Karen, I'd already replied to Ed this morning when I read your very interesting posting referring to Phillip Jenkins' article in the next Atlantic Monthly. In my reply to Ed I've already given my reason why I think we shouldn't try to suppress fundamentalism. Let it exhaust itself or do something silly which discredits itself.
In today's Sunday Telegraph, Christina Lamb, writing from Riyadh, describes the recent infamous incident at Mecca where 15 girl students, fleeing from a fire in their school, but not having time to put on their shrouds and veils, were turned back by the mutawa'a -- the Wahhabi religious police -- and perished in the flames. Even in Saudi Arabia this caused an uproar and gave an opportunity to Crown Prince Abdullah to propose withdrawing control of female education away from the religious establishment. (Perhaps this is the first step in the modernist revolution, so desperately needed in SA, and which I believe Bush is trying to bring about.) (Also, I don't know how strong the pro-life movement is in America these days but I seem to remember that they discredited themselves some time ago when they shot a doctor at an abortion clinic.) Also, in the same paper this morning there's an interesting article by Fareer Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, "The threat of radical Islam is on the wane", in which he's making the case that violence and terrorism are the last gasp of fundamentalism that's actually lost the real fight for the hearts and souls of the masses. I think he's right in the case of Islamic fundamentalism right now, though I wouldn't say he's right about terrorism in other places and at other times. Despite what politicians say, terrorism is sometimes the only way by which the need for reform is brought to general notice. In Northern Ireland, for example, where the Catholics were severely deprived of decent jobs and opportunities by the 'Prods' for generations (and where, for example, the police force was 96% Protestant), then it can be argued that support for IRA terrorism was the only way forward for them. I believe that there is indeed a widening gap within western society but I don't believe it's religious or ideological. It's about intelligence. It's about what I fear has been a period of Counter Enlightenment during the latter half of the last century rather than a Counter Reformation. In this period we've experienced a general dumbing down of schools, arts, pastimes and entertainment in western countries. We are seeing an increasing social, cultural, employment -- and intellectual -- divide. The divide reveals itself in a slowing down of social advancement between the generations, an increase in earnings differentials and a necking of the job structure so that it's less like a diamond shape and more like an hourglass. At anecdotal level in England I can instance the incredibly wide gap in quality between newspapers such as The Guardian, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, Independent and all the remainder, variously known as the gutter press or the tabloids. One or two of the tabloid papers occasionally try to make for the middle-ground (typical of most newspapers 50 years ago) but they inevitably fall back to the usual fare of photos of nude women, crime and stories of sex perverts and so on. The proportion between these two groups of readers is something like 1:5 (and about one third of the latter are illiterate and their papers are really only bought for the football and horse racing results). The reason is that we're moving into a much more complex, technical society in which sophisticated skills are at a premium more than ever before in man's history. And, as Richard Herrnstein pointed out several times, the more egalitarian we try to make our education systems the more stratified it ultimately becomes at its higher levels after repeated stages of testing, selection and peer review. I think that the best phrase to describe the dichotomy is 'Science versus Fundamentalism' -- though I'd settle for Arthur's 'Modernism versus Fundamentalism' because not all those in the modernist box are scientists. (But the science tag points up something quite paradoxical. Opinion polls and journalists are constantly saying that there's a growing public trend against science and that fewer school-leavers are going into science, and yet populist-science books -- often brilliantly written and of great educational value-- has been one of the fastest growing segments in book publishing in recent years.) So there we are. I don't think there's much to fear from fundamentalism because it's on the other side of what appears to be a yawning intelligence divide. The main problem -- as you mention -- is the matter of fertility. In most western countries, the lower fertility rate among high IQers means that they are not reproducing themselves and will be a steadily contracting minority within the economy in the coming years -- but yet so necessary to run it as it becomes increasingly complex. This is the divide that really worries me. But, having rambled on like this and then re-reading your piece below, I'm really agreeing with you. Keith (KWC) . . but wanted to mention to you that in the October issue of The Atlantic Monthly, but not yet online, is a provocative article called The Next Christianity which details the author's exposition that the world is diverging more into what Arthur Cordell earlier referred to as WW3, or the Fundamentalists vs the Modernists. . . . The author, Phillip Jenkins, a religion prof. at Penn. State Univ, says "the 21st century will be regarded by future historians as a century in which religion replaced ideology as the prime animating and destructive force in human affairs". Basically, the Pentecostals and fundamentalists are gaining ground in the southern hemisphere (the global South/Southern churches) and the more liberal denominations are in decline but holding their ground in the northern, more industrialized nations (the global North/Northern churches). He spends a lot of time in the set up to his premise explaining the contributions of the first Reformation, to conclude that this new division will create a 2nd Reformation -- so we are warned. I also learned to think of the Roman Catholic Church as historically the first global corporation in this article. The scary part of this to me, as a lover of history and raised but now a lapsed S. Baptist, is that the phenomenal growth of the fundamentalists/Pentecostals replaces a belief in the sovereignty of the independent nation state (which would not have occurred in history without the Reformation). Since the Southern demographics are projected to overrun the Northern demographics, the prospect of 'world Christianity' falling under the sway of anti-intellectual fundamentalism is growing. In poor countries where governments, famine and its diseases and traditional authorities have continually failed or caused great suffering, there is a counter-Reformation underway that can transfer native allegiances and interests to the authority of what these believers would describe as a return to the 'primitive Church'. >>>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
