Christian Fundamentalism and the Culture of Disenchantment

Conclusion: Disenchanted Christianity

conclusion disenchanted christianity Rather than seeking the triumph of one faith over the others, the task facing us all is to rediscover—after the “metaphysical” age of absolutisms and of the identity between truth and authority—the possibility of a postmodern religious experience in which the relation with the divine is no longer corrupted by fear, violence, and superstition. —Gianni Vattimo, Vero e falso Universalismo cristiano Fundamentalism developed out of a series of twelve pamphlets, The Fundamentals (1910–15), whose essays sought to defend the “fundamentals” of Christian faith against modernist culture and liberal theology. According to George Marsden, “Fundamentalism was originally a broad coalition of antimodernists. From the 1920s to the 1940s, to be a fundamentalist meant only to be theologically traditional, a believer in the fundamentals of evangelical Christianity, and willing to take a militant stand against modernism ” (Reforming 10). And insofar as we understand pre–World War II fundamentalism as, in large part, a strategic reaction to modernism, we may think of today’s right-wing fundamentalism as an alarmed response, a dialectical counterswing, provoked by the diffusion of postmodern secularism through the mass media, the arts, and academia. Postmodern attitudes of skepticism, cynicism, irreverence, and self-reflexiveness have virtually institutionalized an untiring practice of critique, in such forms as demystification, demythologization, desacralization, decentering, and delegitimation. Postmodernism has created a culture of disenchantment, Maltby, Christian Fundamentalism.indd 173 Maltby, Christian Fundamentalism.indd 173 10/29/12 11:01 AM 10/29/12 11:01 AM 174 / conclusion to which today’s extremist variant of fundamentalism has responded with a belligerent reaffirmation of belief in the transcendent, the sacred, and textual authority. Many who respect the critical agenda of postmodernism will have been astonished by this dramatic resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, by the political and cultural advances of, paradoxically, a premodern current of thought. Indeed, the sheer force and scale of fundamentalism, whereby in twenty-first-century America tens of millions fervently subscribe to belief in the Rapture, dispensationalism, and biblical prophecy, constitutes a striking rebuff to an overconfident postmodernism. By way of concluding remarks, I shall consider, first, how a renascent fundamentalism can disturb complacency about the value of postmodernism. I shall address this issue from the standpoint of attitudes antithetical to transcendent thinking. Where fundamentalism crucially depends on belief in a transcendent authority, the central thrust of postmodernism lies in its critique of transcendent thought. Second, I shall consider a current of postmodern theology that strives to advance Christianity without appeals to the transcendent. Postmodern critique is just the most recent successor to a long tradition of secularist assaults on ideas of the transcendent. Its eminent predecessors include Darwinism, dialectical materialism, positivism, Freudianism , and analytical philosophy. All have defined themselves by their antimetaphysical credentials, by their determination to purge their discourse and methodology of transcendent assumptions. Postmodernism is as single-minded as its predecessors in the task of erasing all vestiges of the transcendent, and the impact of this has been felt across the humanities and social sciences, across popular culture and the arts. The proto-postmodern Nietzsche exhorted philosophers to root out residues of the transcendent in post-Enlightenment thinking. Hence the project announced in The Gay Science whereby, after the death of God, “we still have to vanquish his shadow” (167). Richard Rorty seems to have had a similar project in mind when he called for a Wittgensteinian approach to language, whose effect would be to “de-divinize the world” (Contingency 21). Foucault explained that his “essential task was to free the history of thought from its subjection to transcendence . . . to cleanse it of all transcendental narcissism” (Archaeology 203). Finally, recall Derrida’s programmatic assault on philosophy’s ingrained metaphysics; his critique of the role of self-certifying concepts (“transcendental signifieds” like Maltby, Christian Fundamentalism.indd 174 Maltby, Christian Fundamentalism.indd 174 10/29/12 11:01 AM 10/29/12 11:01 AM conclusion / 175 God or telos) in arresting the disruptive “play” of those elusively present “traces” or countermeanings that threaten the semantic integrity of any system of thought: “All dualisms, all theories of the immortality of the soul or of the spirit, as well as all monisms, spiritualist or materialist . . . are the unique theme of a metaphysics whose entire history was compelled to strive toward the reduction of the trace” (Grammatology 71). In general, the postmodern insistence on the instability and contingency of language, whereby any text is necessarily...