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1 ConteSting the State By ByPaSSing it Contemporary “fundamentalist” movements1 —or as we prefer to call them, religiously orthodox movements—have been the subject of much scholarship, media coverage , and political punditry. Missing in nearly all accounts of the nature, strategies, and impact of such movements is an understanding of their underlying communitarian logic, including a compassionate side that leads to much of their institution-building, their outreach to those in need, their success in recruitment, and their popular support . Even when this caring side of religiously orthodox movements is recognized, it is often misunderstood as mere charity.2 Unrecognized is the fact that, for many of the most prominent orthodox movements, this institutional outreach—such as building clinics and hospitals, establishing factories that provide jobs and pay higher-thanprevailing wages, initiating literacy campaigns, offering hospices for the dying, providing aid to the needy, and building affordable housing—is spread throughout the country and linked with schools, worship centers, and businesses into a dense network with the aim of permeating civil society with the movement’s own brand of faith. yet to overlook or misunderstand this strategy is to seriously underestimate the reach of religiously orthodox movements and their success in infusing societies and states with religion. While religiously orthodox movements are often portrayed as irrational or reactionary , we show in this chapter that they are motivated by a logic of communitarianism that is neither consistently right wing nor left wing. This communitarian logic leads them to establish places of worship, schools, social welfare agencies, and businesses that ultimately grow into extensive networks of alternative institutions and, in some cases, a parallel society or state within a state. This nonconfrontational, institutionbuilding strategy can be an end in itself, since it can result in the permeation of society with religious sensibilities, religiously based standards on family and sexuality, and faith-based outreach to those in need. or if state takeover is the goal, it can help the movement build a strong base of popular support that can be translated into electoral victories in the formal political arena. ConteSting the State By ByPaSSing it 11 religiouS orthodoxy aS Communitarian To understand the logic underlying religiously orthodox movements, their political agendas, and their strategies, we begin with a distinction between two “fundamentally different conceptions of moral authority,” first made by sociologist James Davison hunter in his 1991 book, Culture Wars. The religiously orthodox vision views a deity (that is, Allah, yahweh, God) as the ultimate judge of good and evil; regards sacred texts (and clerical teachings derived from these) as divinely revealed, without error, and timeless; and sees this supreme being as watching over, affecting, and judging people’s daily lives. In contrast, the modernist3 vision views individuals as having the freedom to make moral decisions in the context of their times; sees religious texts and teachings as human creations that should be considered in cultural and historical context along with other moral precepts; and regards individuals as responsible for themselves and as largely independent in making their lives and fates.4 Modernists need not be atheists or agnostics; in the United States, for example, most modernists believe in God.5 In a series of conceptual and empirical articles,6 we have drawn out the theological and political implications of hunter’s ideal–typical visions of moral authority and have recognized that actual individuals, religious groups, and movements exist along an orthodox to modernist continuum, not necessarily at the polar extremes or encompassing fully every aspect of one or the other ideal type of moral cosmology. our theoretical model, moral cosmology theory,7 shows how the orthodox and modernist moral cosmologies differ theologically and how these differences affect the political attitudes and behavior of those who hold these moral cosmologies. our model applies only to the Abrahamic faith traditions, which include Christianity, Islam, and Judaism—all of which regard Abraham as a prophetic figure. Another common expression for these traditions is “religions of the Book,” and we use this interchangeably with Abrahamic religions throughout this book. The key characteristic of the Abrahamic faiths, which is lacking in the hindu and Buddhist traditions, is having a sacred book that is seen as revealing divine, eternal truths and laws. The existence of the sacred book gives rise to the orthodox, who take the text to be literally true for all times, places, and peoples, and to (at the opposite pole) modernists, who regard the text as requiring human interpretation , adjustment to contemporary circumstances, and integration...

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