fundamentalism

The Demographic Shift Behind Israel's Ascendant Religious Zionists

by Michael Brenner

Demographics are pushing Orthodox religious nationalists, who are led by West Bank settlers, to political power that is forcing confrontations over both secularism and the occupation. This bloc is growing rapidly less friendly to compromise with secularists, Arabs, or LGBTQ Israelis.

Israel's Ruling Coalition Turns Toward Theocracy

by Bernard Avishai

Netanyahu has engineered an alliance among three disparate strains of religious parties and secular Israelis favoring an aggressive nationalism and occupation policy. But the religious parties have broader goals of undermining secular society in Israel. 

Two Unlikely Champions of Fundamentalist Parties Show it's More about Power than Faith

by Donne Levy

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns to power after embracing religious fundamentalist parties in a coalition. Like his friend Donald Trump, he seems an unlikely leader for a faith-based constituency to embrace. 

Most of All, Hamline's Decision Offends Me as a Muslim

by Amna Khalid

Hamline University, in firing an art history instructor for showing an image of the Prophet Muhammad (with a content warning, in an optional exercise), has not only exemplified how risk-averse bureaucracies use inclusive language to dismiss faculty expertise, it also insulted Muslims by associating a vast and diverse set of cultures with fundamentalist theology. 

Who Is a Christian Nationalist?

by Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead

New survey data says that the growing Christian Nationalist movement is broader than previously believed, and a potential political force in many places. 

Christian Nationalists Terrorized My Childhood. They're More Powerful Now

by Silas House

"As I watched the storming of the Capitol in horror I saw the Christian Nationalism of the outsider church I grew up in on display for the whole world to see."

Conservative Colleges are Winning the Culture Wars

by Adam Laats

While battles over abortion information and teaching racism get headlines, Hillsdale College and other conservative institutions are quietly following the model created by Bob Jones University in the 1970s to push conservative Christian curricula into schools across the country.

Katherine Stewart Joins Jane Coaston to Discuss the Rise of Christian Nationalism

"This is not a new movement. It long preceded Trump. But the ideology is just becoming much more widespread as the movement has seized control, I believe, of the Republican Party."

Christian Dominionism, History, and the War on Abortion in Mississippi

Mississippi's stringent abortion restrictions are the product of a decades-long, cross-denominational project of Christian Dominionism, the view that conservative Christians should control the institutions of society to advance what they consider "Biblical" policies. 

Secularism: The Essential, Fatally Weak Guardrail of Democracy

by Jacques Berlinerblau

The framers of the US Constitiution failed to build in the protections against religious belief overpowering the rights of others or the security of the state that Locke and other political theorists thought were urgently necessary. This oversight might imperil democracy.

How Christian Nationalism Drove Insurrection: A Religious History of Jan. 6

by Kathryn Joyce

Religion scholars Anthea Butler and Peter Manseau offer insight into the convergence of nationalism and religious fervor that contributed to the widespread sense on the right that violence was necessary to thwart the great evil of Biden's election. 

Is There a Way to Dial Down the Political Hatred?

by Molly Worthen

Are fanatical political opinions a refiguring of the need for spiritual meaning in a secular society? What are the prospects for dialogue and coexistence? 

History, Evidence and the Ethics of Belief

by Guy Lancaster

Untrammelled freedom of belief has been enshrined as an American civic virtue. The nation, democracy, and possibly the planet are imperiled without a collective commitment to respect belief only to the extent available evidence supports it. 

The Persistence Of Creationism Shows Losing Could Make Trumpism More Extreme

by Adam Laats

Modern sophisticates were confident that the Scopes Trial marked the defeat and discrediting of creationism. Those alarmed by the denialism of Trump supporters about the election results should remember that the rumors of fundamentalism's demise were greatly exaggerated. 

Trump and the Puritans

by Martyn Whittock

No one would ever call Donald Trump a Puritan. But the 17th century religious movement is a foundation of Trump's America.

Fundamentalist Pandemics

by Juan Cole

What evangelicals could learn from "The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam."

The Religious Right’s Hostility to Science Is Crippling Our Coronavirus Response

by Katherine Stewart

Trump’s response to the pandemic has been haunted by the science denialism of his ultraconservative religious allies.

An Authoritarian Power Structure Brought Coronavirus to Liberty University

by Adam Laats

How one-man rule emerged at fundamentalist colleges and universities.  

A Founder of American Religious Nationalism

by Katherine Stewart

Christian nationalism today is a political movement, and its primary goal is power. Its ultimate aim, formulated by R.J. Rushdoony, is to replace our modern constitutional Republic with a “biblical” order that derives its legitimacy not from the people but from God and the Bible – or, at least, the God and the Bible that men like Rushdoony claimed to know.

Fundamentalism turns 100, a landmark for the Christian Right

by William Trollinger

Christian fundamentalists have become a politically powerful group since the movement’s foundation in 1919.