By Steve Weatherbe

I RECENTLY participated in  ‘Clashing Fundamentalisms,’ a community seminar at the University of Victoria.

I don’t know whether they asked me to take part because they knew I was interested in the subject, or because they thought I was a fundamentalist. Probably the former, because –  though moderate in tone and learned in method –  the seminar suffered from the marked absence of any fundamentalists, at least of Protestant fundamentalists.

It was a clear case of ‘us’ (moderates) versus ‘them’ (fundamentalists), with ‘us’ disguised as neutral academics – suspended from a hot air balloon at a safe height, viewing dispassionately the intriguing clashing of extremists below.

But the seminar did not live up to its billing: there was very little clash of fundamentalists one with another: no Muslims vs. Christians, or Darwinists vs. Young Earth Creationists.

This was disappointing, because the promotional material suggested we would look at “secular, scientific, political and economic fundamentalists . . . in the scientific and secular world, in business and marketing, in global capitalism, and in public policy.” There was no mention of academic or feminist or gay rights fundamentalists; we only focused on religious fundamentalism.

Further, of four topics examined, only one concerned an actual clash: that of Hindus and Muslims in India, over a centuries-old mosque built over a Hindu temple.

The other case studies concerned Muslim women wearing the hijab  in Western liberal societies; and the pressure exerted by Hindu fundamentalists on Hindu women, to live in submissive domesticity. The only Christian case, curiously, dealt with Canada’s long-defunct Sunday closing laws.

The tone was established by a highly debatable definition of fundamentalism, which no one was given a chance to argue with: essentially, that fundamentalism denoted a belief system held so deeply that contrary views were beyond consideration – and which could justifiably be promoted by violence, or the use of state power. Even if these assumptions were true, there are several important aspects of fundamentalism a truly balanced seminar might have considered.

First, do fundamentalists add anything good to a liberal society? I would argue they do – or I should say, we  do, since I am convinced of fundamental Christian teachings.

We contribute in a major way to individualism – a key tenet of liberal society. We raise children with values and behaviours very different from those promoted by mass media, pop culture, public schools and adolescent peer groups.

Fundamentalists provide a fixed bearing, in a society rapidly changing. Religious fundamentalists challenge technically plausible (but morally questionable) procedures like cloning, abortion, harvesting body parts  and euthanasia.

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Secondly, is fundamentalism really to be defined by an alleged belief in violence, or a willingness to use the power of the state? This sounds like Muslim extremism, but not Christian fundamentalism.

As another participant noted: Christian extremists are not flying airplanes into office towers in Mecca; but when the World Trade towers fell to attacks by Islamist  extremists,  some Muslims cheered the replays on TV.

It felt like these academics were getting their information on Christian fundamentalism from The Handmaid’s Tale , the alarmist fan-tasy by Mar-garet Atwood depicting a U.S. ruled by  male suprem-acist fundamentalists.

Please, give me a break. American fundamentalists don’t want Puritan Massachusetts circa 1650, even with polygamy thrown in as it was in Atwood’s laughable novel; at worst, they want the U.S.A., circa 1955. And rather than overthrowing the constitution to get what they want, they want the constitution restored to its original meaning – before its makeover by liberal judges.

Nor are fundamentalist Christians disposed to use violence to get their way, any more than the vast majority of people in either Canada or the U.S.

Unlike Muslims, Christians believe in the separation of church and state. Though some people at the seminar clearly thought this principle was an invention of the Enlightenment, it was actually a development of Western Christianity, in resistance to the efforts of secular monarchs to control their domestic churches.

The seminar also ignored another aspect of fundamentalism: that it can bring people of differing beliefs together.

Strong, traditional Catholics and fundamentalist Protestants ally often on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia and cloning (often joined by conservative Jews and Muslims), and against the prevailing forces of relativism, permissiveness and self-absorption.

Finally, the seminar, in its preoccupation with the impact of fundamentalists on our liberal society and state, entirely ignored the impact of the liberal state on fundamentalists.

They wholly overlooked the power imbalance between fundamentalists and the established authorities: children seized from parents because the latter object to blood transfusions; churches fined for refusing to allow their halls to be used for lesbian marriage celebrations; teachers fired for professing Christian morality; and pro-lifers jailed for praying outside abortuaries where unborn children are slain.

That liberal society is a far bigger threat to the values of fundamentalist Christians than the reverse, is obvious to anyone with an ounce of common sense. Lumping all ardent believers of different religions together is either a mistake, a lie or hysteria.

Steve Weatherbe writes occasionally for BC Christian News . He attends a Roman Catholic church.

June 2007