to marginalize other voices. This is precisely the kind of use that we want to eschew.
A narrower definition of fundamentalism identifies the concept with a Christ-against-culture model of cultural disengagement and a particular biblical hermeneutic. For an example of cultural disengagement see my article “The Pornographic Harry Potter?” For an explanation of fundamentalist biblical hermeneutics see my article “How fundamentalists undermine the authority of scripture.”
The way I will be using the term here has some overlap with the trend of cultural opposition and disengagement, but it has a somewhat broader, more nebulous ethos. In my discussion here I will be using the term to refer to “an orientation that includes intellectual insularity, defensiveness and the brusque dismissal of opposing views.” (I offer that definition here.) Ironically, the tendency to dismiss the views of others by labelling them fundamentalist (in the way identified by Plantinga) can be evidence for fundamentalism in the way I am defining it. You see, intellectual insularity, defensiveness, and the brusque dismissal of others are all accomplished through labelling.
If you want a good example of a fundamentalist in the sense I’m using it, see my discussion in “Liar, Liar, soul on fire!”
