The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (non-fiction book by Karen Armstrong first published in 2000)

 

The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

By Karen Armstrong

(non-fiction published in 2000)

 

“Fundamentalism in all three faiths has no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state.”

n From the introduction

 

Karen Armstong’s first best-seller was 1993’s “A History of God” which traced the evolution of the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In 2000 she released a much slimmer volume, the sorta-sequel but really stand-alone, “The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam” concerning how Extremist threads arose in these three large and diverse Religious identities. A bit more than a year later came the horrific 9/11 attacks and Anderson was moved into the spotlight as never before as the USA and England (the Nations representing her largest audiences) struggled to understand what could have driven such an utter evil, the relationship between the three Faiths in the War of Civilizations, and looking for someone to clearly define the difference between Devotion and Bigotry in the tripartite context.

 

Critic C. P. Farley, writing of “The Battle for …” years after its publication, observed, "9-11 holds a fresh irony. While Osama and Co. wouldn't exist without the hegemony of Western secularism to rally against, their most effective attack on the Great Satan has breathed new life into our own fundamentalist tendencies.”

 

Armstrong’s career started as a Conservative Catholic and before 1993 she’d been a Nun. Her road to Liberalistic Faith was tied to her studies of Comparative Religions and embrace of Catholic Mysticism. Armstrong’s long-standing study of Comparative Religions has always focused on the unified vision of all three, and over time she increasingly argued that the “Golden Rule” is actually a Golen Thread tying all three together. She insists we must be "more faithful to the benevolence, tolerance, and respect for humanity which characterizes modern culture at its best." She is among the most compassionate and ecumenical of religious scholars but this book, though, is about the people who really piss her off.

Here she shifts focus to addressing the least-Ecumenical representatives of each Faith’s Faithful, concluding that the intolerant actually have shared visions despite being so distant from each other. This book represents a sort of fun-house-mirror reflection of what she has long argued to the more-Liberal-leaning Faithful before. The lesson here seems a defiance of Leo Tolstoy's adage, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Armstrong seems more to say that not only does do all loves look alike, all hates do too.

 

“Fundamentalism is now part of the modern world. It represents widespread disappointment, alienation, anxiety, and rage that no government can safely ignore."

 

The book is about three Religions but has four threads. The Jewish one concerns Religious Zionism in the already-Existent State of Israel, the Christian focus is on USA' Protestant Evangelicals of the 20th c. (but skips the more moderate-in-temperament Evangelicals like Billy Graham, though she does observe that unlike among outsiders, like me, within the Evangelical Community they currently, generally, only call themselves "Fundamentalists" when they are of the Dispensationalist Branch), but the Muslim thread concerns two groups, Egyptians Sunni seduced by the Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian Shias of that Nation’s Revolution. ''The most extreme forms of Sunni fundamentalism surfaced in Nasser's [a Muslim Secularist leading Egypt] concentration camps, and the Shah's [another Muslim Secularist leading Iran] crackdowns helped to inspire the Islamic Revolution.''

 

A striking thing here is that this Liberal Catholic mostly refuses to trumpet her resentments towards those threads of Faith that are most obviously hostile to her. Anderson observes that the Fundamentalist movements often started more Mystical and even Pacifistic before their inner Demons began to dominate, several of their founders even embraced Ecumenicalism as they began on the road to what proved to be fortified encampments.

 

But “mostly” but not mean “completely” and more than once she expresses her anger. "Fundamentalist theologies and ideologies are rooted in fear. They see the world as simply drained of meaning, even satanic … If a patient brought such paranoid, conspiracy-laden, and vengeful fantasies to a therapist, he or she would undoubtedly be diagnosed as disturbed."

 

Also, "It is important to recognize that these theologies and ideologies are rooted in fear. The desire to define doctrines, erect barriers, establish borders, and segregate the faithful in a sacred enclave where the law is stringently observed springs from that terror of extinction which has made all fundamentalists, at one time or another, believe that the secularists were about to wipe them out."

 

And maybe she’s a little extra harsh on Christian Fundamentalists, especially USA Televangelists starting in the 1980s, as compared to the others explored. Unlike their Israeli Jewish, Egyptian Sunni, and Iranian Shia, counterparts, USA Christian Fundamentalists (though guilty of specific acts of Terrorism) are not actively, collectively, engaged in a well-organized shooting war against other views of Civilization. She, perhaps deliberately, misspells Jimmy Swaggart’s name and wrote, “Protestant fundamentalists in the United States became more reactionary, intransigent and literal-minded after their humiliation at the Scopes trial.''

 

She's not alone in this bitterness. Anderson lives in London, England, while here in the USA have to deal with Christian Fundamentalists more intimately than she. We also have deal with them more intimately than the murderous Jihadis, true even after those Jihadis murdered almost 3,000 civilians in a single day and sent our boys home in body-bags for decades thereafter. Many of us (including me) are just as pissed at the Christian Fundamentalists she is. In the 1970s or 1980s, the learned Dr. James Luther Adams, teaching in a Seminary, warned his students (I’m now quoting Critic Chris Hedges), “we would end our careers fighting an ascendant Fundamentalist movement, whom he called ‘the Christian fascists.’''

 

Anderson is obviously correct when she observes that Christian Fundamentalists read the Bible, ''in a literal, rational way that is quite different from the more mystical, allegorical approach of premodern spirituality.'' Also, ''The West has developed an entirely unprecedented and wholly different type of civilization … so the religious response to it has been unique.''

 

Her core argument is that “Old Time Religion” is actually new, its followers pursue the untainted doctrines and practices of the past yet prove to be more modern than they realize. In her Liberal Catholicism, she sees more honest expressions of older faiths as comfortably adaptable in the face of changing world, while the Fundamentalists are trapped in a hypocritical error, that all Fundamentalists ''have a symbiotic relationship with modernity'' which they deny.

 

During my own Religious education, this was described as understanding the difference between the “Scared and the Profane,” now an awkward phrase because the meaning of the language has so shifted beneath it. The Profane is now seen as those things that oppose the Scared, but once it was far broader, including those things considered mundane and ordinary. One must live in both worlds, one must pray and eat, and the Faithful need to know the difference and weigh the values in a way that both Scared and Profane are honored.

 

To over-come this linguistic barrier, Anderson moved towards “Myth” and “Reason” to define the contrast, but “Myth” means something different to a Mystic like herself than everybody else. So, like many others, she reached back to dead languages where the meanings of words aren’t so mutable, picking the terms “Mythos” and “Logos.” She writes that her definitions were guided her reading of Johannes Sløk. Mythos concerns "what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence... Myth was not concerned with practical matters but with meaning … [that] which gives meaning to life, but cannot be explained in rational terms," while, "Logos was the “rational, pragmatic and scientific thought that enabled men and women to function well in the world."

 

She then argues that Fundamentalism is – ahem – fundamentally an expression of a confusion between the two. 

 

Religion is not immune to, but really dependent on, Logos, as Religious groups are actually communities full of mundane needs. Also, a government that wasn’t foundationally Theocratic was unthinkable until the 17^th c. age of the Enlightenment. Anderson uses the example of those Catholic Popes and Kings, who were both Religious and Political leaders, and understood that Logos was Logos. These leaders engaged the Crusades knowing they were Conquerors pursuing personal and political gain and tried to build sustainable systems based on treaties with the Arabs. Other leaders during those Centuries of conflict were looking less towards material gain or sustainability, distracted by the pursuit of God’s triumph, confusing Mythos for Logos and guilty of the worst of the atrocities.

 

Here it's worth noting St. Francis of Assisi (not mentioned in the book) who was famously unimpressed by Logos-driven pursuits but also unconfused. Sickened by the cruelties and stalemates of the far-away wars, he traveled to the Holy Land on a lone-wolf peace mission to a Muslim Sultan. Little is known of this meeting Sultan except that the respect the Christian showed the Muslim was rewarded with respect in return; after that meeting the Franciscans were welcome in parts of the Holy Land that others Christians were not. Some chroniclers also credit Francis’ short mission for the Sultan’s improved treatment of Christian POWs and his twice suing the Christian Armies for peace, only to be rejected both times.

 

Anderson argues that the roots of the Fundamentalism we know began with Mythos being discredited in the wake of 1492, with all three Faiths radically altered by an ascendant Spain. The Spanish Reconquista involved the expulsion of a cosmopolitan Jewish and Muslim populations and the Diaspora’s transformations of both faiths as their diaspora crossed the whole of the hemisphere. Christopher Columbus journeys following after the setting sun brought mind-blowing wealth Spain won through savage conquest of the New World that erased whole civilizations, introduced new forms of slavery, and triggered centuries of competition in Europe and the birth of Western Imperialism.

 

Then, after the 1700s, "people in Europe and America began to think logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious."

 

But, for many, Modernity meant ''an emptiness, a void, that rendered life meaningless; many would crave certainty amid the perplexities of modernity; some would project their fears onto imaginary enemies and dream of universal conspiracy.''

 

Or as Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called it, ''a God-shaped hole.''

 

The imbalance in the social discourse and the indifference and insult to Faith in engendered created latter-day, deeply confused, Crusaders who, in their rejection of Logos, paradoxically turned their Mythos into a Logos.

 

Anderson speaks of 1870, when "The Franco-Prussian War had revealed the hideous effects of modern weaponry, and there was a dawning realisation that science might also have a malignant dimension … Without the constraints of a 'higher,' mythical truth, reason can on occasion become demonic and commit crimes that are as great as, if not greater than, any of the atrocities perpetrated by fundamentalists."

 

She profiles each faith separately in progressive chapters. Judaism, without Kingdoms or Republics, does get somewhat short-shrift early on, but not later. She passes lightly over Protestant Reformation (called a “Revolt” if you’re Catholic) likely because she covered in in more detail in other books, but devotes much time to the brutal wars between Sunni and Shia Muslims. Both the Christian and Muslim wars of transformation started in the 15^th c. and there are certainly Fundamentalist elements of all these conflicts, with one or both sides declaring they were returning to the roots. As the centuries and brutalities piled up, all these conflicts left Mythos discredited. By the 18^th c, "people in Europe and America began to think that logos was the only means to truth and began to discount mythos as false and superstitious."

 

(She little addresses the Muslim Ottoman Empire, but in my reading, it proved not to be completely immune to the same forces at roughly the same times.)

 

Armstrong believes that the Fundamentalism we now see is a 20^th c. is distinct from the older conflicts.

 

The Muslim focus was on somewhat more on Shia and perhaps shortsightedly so. In the Western conception, Shia Islam is more radicalized and intolerant than Sunni, but that is likely more a product of Western political convenance than any reality. Though she details the emergence of Sunni Muslim Brotherhood the book never addresses the Sunni Cult of Wahhabism which is centered in Saudi Aradia (Iran’s blood enemy). If one looks at the Terrorist concerns of the West, our leading enemy is the radicalized Wahhabis. On the other hand, one must be generous towards Anderson on this, the book was published before Wahhabi Jihadis killed almost 3,000 people on 9/11 and triggered the two longest and most futile wars in USA history.

 

Anderson ties the birth of extremism among the Shia to Conqueror Shah Ismail I in the 16^th c. but devotes more time to biography of Aitolia Khomeini in the 20^th c. She charts Khomeini’s de-evolution from a wannabe Reformer to among the world’s most dangerous Extremists after watching his students murdered before him, being sentenced to death for things that aren’t even criminal in the USA, cast-off into exile, and learning his own son had been assassinated, likely by the Iranian government. Khomeini was not, even though he claimed to be, a throwback to the Middle Ages, ''in fact much of his message and developing ideology was modern. His opposition to Western imperialism and his support of the Palestinians were similar to other third world movements at this time; so was his direct appeal to the people.'' Khomeini’s version of the “Velayat-e faqih” (the guardianship of the Islamic jurist) was, in fact, an overturning of centuries of Shia tradition.

 

In each covered Faith, Anderson observes that the Fundamentalists’ War against Modernity is rooted in the rhetoric of the Modern: anti-Imperialism among the Muslims who were once among the world’s great Conquerors; USA Evangelical embrace of the pseudo-Science of Creationism even though the Science of Evolution is broadly accepted among those Christian denominations that are not Fundamentalist.

 

Israel was founded as a Secular State that served a Religion creating a – ahem – fundamental cross-purpose that encouraged the rise of figures like Gush Emunim, whose ideas were easily dismissible in the 1970s but have tremendous influence today. ''They adopted a novel stringency in their observance of the Torah and learned to manipulate the political system in a way that brought them more power than any religious Jew had enjoyed for nearly two millenniums.'' Anderson insists that there are two wars being fought in the Middle East, one between the Arabs and the Jews and the other ''between secularists and religious.''

 

She closes the book in a manner that was inevitably, but disappointingly, inconclusive. The farther back into the past she goes, the greater her confidence in her speech. But after leaving the 1980s behind and when she starts discussing the then-contemporary, she rightfully conveys that the trends of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Fundamentalism were acerating, but seemed to find it harder to keep up with the headlines. Observed critic Darold Morgan, “Both the students of religion and science will have to cope with fundamentalism, is her conclusion. The serious reader keeps hoping that Armstrong will provide a third path where those devoted to religious truth and the scientific community can find a respectful and rational compromise.”

 

Very likely, Armstrong didn’t try, because a third path is not possible. There will always be spiritual and physical crisis, so there will always be some form of the Fundamentalist Reactionary, like the Protestants breaking from the Catholics in the 15^th c, and the Fundamentalists breaking away from the rest of Protestantism now. The three faiths are truly one, called Abrahamic, but the three Faiths are also Legion, as the Demon told the Christ. Since the 7^th c. there has been three visions of Jerusalem, but when you look closely you see that three Jerusalems isn’t even the beginning of the story.