The Fundamentalist

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a novel by Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, published in The novel uses the technique of a frame story, which takes place.
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A few scholars regard Catholics who reject modern theology in favor of more traditional doctrines as fundamentalists. Interpretations of Christian fundamentalism have changed over time. It became active in the s after the release of The Fundamentals , a twelve-volume set of essays, apologetic and polemic , written by conservative Protestant theologians to defend what they saw as Protestant orthodoxy. The movement became more organized in the s within U. Protestant churches, especially Baptist and Presbyterian ones.

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Many such churches adopted a "fighting style" [ clarification needed ] and combined Princeton theology with Dispensationalism. The term fundamentalism was coined by Baptist editor Curtis Lee Laws in to designate Protestants who were ready "to do battle royal for the fundamentals". Laws borrowed it from the title of a series of essays published between and called The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.

The term "fundamentalism" entered the English language in , and is often capitalized when referring to the religious movement. The term fundamentalist is controversial in the 21st century, as it can carry the connotation of religious extremism , even though it was coined by movement leaders. Some who hold these beliefs reject the label of "fundamentalism", seeing it as too pejorative, [9] while to others it has become a banner of pride.

Such Christians prefer to use the term fundamental , as opposed to fundamentalist e. Fundamentalism came from multiple streams in British and American theology of the 19th century.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (film) - Wikipedia

Woodberry and Christian S. Following the Civil War, tensions developed between Northern evangelical leaders over Darwinism and higher biblical criticism; Southerners remained unified in opposition to both Marsden , Modernists attempted to update Christianity to match their view of science. They denied biblical miracles and argued that God manifests himself through the social evolution of society. Conservatives resisted these changes. However, the split does not mean there are just two groups, modernists and fundamentalists.

There are also people who considered themselves to be neo-evangelicals, separating themselves from the extreme components of fundamentalism. These neo-evangelicals also wanted to separate themselves from the fundamentalist movement and mainstream evangelical movement due to its often anti-intellectual approach.

The first important stream was Evangelicalism as it emerged in the revivals of the First Great Awakening and Second Great Awakening in America and the Methodism movement in England in the period — They in turn had been influenced by the Pietism movement in Germany. Church historian Randall Balmer explains that:. Evangelicalism itself, I believe, is a quintessentially North American phenomenon, deriving as it did from the confluence of Pietism, Presbyterianism, and the vestiges of Puritanism.

Evangelicalism picked up the peculiar characteristics from each strain — warmhearted spirituality from the Pietists for instance , doctrinal precisionism from the Presbyterians, and individualistic introspection from the Puritans — even as the North American context itself has profoundly shaped the various manifestations of evangelicalism: A second stream was Dispensationalism , a new interpretation of the Bible developed in the s in England.

John Nelson Darby 's ideas were disseminated by the notes and commentaries in the widely used Scofield Reference Bible , published in Dispensationalism was a millenarian theory that divided all of time into seven different stages, called "dispensations", which were seen as stages of God 's revelation. At the end of each stage, according to this theory, God punished the particular peoples involved for failing to fulfill the requirements they were under in their Dispensation.

Increasing secularism , liberalism, and immorality in the s were believed to be signs that humanity had again failed God's testing. Dispensationalists held to a form of eschatology that believed that the world was on the verge of the last stage, known as the Great Tribulation where a final battle will take place at Armageddon the valley of Megiddo , followed by Christ's return , his 1, year reign on earth, a final rebellion and then a final judgment, after which all mankind, devils and angels will be divided into either Heaven or the Lake of Fire.

A third stream was Princeton Theology, which responded to higher criticism of the Bible by developing from the s to the doctrine of inerrancy. This doctrine, also called biblical inerrancy, stated that the Bible was divinely inspired, religiously authoritative, and without error. Princeton theologians believed that the Bible should be read differently from any other historical document, and also that Christian modernism and liberalism led people to hell just like non-Christian religions. Biblical inerrancy was a particularly significant rallying point for fundamentalists.

A fourth stream—the immediate spark—was the volume study The Fundamentals , published — It [22] stressed several core beliefs, including:. Like Princeton Theology, The Fundamentals reflected growing opposition among many evangelical Christians towards higher criticism of the Bible and modernism.

The interpretations given the fundamentalist movement have changed over time, with most older interpretations being based on the concepts of social displacement or cultural lag. Richard Niebuhr , understood the conflict between fundamentalism and modernism to be part of a broader social conflict between the cities and the country.

Christian fundamentalism

Beginning in the late s the movement began to be seen as "a bona fide religious, theological and even intellectual movement in its own right. Sandeen saw fundamentalism as arising from the confluence of Princeton Theology and millennialism. George Marsden defined fundamentalism as "militantly anti-modernist Protestant evangelicalism" in his work Fundamentalism and American Culture. Militant opposition to modernism was what most clearly set off fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists sought to rescue their denominations from the growth of modernism at home. According to Marsden, recent scholars differentiate "fundamentalists" from "evangelicals" by arguing the former were more militant and less willing to collaborate with groups considered "modernist" in theology. In the s the more moderate faction of fundamentalists maintained the same theology but began calling themselves "evangelicals" to stress their less militant position.

Timothy Weber views fundamentalism as "a rather distinctive modern reaction to religious, social and intellectual changes of the late s and early s, a reaction that eventually took on a life of its own and changed significantly over time. Fundamentalist movements existed in most North American Protestant denominations by following attacks on modernist theology in Presbyterian and Baptist denominations. Fundamentalism was especially controversial among Presbyterians.

In Canada, fundamentalism was less prominent, [33] but it had an aggressive leader in English-born Thomas Todhunter Shields — , who led 80 churches out of the Baptist federation in Ontario in and formed the Union of regular Baptist churches of Ontario and Quebec. His newspaper, The Gospel Witness, reached 30, subscribers in 16 countries, giving him an international reputation. He was one of the founders of the international Council of Christian Churches. A dynamic preacher and leader in Canadian fundamentalism, Smith wrote 35 books and engaged in missionary work worldwide.

Billy Graham called him "the greatest combination pastor, hymn writer, missionary statesman, an evangelist of our time". A leading organizer of the fundamentalist campaign against modernism in the United States was William Bell Riley , a Northern Baptist based in Minneapolis, where his Northwestern Bible and Missionary Training School , Northwestern Evangelical Seminary , and Northwestern College produced thousands of graduates. At a large conference in Philadelphia in , Riley created the World Christian Fundamentals Association WCFA , which became the chief interdenominational fundamentalist organization in the s.

Although the fundamentalist drive of the s to take control of the major Protestant denominations failed at the national level, the network of churches and missions fostered by Riley shows the movement was growing in strength, especially in the U. Both rural and urban in character, the flourishing movement acted as a denominational surrogate and fostered a militant evangelical Christian orthodoxy. Much of the enthusiasm for mobilizing fundamentalism came from Protestant seminaries and Protestant "Bible colleges" in the United States.

Two leading fundamentalist seminaries were the Dispensationalist Dallas Theological Seminary , founded in by Lewis Sperry Chafer , and the Reformed Westminster Theological Seminary , formed in under the leadership and funding of former Princeton Theological Seminary professor J. Dwight Moody was influential in preaching the imminence of the Kingdom of God that was so important to Dispensationalism. By the late s the national media had identified it with the South, largely ignoring manifestations elsewhere.

In — General Social Surveys , 65 percent of respondents from the "East South Central" region comprising Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama self-identified as fundamentalist. The share of fundamentalists was at or near 50 percent in "West South Central" Texas to Arkansas and "South Atlantic" Florida to Maryland , and at 25 percent or below elsewhere in the country, with the low of nine percent in New England. The pattern persisted into the 21st century; in — surveys, the average share of fundamentalists in the East South Central Region stood at 58 percent, while, in New England, it climbed slightly to 13 percent.

Many fundamentalists in the s devoted themselves to fighting the teaching of evolution in the nation's schools and colleges, especially by passing state laws that affected public schools. William Bell Riley took the initiative in the Scopes Trial to bring in famed politician William Jennings Bryan as an assistant to the local prosecutor, who helped attract national media attention to the trial. In the half century after the Scopes Trial, fundamentalists had little success in shaping government policy, and generally were defeated in their efforts to reshape the mainline denominations , which refused to join fundamentalist attacks on evolution.

Edwards , however, challenges the consensus view among scholars that in the wake of the Scopes trial, fundamentalism retreated into the political and cultural background, a viewpoint evidenced in the movie "Inherit the Wind" and the majority of contemporary historical accounts. Rather, he argues, the cause of fundamentalism's retreat was the death of its leader, Bryan. Most fundamentalists saw the trial as a victory and not a defeat, but Bryan's death soon after created a leadership void that no other fundamentalist leader could fill.

Bryan, unlike the other leaders, brought name recognition, respectability, and the ability to forge a broad-based coalition of fundamentalist religious groups to argue for the anti-evolutionist position. Gatewood analyzes the transition from the anti-evolution crusade of the s to the creation science movement of the s. Despite some similarities between these two causes, the creation science movement represented a shift from religious to scientific objections to Darwin's theory.

Creation science also differed in terms of popular leadership, rhetorical tone, and sectional focus. It lacked a prestigious leader like Bryan, utilized scientific rather than religious rhetoric, and was a product of California and Michigan instead of the South. Webb traces the political and legal struggles between strict creationists and Darwinists to influence the extent to which evolution would be taught as science in Arizona and California schools.

After Scopes was convicted, creationists throughout the United States sought similar antievolution laws for their states. These included Reverends R. Beal and Aubrey L. Moore in Arizona and members of the Creation Research Society in California, all supported by distinguished laymen.

They sought to ban evolution as a topic for study, or at least relegate it to the status of unproven theory perhaps taught alongside the biblical version of creation. Educators, scientists, and other distinguished laymen favored evolution. This struggle occurred later in the Southwest than in other US areas and persisted through the Sputnik era. In recent times, the courts have heard cases on whether or not the Book of Genesis's creation account should be taught in science classrooms alongside evolution, most notably in the federal court case Kitzmiller v.

Dover Area School District. The trial ended with the judge deciding that teaching intelligent design in a science class was unconstitutional as it was a religious belief and not science. The original fundamentalist movement divided along clearly defined lines within conservative evangelical Protestantism as issues progressed. Many groupings, large and small, were produced by this schism.

Neo-evangelicalism , Reformed and Lutheran Confessionalism, the Heritage movement , and Paleo-Orthodoxy have all developed distinct identities, but none of them acknowledge any more than an historical overlap with the fundamentalist movement, and the term is seldom used of them.


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The broader term " evangelical " includes fundamentalists as well as people with similar or identical religious beliefs who do not engage the outside challenge to the Bible as actively. The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed a surge of interest in organized political activism by U.

Dispensational fundamentalists viewed the establishment of the state of Israel as an important sign of the fulfillment of biblical prophecy, and support for Israel became the centerpiece of their approach to U. Vitale in , which prohibited state-sanctioned prayer in public schools, and Abington School District v. Schempp in , which prohibited mandatory Bible reading in public schools. Leaders of the newly political fundamentalism included Rob Grant and Jerry Falwell.

In the s and s, the Christian Right was influencing elections and policy with groups such as the Family Research Council founded by James Dobson and the Christian Coalition formed in by Pat Robertson helping conservative politicians, especially Republicans to win state and national elections. Some scholars describe certain Catholics as fundamentalists. Such Catholics believe in a literal interpretation of both doctrines and Vatican declarations, particularly those pronounced by the Pope , [53] [54] [55] and believe that individuals who do not agree with the magisterium are condemned by God.

Marty described Catholic fundamentalists as advocating mass in Latin and mandatory clerical celibacy while opposing ordination of women priests and rejecting artificial birth control. Pius X , a product of Marcel Lefebvre , is cited as a stronghold of Catholic fundamentalism.

The Fundamentalists

He applied the term to Catholics both on the right and on the left. Fundamentalists' literal interpretation of the Bible has been criticised by practitioners of Biblical criticism for failing to take into account the circumstances in which the Christian Bible was written. Critics claim that this "literal interpretation" is not in keeping with the message the scripture intended to convey when it was written, [61] and that it uses the Bible for political purposes by presenting God "more as a God of judgement and punishment than as a God of love and mercy".

Christian Fundamentalism has been linked with child abuse [64] [65] [66] [67] and mental-illness [68] [69] [70]. Christian Fundamentalism has also been linked with corporal punishment , [71] [72] [73] [74] with most practitioners believing the bible demands they spank their children. Fundamentalists have attempted and continue to attempt to teach intelligent design , a hypothesis with creationism as its base, in lieu of evolution in public schools. Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin.

Edit Cast Cast overview, first billed only: Bobby Lincoln Kiefer Sutherland Jim Cross Om Puri Ludlow Cooper Nelsan Ellis Nazmi Kemal Meesha Shafi Terror has two faces. Edit Did You Know? This led to a dispute between Shafi and Overload, as to who owns the copyright of the song. Goofs at around 6 mins The little girl with the envelope marked "U. Embassy" is walking through a corridor to drop the brown envelope. As she goes down the stairs, there is a signboard in blue, with white "Hindi" text. This corridor supposedly depicts Lahore and the Lahore Press Club where the signboards would have English and Urdu texts.

The ruthlessness of the act was surpassed only by its genius. And David had struck Goliath. I'm sorry if my reaction to the attacks has offended you, Bobby. I hope you see that I'm not celebrating at the death of 3, innocents, just as you would not celebrate the death of , in Baghdad or Kabul, for that matter. But before conscience kicks in, have you Connections Featured in At the Movies: Add the first question.

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