Fundamentally Wrong

Rob Salkowitz over at Emphasis Added on the psychology of Christian fundamentalism:

Clearly you don’t have to look too deeply into human history to see this common pattern across many societies. Somewhere deep in our minds, we are hard-wired to recognize this sort of social order as safe and reassuring in times of danger. Once these impulses are activated, the response precedes logical thought. Rationalizations, if they are considered necessary, typically take the form of subordinating the responsibility for one’s actions to the recognized authority of religious texts, tribal identity, tradition, or abstract and mutable codes of behavior such as “honor” and “faith,” whose general aura of opprobrium serves to justify all sorts of cruel activities committed in their name. Professed belief in dogma and social codes is what gives human beings permission to put away their more highly-evolved sense of ethics and empathy and revert to the primordial violence of our tribal ancestry.

So it’s important to recognize that the impulses toward fundamentalism and hierarchical political structures have very long roots and are, in an important way, a “natural” way for humans to react to threatening situations. It’s also important to remember that these behaviors were adapted to a mode of tribal life typified by fear, superstition, squalor, and misery. Humanity has shown the capacity to evolve considerably beyond this low level of existence in direct proportion to our ability to transcend lizard-brained reflexes to organize our society according to primordial tribal principles.

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Speaking as a former Southern Baptist, it's hard not to note that the rise of modern American fundamentalism has not at all taken place "in times of danger." In fact, one could trace modern fundamentalism's beginnings to the 1970s, when conservative Baptists dedicated themselves to taking over the denomination and banishing liberals and moderates from their ranks forever; similar movements also took place outside the Southern Baptist convention, the "Bible church" movement, for instance--this was all within a cultural framework of less religious conservatives essentially doing the same thing, but with politics. Certainly, there has been economic turmoil in the last 35 years or so, and some red-baiting during the Reagan era, but nothing coming close to the "times of danger" that made our ancestors cling nervously to their patriarchs. Any real sense of danger coming in the wake of 9/11 happened well after fundamentalism had firmly entrenched itself in American culture.

Perhaps one could argue that the social changes of the 60s and 70s gave many of these fundamentalists a strong feeling of "times of danger," but very few of them were going hungry or were in any other kind of life-threatening situation while the movement took root. On the other hand, that's not a bad argument to make. My parents and brothers are still quite Baptist, and there is a very real sense among them that liberals and other evil forces are trying to strip them, in essence, of their identities.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the fundamentalist movement, as a phenomenon, is much more complicated than an analysis in terms of neurology and evolution might suggest. That doesn't mean, however, that Salkowitz's essay isn't worth reading: fear and authoritarianism most certainly play a role in the overall fundamentalist dynamic.

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