Strong Religion: The Rise of Fundamentalisms Around the World.

By Gabriel Almond, R. Scott Appleby, and Emmanuel Sivan. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. 296p. $49.00 cloth, $19.00 paper.

The revival of religion as an immense political force came as a complete surprise to virtually all social scientists, a major reason that the Chicago Fundamentalism Project was one of the most interesting and valuable collective academic undertakings since World War II. Organized by Martin Marty and Scott Appleby, it involved at least six annual conferences and received written contributions from nearly a hundred prominent scholars who became knowledgeable about different aspects of the subject. During the 1990s it produced five important and widely known volumes.

The theoretical and conceptual discussions of the project were contained mainly in a huge “four-part essay” in the final volume, Fundamentalism Comprehended (1995). Its authors were Scott Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, and the late Gabriel Almond, one of our own, a beloved political scientist of giant proportions. Almond's first APSR article appeared in 1934, a coauthored piece with his teacher and sponsor Harold Lasswell. During the next 70 years, he was the author or coauthor of seminal works The American People and Foreign Policy (1950), Appeals of Communism (1954), Politics of the Developing Areas (1960), The Civic Culture (1963), and Crisis Choice and Change (1973). A Discipline Divided (1990) treated the bitter divisions within political science generated by methodological disputes; and finally, 60 years after completing it, he published his doctoral dissertation, Plutocracy and Politics in New York (1998)! He died Christmas 2002 at the age of 91, a few months before Strong Religion came out.

Fundamentalism “refers to a discernible pattern of religious militancy by which self-styled ‘true believers’ attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and believers” (p. 17). Each of the seven major world religions has produced one or more fundamentalist movements. The earlier theoretical essay of the Fundamentalism Project is elaborated in this text, a “framework for the analysis of the rise, growth, and decline of fundamentalist movements” (p. 14). One significant timely question is “are fundamentalist movements now capable of or inclined to carry the battle against their enemies far beyond their territorial borders so that we can be said to be facing a ‘third world war’ as President Bush termed the conflict against terrorism? Is it a war further, not only against Islamists but against the fundamentalists in general?” (p. 6).

The authors treat the phenomena preeminently in political terms. The approach is fully justified by the facts, but the view still seems foreign to most people who focus on violence, especially that produced by Islamic elements. The volume begins by discussing the “Enclave Culture,” or the general character of the cultures and systems that have emerged from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to cope with secularism. A second chapter compares some 20 examples from seven world religions to distinguish those that are truly fundamentalists from simply militant religious movements. The next two chapters enumerate conditions (cultural, economic, and political) for the development of the phenomena. Then the focus is on the role of chance factors, that is, the life and character of leaders. The four different ways (conqueror, transformer, creator, and renouncer) that fundamentalist groups deal with the external political environment are examined in the fourth chapter. Special attention is given to democratic and nondemocratic systems where conditions of ethnic heterogeneity and conflict are crucial. The concluding chapter assesses fundamentalism's future as globalization spreads, religious competitions intensify, and the “war against terror” continues. Prognosis is always a risky enterprise, and it is especially so when we remember that no social scientist foresaw the initial emergence of the phenomena, a failing that is still unexplained.

Nonetheless, the diagnosis and conclusions seem sensible and reassuring, especially to those desperately confused and frightened by 9/11. Globalization tends to contract, rather than expand, fundamentalism's appeal. In democratic states, most fundamentalists find ways to participate without undermining the constitutional order. When fundamentalists gain control of the state, as in Iran, they learn to moderate their demands in order to survive. Secular “authoritarian” governments have crushed the fundamentalists, especially in the Islamic world, but the “refugees of defeated Islamist groups” were joined together by Al Qaeda (p. 239) for what seems to be a desperate last-ditch, and ultimately unsuccessful, stand. The United States is an attractive target for two basic reasons. No other state symbolizes secularism as well, and it supports many regimes in the Muslim world that have dealt the fundamentalists crippling defeats. Obviously, we neither can nor want to change the first circumstance, and hopefully our anxieties will not prevent us from altering the second.

The title of the book is odd. The authors explain that the term “fundamentalism” can be confusing, offensive, and debased. A new term “strong religion” is offered (pp. 17–18), but then for some unexplained reason, they ignore their own argument. The rest of the book uses the term fundamentalism only!

Strong Religion rests on solid research and persuasive reflections, but we are never told who the intended audience might be. Although the analysis is more systematic, those of us who are familiar with the Fundamentalism Project's achievements will find little that is new here. Obviously, it will be a useful text for undergraduates who lack both time and money (and perhaps the patience) for the giant earlier volumes. But this short convenient volume contains too many unexplained details, and the writing is often repetitious. Fundamentalisms and the State (Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby, Eds., 1993) was the last volume to discuss violence extensively, and there were many important developments and reasons to develop that subject here. But while the observations provided are certainly appropriate, it does seem that they deserve more than the meager space allotted (i.e., pp. 234–41).