Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

The End of Fundamentalism?
Thursday, January 4, 2007

Andrew Sullivan has what is, in my mind, the defining blog covering politics and religion. His mix of short squibs and longer, more thoughtful posts, gets the mix almost exactly right, in my opinion. I disagree with lots of what he says, for sure, but I enjoying seeing how his mind works. As he has written about there, and elsewhere, for months, his new book explores the role of humility in religion, and especially in dealing with God. This is a big theme of mine in Where God Was Born. Most people take confidence from the Bible; I believe in its very narrative, especially the way God continues to shift his allegiance from first sons to second sons, from king to prophet, from Israelite to non-Israelite, the Bible is sending a message that humility must be part of our relationship with God.

Andrew has just posted a new piece arguing that 2006 was the year of humility in religion. Here are two key grafs:

There was the strain of Islamic Wahhabism incubated in Saudi Arabia, exported to Afghanistan and wreaking havoc in Iraq. There was Shi'ite theocracy, centered in Tehran, made more terrifying by the apocalyptic worldview of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In the West, the dominant form of Christianity was Fundamentalist Protestantism, gaining new converts and, fused with the Republican Party, flexing powerful political muscles. And in the Vatican, the conservatism of John Paul II found its natural successor in the austere and more thoroughgoing orthodoxy of the new Pope, Benedict XVI. There seemed no stopping this cultural surge, just various attempts to adjust to it, restrain it from violence and temper its extremes.
And then in 2006, there was an unmistakable pause, a moment of self-examination, even the hint of a great humbling. The most absolutist visionaries found a limit to their certitude. Benedict XVI went in a matter of months from proclaiming an irreducible gulf between Christianity and Islam to visiting a mosque in Turkey with white slippers on his feet. He publicly called for Turkey, a secular state but a Muslim country, to be integrated into the European Union. In the U.S., the religious right saw its most enthusiastic repre sentative in the Senate, Rick Santorum, go down to defeat by a crushing 18 points. For the first time, a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage failed — in Arizona. State initiatives for embryonic-stem-cell research became a wedge issue for ... Democrats. Religion finally cut both ways in democratic discourse. For the first time since the evangelical revival began in the 1980s, too much rigidity began to cost politicians votes rather than win them more.

If only this were so. I disagree that fundamentalism was the "dominant" brand of Protestantism. It's by far the minority. The Shia revolution in Iran was in 1979 and has been showing many, many signs of weakening in recent years, despite the political rise of the new president. His evidence of a turnaround in 2006 are more persuasive, but I think in retrospect will be tied to the overreach of the Iraq War, which, as I write in my book, was more tied to religion than anyone ever admitted. If anything, I can't help wondering if this "turning point" is more associated with the publication of his book. Its reaction in conservative quarters might be evidence against him, however.

Labels: Bible in America, Politics in America

Posted by B Feiler at 8:40 AM
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