Fundamentalism among Protestants

David A. J. Richards

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511676031.007

5 - Fundamentalism among Protestants

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 May 2010

David A. J. Richards

Show author details

David A. J. Richards: Affiliation:
New York University School of Law

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Protestant fundamentalism in the United States must be understood within the larger framework of the distinctive history and culture of the Protestant churches in contrast to Roman Catholicism. Only when we are quite clear about this larger framework can we both understand and critically assess such fundamentalism, as it both arises very much within that framework and yet incoherently questions and abandons what has made that framework so valuable not only as an interpretation of Christianity but also in the historical growth and development of the principles and institutions of constitutional government, including the argument for toleration. I begin with a discussion of this larger framework and then turn to the nature of the claims that fundamentalism makes within this framework. My critique then examines closely various dimensions of its internal incoherence (including its lack of attention to the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth) and its substantive unreasonableness. I then offer a diagnosis of its roots in a reactionary patriarchal culture and psychology.

PROTESTANTISM AND CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

Human culture, which had been oral, was transformed by the emergence of literacy and written texts. The very capacity to think of oneself as part of a culture is delimited not by the exigencies or oral memory but by the written texts that today preserve the content of the culture.

Type: Chapter
Information: Fundamentalism in American Religion and Law
Obama's Challenge to Patriarchy's Threat to Democracy
, pp. 153 - 192

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511676031.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ong, Walter J., Orality and Literacy (London: Methuen, 1982)CrossRef Google Scholar

Goody, Jack, The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977)Google Scholar

Plumb, J. H., The Death of the Past, pp. 62–101 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971)Google Scholar

Jacobson, Dan, The Story of the Stories: The Chosen People and Its God (New York: Harper & Row, 1982)Google Scholar

Alter, Robert, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981)Google Scholar

Cochrane, Charles N., Christianity and Classical Culture (London: Oxford University Press, 1944)Google Scholar

Santayana, George, The Life of Reason, vol. 3, Reason in Religion, pp. 69–177 (New York: Dover, 1982)Google Scholar

Blumenberg, Hans, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Wallace, Robert M. (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Gilson, Étienne, God and Philosophy (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1941)Google Scholar

Dodds, E. R., Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety (New York: W. W. Norton, 1965)CrossRef Google Scholar

Brown, Peter, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978)Google Scholar

,Augustine, City of God, trans. Bettenson, Henry (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1972)Google Scholar

,Augustine, The Trinity, vol. 8, Augustine: Late Works, trans. Burnaby, John (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1955)Google Scholar

Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar

Bainton, Ronald H., “The Bible in the Reformation,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 3, ed. Greenslade, S. D. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), pp. 1–37Google Scholar

Bouyer, Louis, “Erasmus in Relation to the Medieval Biblical Tradition,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 2, ed. Lampe, G. W. H. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), pp. 492–505CrossRef Google Scholar

Miller, Perry, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1939), pp. 3–35Google Scholar

Lovejoy, Arthur O., The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1936), pp. 163, 332–3Google Scholar

Acton, J. E. E. D. (Lord), “The Protestant Theory of Persecution,” in The History of Freedom and Other Essays (London: Macmillan, 1907)Google Scholar

Shapiro, Barbara J., Probability and Certainty in Seventeenth-Century England (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Leeuwen, Henry G., The Problem of Certainty in English Thought, 1630–1690 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970)CrossRef Google Scholar

Popkin, Richard H., The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)Google Scholar

Richards, David A. J., Toleration and the Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), pp. 88–102Google Scholar

Zagorin, Perez, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003)CrossRef Google Scholar

Schneidau, Henry N., Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976)Google Scholar

Bayle, Pierre, Philosophique Commentaire sur ces paroles de Jesus Christ “Constrain-les d/entrée,” Oeuvres Diverses de Mr. Pierre Bayle, vol. 2 (A la Haye: Chez P. Husson et al., 1727), pp. 357–560, 387–8Google Scholar

Locke, John, Works of John Locke, vol. 6, A Letter Concerning Toleration; A Second Letter Concerning Toleration; A Third Letter Concerning Toleration; A Fourth Letter for Toleration (London: Thomas Davison, 1823), pp. 1–574, 37–8Google Scholar

Colman, John, John Locke's Moral Philosophy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Dunn, John, “From Applied Theology to Social Analysis,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Hont, Istvan and Ignatieff, Michael (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 119–35CrossRef Google Scholar

Locke, John, The Reasonableness of Christianity, ed. Ramsey, I. T. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar

Rex, Walter, Essays on Pierre Bayle and Religious Controversy (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1965), p. 55CrossRef Google Scholar

Eckenrode, H. J., Separation of Church and State in Virginia (New York: De Capo Press, 1971), p. 74Google Scholar

Richards, David A. J., A Theory of Reasons for Action (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 152–7Google Scholar

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, “The Social Contract,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. Cole, G. D. H. (New York: Dutton, 1950)Google Scholar

Kant, Immanuel, “Concerning the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice,’” in Kant's Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans, trans. Nisbet, H. B. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 61–92

Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971)Google Scholar

Dunn, , The Political Thought of John Locke (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969)CrossRef Google Scholar

Richards, David A. J., Foundations of American Constitutionalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989)Google Scholar

Richards, David A. J., Disarming Manhood: Roots of Ethical Resistance (Athens: Ohio University/Swallow Press, 2005)Google Scholar

Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Sandeen, Ernest R., The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millennarianism 1800–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar

Marsden, George M., Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Crapanzano, Vincent, Serving the Word: Literalism in America from the Pulpit to the Bench (New York: New Press, 2000), pp. 16, 91–2, 147, 152, 165, 173–4Google Scholar

Bloom, Harold, The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (New York: Touchstone, 1992), p. 226Google Scholar

Kell, Carl L. and Camp, L. Raymond, In the Name of the Father: The Rhetoric of the New Southern Baptist Convention (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999)Google Scholar

Vermes, Geza, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981)Google Scholar

Vermes, , Jesus and the World of Judaism (London: SCM Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Vermes, , The Religion of Jesus the Jew (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (New York: Viking Compass, 2001)Google Scholar

Flusser, David, Jesus (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 2001)Google Scholar

Flusser, David, Judaism and the Origins of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University, 1988)Google Scholar

Fredriksen, Paula, From Jesus to Christ, 2nd ed. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Fredriksen, Paula, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000)Google Scholar

Sanders, E. P., Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985)Google Scholar

Sanders, , The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Allen Lane, 1993)Google Scholar

Meier, John P., A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 1, The Roots of the Problem and the Person (New York: Doubleday, 1991)Google Scholar

Meier, , A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 2, Mentor, Message, and Miracles (Doubleday: New York, 1993)Google Scholar

Meier, , A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, vol. 3, Companions and Competitors (New York: Doubleday, 2001)Google Scholar

Daube, David, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1998)Google Scholar

Wilson, A. N., Jesus: A Life (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1992)Google Scholar

Kaufmann, Walter, Critique of Religion and Philosophy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 278–85Google Scholar

Buber, Martin, I and Thou, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970), pp. 66–7Google Scholar

Witherington, Ben, Women and the Genesis of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 52–64CrossRef Google Scholar

Ruether, Rosemary Radford, Sexism and God-Talk: Toward a Feminist Theology (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schussler, Jesus: Miriam's Child, Sophia's Prophet (New York: Continuum, 1994)Google Scholar

Fiorenza, , In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 2002)Google Scholar

Fiorenza, , ed., Searching Scriptures, vol. 1, A Feminist Introduction (New York: Crossroad, 1993)

Fiorenza, , ed., Searching the Scriptures, vol. 2, A Feminist Commentary (New York: Crossroad, 1994)

Wildavsky, Aaron, The Nursing Father: Moses as a Political Leader (University: University of Alabama Press, 1984)Google Scholar

Ruddick, Sara, Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989)Google Scholar

Erikson, Erik H., “The Galilean Sayings and the Sense of ‘I,’” 70 Yale Rev. 321, 349 (1981)Google Scholar

Albright, W. E. and Mann, C. S., The Anchor Bible: Matthew (New York: Doubleday, 1971), p. 68Google Scholar

Jeremias, Joachim, The Sermon on the Mount (London: Athlone Press, 1961), p. 27Google Scholar

Davies, W. D., The Setting of the Sermon on the Mount (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), p. 427Google Scholar

Brown, Raymond E., The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John I–XII (New York: Doubleday, 1966), p. 332Google Scholar

Heschel, Abraham, The Prophets (New York: Perennial Classics, 2001)Google Scholar

Alston, Richard, “Arms and the Man: Soldiers, Masculinity, and Power in Republican and Imperial Rome,” in When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power and Identity in Classical Antiquity, ed. Foxhall, Lin and Salmon, John (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 205–23Google Scholar

Schiavone, Aldo, The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West, trans. Schneider, Margery J. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Gilligan, Carol and Richards, David A. J., The Deepening Darkness: Patriarchy, Resistance, and Democracy's Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)Google Scholar

Fox, Robin Lane, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992)Google Scholar

Wills, Garry, What Paul Meant (New York: Viking, 2006)Google Scholar

Paul, Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar

Taubes, Jacob, The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Hollander, Dana (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Sandmel, Samuel, The Genius of Paul: A Study in History (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979)Google Scholar

Boyarin, Daniel, A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)Google Scholar

Franklin, John Hope, The Militant South, 1800–1861 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1956)Google Scholar

Wyatt-Brown, Bertram, Honor and Violence in the Old South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar

Cash, W. J., The Mind of the South (New York: Vintage Books, 1941)Google Scholar

Richards, David A. J., Women, Gays, and the Constitution: The Grounds for Feminism and Gay Rights in Culture and Law (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 42–4Google Scholar

Gager, John A., The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983)Google Scholar

Poliakov, Leon, The History of Anti-Semitism, vol. 1, trans. Howard, Richard (New York: Vanguard Press, 1965)Google Scholar

Langmuir, Gavin I., Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar

Langmuir, , History, Religion, and Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar

Boyarin, Daniel, Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Levenson, Jon D., Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the God of Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Boyarin, Daniel, Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)Google Scholar

Schneidau, Herbert N., Sacred Discontent: The Bible and Western Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976)Google Scholar

Halbertal, Moshe and Margalit, Avishai, Idolatry, trans. Goldblum, Naomi (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar

Jacobson, Dan, The Story of Stories: The Chosen People and Its God (New York: Harper & Row, 1982)Google Scholar

Frankfort, Henri, Kingship and the Gods: A Study of Ancient Near Eastern Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948)Google Scholar

Frankfort, Henri, Frankfort, H. A., Wilson, John A., and Jacobsen, Thorkild, Before Philosophy: The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man (Baltimore: Penguin, 1961)Google Scholar

Alter, Robert, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books 1981)Google Scholar

Halbertal, Moshe, People of the Book: Canon, Meaning, and Authority (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997)Google Scholar

Milgrom, Jacob, Leviticus 17–22: The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 2000), p. 1515Google Scholar

Douglas, , In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (Sheffield, U.K.: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Greenberg, Rabbi Steven, Wrestling with God and Men: Homosexuality in the Jewish Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004)Google Scholar

Biale, David, Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America (New York: Basic Books, 1992)Google Scholar

Bamforth, Nicholas and Richards, David A. J., Patriarchal Relgiion, Sexuality, and Gender: Critique of New Natural Law (Cambridge University Press, 2007)CrossRef Google Scholar

Halbertal, Tova Hartman, Appropriately Subversive: Modern Mothers in Traditional Religions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002)Google Scholar

Segal, Alan F., Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar

Carroll, James, Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001), pp. 208–19Google Scholar

Nietzsche, Friedrich, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. Smith, Douglas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 77–136Google Scholar

Koonz, Claudia, Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987)Google Scholar

Koonz, Claudia, The Nazi Conscience (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2003)Google Scholar

Elon, Amos, The Pity of It All: A Portrait of the German-Jewish Epoch, 1743–1933 (New York: Picador, 2002)Google Scholar

Freud, Sigmund, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” in Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. Strachey, James (London: Hogarth Press, 1961), vol. 21, p. 114Google Scholar

Elon, Amos, Herzl (New York: Hold, Rinehart and Winston, 1975)Google Scholar

Wheatcroft, Geoffrey, The Controversy of Zion: Jewish Nationalism, the Jewish State, and the Unresolved Jewish Dilemma (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1996)Google Scholar

Arendt, Hannah, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973)Google Scholar

Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth, Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1982), pp. 5–163Google Scholar

Arendt, Hannah, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1992)Google Scholar

deGruchy, John W., ed., The Cambridge Companion to Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2002), p. 158

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich, Letters and Papers from Prison, ed. Bethge, Eberhard (New York: Touchstone Books, 1971), p. 17Google Scholar

Bethge, Renate, “Bonhoeffer's Family and Its Significance for His Theology,” in Dietrich Bonhoeffer – His Significance for North Americans, ed. Rasmussen, Larry (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), pp. 1–30Google Scholar

Hallie, Philip P., Let Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (New York: Harper & Row, 1979)Google Scholar

Numbers, Ronald L., The Creationist: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006)Google Scholar

Douglas, Ann, The Feminization of American Culture (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977)Google Scholar

Griffith, R. Marie, God's Daughters: Evangelical Woman and the Power of Submission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Brasher, Brenda E., Godly Women: Fundamentalism and Female Power (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998)Google Scholar

Putney, Clifford, Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1889–1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001)Google Scholar

Townsend, Kim, Manhood at Harvard: William James and Others (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996)Google Scholar

Renehan, Edward J., The Lion's Pride: Theodore Roosevelt and His Family in Peace and War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)Google Scholar

DeBerg, Betty A., Ungodly Women: Gender and the First Wave of American Fundamentalism (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2000)Google Scholar

Bendroth, Margaret Lamberts, Fundamentalism and Gender: 1875 to the Present (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1993)Google Scholar

Hassey, Janette, No Time for Silence: Evangelical Women in Public Ministry around the Turn of the Century (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Academic Books, 1986)Google Scholar

Hofstadter, Richard, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. 119Google Scholar

Noll, Mark A., The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 1994)Google Scholar

Phillips, Kevin, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (New York: Viking, 2006)Google Scholar

Linker, Damon, The Theocons: Secular America under Siege (New York: Doubleday, 2006)Google Scholar

Dworkin, Ronald, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006), pp. 5–6Google Scholar

Carpenter, Joel A., Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997)Google Scholar

Manning, Christel, God Gave Us the Right: Conservative Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Orthodox Jewish Women Grapple with Feminism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999), p. 199Google Scholar

Wills, Garry, What Jesus Meant (New York: Viking, 2006), pp. 32–9Google Scholar