WHERE did fundamentalism start? At the end of the last century, liberal theologians were changing their beliefs to accommodate higher criticism of the Bible and scientific theories, such as evolution. As a result, people’s confidence in the Bible was shaken. Conservative religious leaders in the United States reacted by fixing what they called the fundamentals of faith.a Early in the 20th century, they published a discussion of these fundamentals in a series of volumes entitled The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth. From this title comes the term “fundamentalism.”

Today, the word “fundamentalism” applies not only to Protestant movements but also to those in other religions, such as Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism.

Identifying a Fundamentalist

Religious fundamentalism is usually an attempt to preserve what is believed to be the original traditions or religious beliefs of a culture and to oppose what is perceived as the secular spirit of the world. That is not to say that fundamentalists oppose all that is modern. Some use modern communication very effectively to promote their point of view. But they fight against the secularization of society.b

Some fundamentalists are determined not only to preserve for themselves a traditional structure of doctrines or way of life but to impose these on others, to change social structures so that they conform with the fundamentalists’ beliefs. The Catholic fundamentalist, therefore, will not limit himself to rejecting abortion. He may well pressure the legislators of his country to promote laws outlawing abortion. In Poland, according to the newspaper La Repubblica, in order to have an antiabortion law approved, the Catholic Church conducted “a ‘war’ in which it deployed all its power and influence.” In doing so, the church authorities were acting very much like fundamentalists. The Protestant Christian Coalition in the United States fights similar “wars.”

Fundamentalists are distinguished above all by their deep-rooted religious convictions. Thus, a Protestant fundamentalist will be a convinced proponent of the literal interpretation of the Bible, likely including the belief that the earth was created in six literal days. A Catholic fundamentalist has no doubts about the infallibility of the pope.