Fundamentalisms Comprehended (The Fundamentalism Project)

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.

Martin E. Marty is co-director of the Fundamentalism Project and the Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of modern Christianity at the University of Chicago. He is the senior editor of Christian Century. His many books include the multivolume Modern American Religion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.