#armp

A better way to visualize these than discrete categories might be something like this, sorry for the image quality:

They are processes and tendencies, things you do to your religion, which can absolutely bleed together and coexist.

Today the official position of many religious institutions (e.g. the mainstream Catholic Church or LDS Church) falls somewhere between conservatism and modernism. Conservative and Modern Orthodox Judaism are also good examples – of being willing to bend significantly in some areas while upholding tradition in others.

The Islam of Muammar Gaddafi, the Hinduism of Dayanand Saraswati, and arguably the State Shintō of the Meiji Restoration (though Shintō isn’t scriptural) exemplify a different trend: that sometimes the most effective way to modernize is to fundamentalize. If your goal is to radically reshape the tradition, then stripping it down to the fundamentals can give you more latitude to innovate, and delegitimizes the conservative clergy who have a stake in keeping the tradition the way it is, all while framing your project as in fact the most orthodox.

More commonly though, fundamentalists will make common cause with conservatives. Christian fundamentalists in the U.S., with a few radical exceptions like Reconstructionism, have more or less always considered themselves a type of conservative, and there is a strong resonance between fundamentalists and conservatives in Islam – Saudi Wahhabism takes a fundamentalizing approach in law and culture while upholding ecclesiastical and monarchical power, and was instrumental in the rise of more categorical fundamentalisms like al-Qaeda (though even bin Laden cited medieval scholarship when it suited him). In a similar sense some on the Jewish Orthodox right, especially Kahanists, have a fundamentalizing emphasis on returning to the Torah given at Sinai but remain bound to the later rabbinic tradition – “aspiring fundamentalists within a framework that poses challenges to achieving such a thing” in @boffin-in-training’s words.

I would also mention the tendency for an old fundamentalism to calcify into a new conservatism, almost cyclically. The Protestant Reformation was in many ways a radical fundamentalization of Christianity, but today Protestantism is its own religious tradition with its own conservatives. Again, see Saudi Wahhabi Islam for what Michael Cook calls an “eighteenth-century fundamentalism” that evolved into a “puritanical conservatism”.

Religious politics: Any use of religion for the purposes of modern politics, e.g. political Catholicism, Islamism, Hindu nationalism.

Religious nationalism or ‘religio-nationalism’: Religious politics with primarily nationalist, ethno-territorial concerns linking religious identity with national identity; e.g. most Balkan nationalisms, Hindu nationalism, Buddhist nationalism, the Muslim League, Zionism. There’s a subtle difference between religious identity as national identity, such as in the examples above, versus a national church playing a strong role in cementing an existing secular nationality, e.g. Anglicanism in England or Catholicism in Spain and Poland.

Fascisms which define the ingroup religiously belong here. They are still technically secular and prioritize national and cultural identity above all: the Sangh Parivar has a Muslim wing and the Ustaše even tried to set up their own Orthodox Church.

Religious dominionism or clericalism: Religious politics trying to expand religious control over the government to impose certain values on society, whether in a fundamentalist or conservative (or even modernist) spirit; e.g. Islamism, the Christian right, integral Catholicism, Israel’s Orthodox right. These could be divided, on the model of Salafism, into ‘activist’ or ‘political’ movements which try to win elections within the existing system, and ‘insurgents’ who want to overthrow godless governments and install ones of their own.

Both names have drawbacks: dominionism suggests fully-fledged theocratic rule whereas I mean it much more broadly, while clericalism implies the role of a clergy even though many fundamentalists and modernists are explicitly anti-clerical. Certainly it would seem odd to describe Hassan al-Turabi or Muammar Gaddafi as ‘clericalists’.

Clerical fascism: Given what I just said it might be most accurate to use ‘clerical fascism’ as Roger Griffin does, to refer specifically to the collaboration of clergy with fascist movements (e.g. the stance of the Catholic Church in Italy, Croatia, Brazil, etc), especially through genuine ideological fusion like in the work of Emanuel Hirsch. Theoretically this is distinct from (quasi)fascist movements which incorporate dominionism on their own, like the Kahanist ‘halachic state’ or the League of the South’s intention to run independent Dixie on Biblical law. None of the original clericofascisti or Deutsche Christen had such extreme goals.

This post brought to you by:

Ancient Religions, Modern Politics: The Islamic Case in Comparative Perspective, Michael Cook

“The appeal of Islamic fundamentalism,” Michael Cook

“The New Religious Politics and Women Worldwide: A Comparative Study,” Nikki Keddie

Salafi movement – Wikipedia

“The ‘Holy Storm’: ‘Clerical Fascism’ Through the Lens of Modernism,” Roger Griffin

My attempt at a typology of fascist religious discourse with @anarchotolkienist’s helpful addition, and a later one which sort of anticipated this post although with some different terminology.