Vol. 1: Fundamentalisms Observed. 1991. 872 pp. $40
Vol. 2: Fundamentalisms and Society: Reclaiming the Sciences, the Family, and Education. 1993. 592 pp. $45
Vol. 3: Fundamentalisms and the State: Remaking Politics, Economies, and Militance. 1993. 665 pp. $45
Forty years ago, Marxism-Leninism posed the great intellectual puzzle of the age. What accounted for its great surge of strength? Was it monolithic or diverse? How did various versions differ from each other? How should the U.S. government respond? To a striking degree, the same questions are now being asked of fundamentalist religion, the new international menace. And, once again, scholars are sorting through masses of information and then meeting to argue their interpretations.
The main difference between then and now lies in the caliber of those scholars. Marxism-Leninism called on some of the era's finest minds, but the study of religious activism remains an intellectual backwater. While Marty and Appleby bring great energy and intelligence to the project, their contributors don't often match them. As a result, these first three volumes of a six-volume project show more clarity of conception than quality of execution. Of course, some chapters stand out-those by Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem Friedman, William H. McNeill, Deepak Lal, and Martin Kramer are exceptionally good - but the hundreds of pages generally make for pretty heavy reading.
Fundamentalisms Observed sets the stage with descriptions of fundamentalist movements in the three great Abrahamic religions as well as their Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Confucian, and Japanese counterparts. In their conclusion the editors boil down the universal traits of fundamentalism: "the envy of the modern, the tendency to foster a sense of crisis and urgency; the flair for the dramatic and the symbolic act; the shrewd, popular, and effective adaptations to modernity."
Volume two concentrates on fundamentalist attitudes toward science, technology, family and interpersonal relationships, education, and the media. Volume three looks at fundamentalist efforts to reconceptualize and gain power. In general, the editors note, fundamentalism "has been much more in evidence in its extreme or unmodified form on certain levels of 'society' than at the level of the 'state.'" Translated from academese, this means that fundamentalists have had little success in translating their influence over individuals into political power.
