The New Religious Politics: Where, When, and Why Do “Fundamentalisms” Appear?

Abstract

The reasons for the recent and simultaneous appearance, or rise in influence, in much of the world of "fundamentalist" or doctrinally and socially conservative religiopolitical mass movements have been analyzed for individual groups but rarely in a way that compares all the main religions and the regions in which they are strong. 1 Rarer still have been analyses of why such movements have expanded in most areas only since the 1970s, what causes exist in areas where these movements are strong and why they differ from those regions where they are weak or nonexistent, and what, aside from religion, produces different types of movements. Here we will try to see if there are common factors in time and in space that help explain these movements and will look for causes of their similarities and differences. Explanations presented here will stress differences between religious nationalism (or communalism) directed primarily against other religious communities and conservative religious politics directed primarily against internal enemies. Differences between types and levels of preexisting religious beliefs will be examined to suggest why some areas have such movements and others do not. Worldwide factors that help to account for the recent rise of religious politics will also be explored. To deal with such large problems in one essay requires the simplification of complex and varied movements and permits only a brief treatment of their his-696

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