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Editorial

SIDIC’s final issue of the year and of the millennium addresses the various reactionary religious movements which have been expressing themselves with increasing intensity during the closing years of this century. Frequently “clustered” under the umbrella designation of fundamentalism, these movements reflect common patterns in reaction to common causes; however, they also differ considerably in their political expressions and in their cultural and religious contexts.

In the wake of modernity and ethnonationalism, and coinciding to a significant extent with the multicultural movement, a global resurgence of religion is giving expression to religious militancy and politicization, isolationism and extreme nationalism and, at times, violent extremism. Emerging at a time when most of the antireligious totalitarianisms are gone, this radical, politicized religious revivalism has moderate as well as extreme expressions which intertwine faith and politics, affecting both personal and public life. What are the impulses which underlie and invigorate this phenomenon? What are the implications which demand attention?

The articles in this issue serve as four “windows” into this passionately energetic and complex phenomenon. R. Scott Appleby – astutely making the distinction between “holding on to the faith” and “being held by the faith”– sketches a portrait of “enclave religiosity” in Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He provides a backdrop for assessing patterns of ecumenical and interreligious interaction that have characterized fundamentalism in recent years in these three faiths. While acknowledging the anti-ecumenism of Protestant fundamentalism and Catholic integralism which Pierre LathuiliPre’s article describes in some detail, Appleby also draws attention to the more recent evolution of a somewhat bizarre fundamentalist-style ecumenism – an ecumenism in the service of political expediency, erected hastily in response to the fear of losing distinctive religious identity.

David Rosen addresses the role of religion in establishing individual, corporate and national identity. After briefly considering this in the broad socio-cultural context, he addresses the Jewish national context today with special attention to the fact that, in Judaism, the relationship between religion and peoplehood is inextricable. In Islamic Fundamentalism, John Esposito presents a valuable detailed overview of developments in the Muslim world in the 1990s. He cautions about applying the term fundamentalism to this proliferation of diverse and complex movements which run the gamut from moderate to extremist and which are more accurately designated by such terms as Islamism, political Islam, Islamic activism or Islamic revivalism. He addresses the roots, character and scope of these movements – as they affect both personal and public life, and as they express an alternative ideology to nationalism, capitalism and socialism in an effort to implement Islamic alternatives in today’s society.

During this time of cultural upheaval and homogenizing universalism are these movements perhaps expressing human yearnings to which we need to be attentive? As change, pluralism and tolerance are perceived as threats to communal and religious identity, how can the universal elements of religion be strengthened while cross-cultural and interreligious understanding and cooperation are ensured as the preferred alternatives to isolation, aggressivity, conflict and violence? With this issue SIDIC attempts to make a contribution in pursuing answers to these questions.