After an extended break I’m back to James Scott’s “The Art of Not Being Governed”. Just a few pages back in and I had to stop. He writes “Not particularly religious to begin with, let alone orthodox, peasants eymologically, the term pagan, meaning nonbeliever, comes to us directly from the Latin paganus, meaning country-dweller) turned to anti-establishment revolutionary sects when their economic and social independence was menaced”. Since Christianity today is The Religion You Don’t Believe In and is most widespread in European/western culture, it’s natural for Scott to associate it with orthodoxy. But when Christianity was a young minority sect, it was confined almost exclusively to the cities. And since the world was more agrarian then and cities were a population sink, most people were pagans in the old sense. Worship of the old gods had long been integrated into the Roman empire, and Edward Gibbon (echoing pagans of the time) associated Christianity with the demise of that empire. Rural people are traditional, and new cults are novel. The peasantry may not be “orthodox” (“theologically incorrect“), mostly because they don’t know what the educated elite’s “orthodoxy” is, and may simply assume the practices of their neighbors and ancestors is normative for co-religionists in the metropole. Fundamentalism is the product of modernist rationalism, and attracts the uprooted migrants to cities. As Ed Glaeser (and Azar Gat) has noted, the concentration of people in cities facilitates rebellion. Despite all my complaints, I’m not going to dispute Scott’s expertise on the rebellious milleniarism of the hill peoples of southeast asia. The problem is that he is now conflating them with peasants, when so much of his book is about the dichotomy between “barbarians” and peasantry and how each develops a strongly held identity of not being the other.
March 29, 2011
March 29, 2011 at 8:37 am
Re: fundamentalism
People seem very concerned about adopting the *form* of rationality, but very unconcerned about adopting its methods or its content.
Camouflage, perhaps?
March 29, 2011 at 11:08 am
Fundamentalism, sensu stricto, is a Christian phenomenon of the early 20th century. A fundamentalist is one who adheres to the “five points of fundamentalism,” viz.: 1) the divine inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture; 2) the divinity of Christ; 3) the virgin birth of Christ; 4) His substitutionary atonement, i.e., Christ’s crucifixion as a redemptive sacrifice for the sins of man; 5) His resurrection and bodily return to earth.
The points constitute a sort of Protestant parallel to the “Syllabus of Errors” promulgated by Pius IX. They are not so much “the product of modernist rationalism” as a reaction to it. It’s important to note that anyone who can recite the Nicene Creed with sincere belief is a “fundamentalist” in the sense of accepting the Five Points. Pretty much all Christians, Protestant, Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, were fundamentalists of this sort until the eighteenth century advent of the Enlightenment. Fundamentalism must not be confused with dispensationalism, Pentecostalism, premillenarianism, or other -isms sometimes found in association with it.
I do not see how the theological conservatism of the Five Points is particularly urban in character. If anything it is rural. The points were adopted in 1910 by the Presbyterian General Assembly (representing all Presbyterian congregations across the U.S., hence, primarily a rural constituency at that time) in response to the liberalism emanating from the Union Theological Seminary, a bastion of the urban intelligentsia. Fundamentalism in the U.S. until quite recently was strongest in the rural South and West. The rise of urban fundamentalist/evangelical mega-churches like Saddleback is a very recent phenomenon and is largely a byproduct of the collapse of “mainstream” denominations like the Episcopalians and Presbyterians, which have lost membership as they have embraced theological liberalism.
What you say about the early strength of Christianity in cities is correct, and it is of course true that Julian the Apostate was a religious conservative in the context of his day and age. This observation, however valid, does not shed much light on religious life today.
March 29, 2011 at 3:51 pm
But when Christianity was a young minority sect, it was confined almost exclusively to the cities.
An interesting point. It suggests that we watch out for the weird sects coming out of cities as one of them might become the future big-time religion.
March 29, 2011 at 3:55 pm
Isn’t most of humanity now urban? I’d think cities would be the source of the next religion merely by default.
Unless of course a global apocalypse destroys most cities, which would provide ample material for a new religion amongst the countryfolk…
March 31, 2011 at 4:21 pm
without googling, i think we’re at about a 50/50 split now, although I think we’ll be mostly urban within a generation.
March 29, 2011 at 8:51 pm
You seem to be conflating “orthodox” with “common” in your title (but maybe not in the post?). Paganism was not orthodox because orthodox means conformant to a doctrine, and pagans generally have loose sets of practices, not formal doctrine. The union of Roman administration with Christian belief produced the first real orthodoxy, I think.
March 29, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Following Scott in this book, I am thinking in general terms rather than specific to Christianity (in his context, Christianity indicates the rejection of the religion of lowland states). And I’d say doctrine begins with literate states.
March 31, 2011 at 12:19 pm
I have often wondered about the process of thought whereby the term “fundamentalist” became attached to religions other than Christianity. It would also be interesting to know when it first was used outside the context of Christianity.
It seems to me that those who speak (for example) of Wahhabi Muslims as “fundamentalists” are, consciously or not, trying to make a comparison that is unflattering to fundamentalist Christians and the “religious right” here in the United States. The comparison is overt on the part of some polemicists. I have seen (for example) the pro-life movement accused of wishing to impose a “theocracy” on the United States akin to that of Saudi Arabia, when in fact, all they want to do is to restore the sexual mores prevalent when Eisenhower was president.
There is no Muslim theological term translatable as “fundamentalist” to describe the kind of austere, militant Islam that westerners have in mid when they call it fundamentalist. I believe the Wahhabis dislike being called Wahhabi (after their founder) and prefer to be called muwahhidun. The closest English words we have to this are “monotheists” or “unitarians.”
But “unitarian” hardly makes the implicit comparison that those who speak about “fundamentalist” Muslims seek to do. They want to tar Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson by association with Osama bin Laden – not Paul Blanshard or Adlai Stevenson!
April 1, 2011 at 12:20 am
Ironically, I’ve heard that the original “fundamentalist” movement was essentially ecumenical, attempting to find a basis for agreement in the early wake of the Protestant reformation.
When I speak of fundamentalists, I do so with a sense of identification, the nutty rationalist is still a part of me.
I don’t think use of the word fundamentalist always implies that comparison, though usage is going to be sourced to the familiar. The term “American Taliban” does though, and is indeed completely ridiculous.
President Taft was also a unitarian.
April 1, 2011 at 1:36 am
Don’t see what’s so ridiculous about the idea of an American Taliban. The ideology is about the same, they just don’t have the power.
I’m surprised that you think it’s ridiculous. Americans are just as prone to religious mania as anyone else, and much more so than the rest of the findustrialized world.
April 1, 2011 at 12:39 pm
Here’s a Chestertonian paradox: the way to destroy the influence of the Christian religion is to subsidize it with government funds.
When Jefferson introduced his famous statute of religious liberty into the Virginia legislature, it was met with objections from many, notable among them being Patrick Henry. Jefferson answered his critics by pointing out that state subsidy made the clergy “more attentive to their emoluments than to their duties.” Cutting off the support of the state meant that American churches had to rely on the support of their communicants – the clergy had to give them what they wanted.
In most of Europe, throughout the nineteenth century and even up to the present, churches were the beneficiaries of government expenditures. This is still true in England, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries. There are state confessional churches in England and in Scandinavia, and in Germany, there is a church tax that is collected by the state and disbursed amongst Reformed (Calvinist), Lutheran, and Catholic establishments.
We may with profit compare the popularity of religion in those countries with that in the United States. In Scandinavia, the state churches have largely become no more than keepers of vital statistics. Very small numbers of people attend services regularly. In Britain and Germany, congregations are dwindling and are largely made up of senior citizens.
The growth of suburban mega-churches and the vibrant evangelical congregations of the United States stand in sharp contrast. Jefferson’s analysis was “on the money.” Non-establishment and free exercise have been highly favorable to religion in the United States, because they have provided it with suitable economic incentives.
April 4, 2011 at 7:39 am
mtraven, I’ll outsource my response to Razib. The Christian right in America are like “moderate” Muslims. It’s telling that you made the comparison to industrialized nations, where the state has been kicking the church’s ass since the peace of Westphalia. Someone who wants to overturn Lawrence v. Texas or Griswold v. Connecticut would only get back to JFK’s America. As Walter Block said of a person who doesn’t understand the difference between a toilet and a carpet, if you don’t understand the difference between JFK’s American and the Taliban’s Afghanistan, that makes for reluctance to invite such a person to a conversation.
Michael, see The Political Economy of Beliefs.
April 4, 2011 at 9:22 am
Not clear how that article contradicts anything I said. You and he are talking general traits of a large religous population; I said there is a specific subset of Christians here with Taliban-like attitudes. They do not have the influence of the Afghan Taliban because America is not Afghanistan.
The Dominionists do not have a lot of power (compared to the Taliban) but they have more power and influence within the right than most people know, which is why it is useful, not hysterical, for people to highlight that influence.
April 4, 2011 at 7:21 pm
Wake me up when they accomplish something.