Chapter 15. This group of men wished to enforce their “strict interpretation of
Chapter 15. This group of men wished to enforce their “strict interpretation of modesty rules” (Kershner, 2011) even though Margolese was wearing long sleeves and a skirt. Another extreme fundamentalist group, the Westboro Baptist Church, picket the funerals of fallen military personnel (Hurdle, 2007), of the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings (Linkins, 2013), and even of the brutal greyhound bus stabbing in Winnipeg, Canada (CBC News, 2008). They interpret these tragic events as demonstrations of God’s discontent and of society’s rejection of fundamentalist interpretations of gay marriage, divorce, and abortion. The public demonstrations of the Ultra-Orthodox men and the Westboro Baptist Church provide a platform for these groups to disseminate their beliefs, mobilize supporters and recruit new followers. However, the controversial protests also attack routine norms of civility — the right of eight-year-old girls to walk to school unmolested by adult men; the solemnity of funeral rites and the mourning processes of the bereaved — and lead to communal disruption and resentment, as well as the alienation of these groups from broader society.
One of the key emblems of the contemporary rise of religious fundamentalism is that conflicts, whether they are playground disagreements or extensive political confrontations, tend to become irreconcilable when fundamental beliefs are at the core of said disputes. These types of issue are one of the defining features of the contemporary era. Unlike discussions relating to secular business or political interests, fundamentalist beliefs associated with religious ideology seem non-negotiable and therefore prone to violent conflict. In an increasingly globalized and diverse world, where people are obliged to live in proximity with “Others” who hold different truths, the militant insistence on ultimate religious truths seems problematic.
The rise of fundamentalism also poses problems for the sociology of religion. For many decades theorists such as Berger (1967), Wilson (1982; 1985) and Bruce (1999) argued that the modernization of societies, the privatization of religion, and the global spread of religious and cultural pluralism meant that societies would continue to secularize, and levels of religiosity would steadily decline. However, other theorists such as Hadden (1987; 1989), Stark (1994; 1999) and Casanova (1994; 1999) have recently begun to reconsider the secularization thesis. They argue that religious diversity and pluralism have sparked new interpretations of religion and new revivals of religiosity. Dawson (2006) observes that the inability of late modern societies to produce concrete answers to basic questions about the existential experiences of human life or provide meaningful responses to miraculous or tragic events “has implicitly kept the door open to religious worldviews” (pp. 113–14). In other words, these new sociological interpretations of religion propose that rather than withering away