Accounting for Fundamentalisms features treatments of fundamentalist movements, groups that often make headlines but are rarely understood, as part of the multivolume Fundamentalism Project. This book remains a standard reference source for comprehending the dynamics of fundamentalist movements around the world. Surveying fundamentalist movements in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Buddhism, the contributors to Accounting for Fundamentalisms describe the organization of these movements, their leadership and recruiting techniques, and the ways in which their ideological programs and organizational structures shift over time in response to changing political and social environments.

The Fundamentalism Project
Edited by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby

Around the world, fundamentalist movements are profoundly
affecting the way we live. Misinformation and misperception
about fundamentalism exacerbate conflicts at home and abroad.
Yet policymakers, journalists, students, and others have
lacked any comprehensive resource on the explosive phenomenon
of fundamentalism. Now the Fundamentalism Project has
assembled an international team of scholars for a multivolume
assessment of the history, scope, sources, character, and
impact of fundamentalist movements within the world's major
religious traditions.

Fundamentalisms and Society shows how fundamentalist
movements have influenced human relations, education, women's
rights, and scientific research in over a dozen nations and
within the traditions of Islam, Judaism, Christianity,
Buddhism, and Hinduism. Drawn from the fields of
anthropology, sociology, history of religion, and history of
science, the contributors cover topics such as the
educational structures of Hindu revivalism, women in
fundamentalist Iran and Pakistan, and the creationist cosmos
of Protestant fundamentalism. In a concluding essay, William
H. McNeill situates contemporary fundamentalisms within a
world historical context.
The Fundamentalism Project, Volume 2

Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby direct the
Fundamentalism Project. Marty, the Fairfax M. Cone
Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Modern
Christianity at the University of Chicago, is the senior
editor of the Christian Century and the author of
numerous books, including the multivolume Modern American
Religion, also published by the University of
Chicago Press. Appleby, a research associate at the
University of Chicago, is the author of “Church and
Age Unite!” The Modernist Impulse in American
Catholicism.

Do fundamentalisms tend toward political activism, and how
successful have they been in remaking political structures?
To answer this question, the contributors to this volume—
political scientists, historians of religion,
anthropologists, and sociologists—discuss the anti-
abortion movement, Operation Rescue in the United States, the
Islamic war of resistance in Afghanistan, Shi'ite
jurisprudence in Iran, and other issues. The volume
considers the effect that antisecular religious movements
have had over the past twenty-five years on national
economies, political parties, constitutional issues, and
international relations on five continents and within the
traditions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and Sikhism. Marty and Appleby conclude with a
synthetic statement on the fundamentalist impact on polities,
economies, and state security.
The Fundamentalism Project, Volume 3

Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby direct the
Fundamentalism Project. Marty, the Fairfax M. Cone
Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Modern
Christianity at the University of Chicago, is the senior
editor of the Christian Century and the author of
numerous books, including the multivolume Modern American
Religion, also published by the University of
Chicago Press. Appleby, a research associate at the
University of Chicago, is the author of “Church and
Age Unite!” The Modernist Impulse in American
Catholicism.

In this fifth volume of the Fundamentalism Project, Fundamentalisms Comprehended, the distinguished contributors return to and test the endeavor's beginning premise: that fundamentalisms in all faiths share certain "family resemblances." Several of the essays reconsider the project's original definition of fundamentalism as a reactive, absolutist, and comprehensive mode of anti-secular religious activism. The book concludes with a capstone statement by R. Scott Appleby, Emmanuel Sivan, and Gabriel Almond that builds upon the entire Fundamentalism Project. Identifying different categories of fundamentalist movements, and delineating four distinct patterns of fundamentalist behavior toward outsiders, this statement provides an explanatory framework for understanding and comparing fundamentalisms around the world.

This volume is an encyclopedic introduction to movements of religious reaction in the twentieth century. The fourteen chapters are thematically linked by a common set of concerns: the social, political, cultural, and religious contexts in which these movements were born; the particular world-views, systems of thought, and beliefs that govern each movement; the ways in which leaders and group members make sense of and respond to the challenges of the modern, postcolonial era in world history.

The contributors include sociologists, cultural anthropologists, and historians, some of whom have been participant-observers in the groups under consideration. As an analysis of the global resurgence of religion, Fundamentalisms Observed sheds new light on current religious movements and cultures from North America to the Far East.

Behind the bloody acts of terrorism, the mobs chanting with upraised fists, the backroom and front-page politics in the Middle East, stand powerful religious leaders cloaked in mystery and fanaticism. Spokesmen for the Despised lifts the veils, presenting eight vivid portraits of fundamentalist leaders who have turned their charismatic religious authority to powerful political ends.

The deeds of the men profiled in this book make history and headlines, whether through the anti-American rhetoric of the late Iranian revolutionary, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini; the violent acts of Hizbullah, the Lebanese Shi'ite movement headed by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah; or the group of Jewish rabbis who appear to have inspired the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. No one better exemplifies this history-making than Shaykh Ahmad Yasin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, who from his Israeli jail cell continues to influence Hamas's efforts to eliminate both Israel and the PLO. Also featured are the spiritual guides of the radical Jewish settler movement Gush Emunim, the Sudanese sponsor of "the Islamic Awakening," the preacher who inflamed Upper Egypt, and the ideological leader of the Zionist International Christian Embassy.

These riveting biographies include interviews with true believers and bitter opponents, and in several cases with the subjects themselves, carefully placing the lives of these charismatic leaders in the contexts of their religious traditions and their varied social, political, and religious settings. Spokesmen for the Despised is an essential volume for anyone wishing to understand the relationship between religion and politics in the Middle East.

Contributors: Ziad Abu Amr, Gideon Aran, Yaakov Ariel, Daniel Brumberg, Patrick D. Gaffney, Samuel Heilman, Martin Kramer, and Judith Miller

After the September 11 terrorist attacks against the United States, religious fundamentalism has dominated public debate as never before. Policymakers, educators, and the general public all want to know: Why do fundamentalist movements turn violent? Are fundamentalisms a global threat to human rights, security, and democratic forms of government? What is the future of fundamentalism?

To answer questions like these, Strong Religion draws on the results of the Fundamentalism Project, a decade-long interdisciplinary study of antimodernist, antisecular militant religious movements on five continents and within seven world religious traditions. The authors of this study analyze the various social structures, cultural contexts, and political environments in which fundamentalist movements have emerged around the world, from the Islamic Hamas and Hizbullah to the Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries of Northern Ireland, and from the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition of the United States to the Sikh radicals and Hindu nationalists of India. Offering a vividly detailed portrait of the cultures that nourish such movements, Strong Religion opens a much-needed window onto different modes of fundamentalism and identifies the kind of historical events that can trigger them.