The Religious Right and Fundamentalism: A Global Rise

In the latter half of the twentieth century, many people believed that, along with modernization, religion would withdraw from the front stage of politics. As society grew wealthy and science and rationality spread, faith would settle into the private sphere: this was the so-called prediction of secularization. Yet from around the end of the 1970s, events that seemed to betray that prediction began to occur, almost as if by prior arrangement, in places all over the globe. In America, in the Middle East, in South Asia, faith was once again being pushed to the forefront of politics.

Far apart from one another, differing in religion and in culture, these movements appear at first glance unrelated. Yet draw back a little from history, and a shared structure rises into view: a backlash against rapidly advancing secularization and modernization, and the politics of identity that carries the question ‘who are we?’ into the political arena. In this chapter, rather than debating the merits of a particular faith, we read across regions the structure of why religious conservatism and fundamentalism rose simultaneously.

America: The Political Participation of Evangelicals

First, America. As we touched on in the second chapter, this country had from the start a thick religious stratum of Christian evangelicals. In the first half of the twentieth century, many of them tended to keep their distance from politics. Yet from the 1960s onward, faced with rapid secularization of society such as the legalization of abortion, the prohibition of prayer in public schools, and changing values around sex and family, they grew more keenly alarmed.

As a reaction to this, in 1979 a conservative political organization called the Moral Majority was organized by Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell and others. Raising the banner of protecting traditional views of the family and the values of faith, they spread their support through television and radio, joining hands across denominational lines. This movement has been credited as one factor in Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 presidential election. Not confining faith to the private sphere but actively bringing it into elections and policy: in this way, the current known as the religious right came to occupy a corner of American politics.

The Middle East and South Asia: Revolution and Nationalism

In that same year of 1979, religion shook a state in the Middle East as well. In Iran, discontent rose against a monarchy that had been pursuing secular modernization, and through a revolution centered on the religious leader Khomeini, the shah left the country and an Islamic republic was established. The ideal of the revolution was to set the teachings of Islam at the foundation of society and politics.

This event gave the world a great shock. For until then, in the West, religion had been seen as something that would recede along with modernization. With the Iranian Revolution as one trigger, a current within societies thought to have secularized, seeking to return to the teachings of Islam, came to draw attention in many places under the names of Islamism or Islamic revival. It must be noted, however, that its substance differed greatly by region and era, and was extremely diverse, ranging from moderate political participation to armed struggle.

Turning our eyes to South Asia, a closely similar structure can be seen in India. At independence, India, in order to hold together a multi-religious society, raised the principle of a secular state not leaning toward any particular religion. But in 1980, the Bharatiya Janata Party, pushing to the fore the identity of the majority Hindus, was founded. Against the background of discontent with secularism and a sense that they themselves were the core of the nation, this party broadened its support and grew into a major force in federal politics in the 1990s. A sense of religious majority binding together with national consciousness: this too can be said to be one form of the politics of identity.

Why Did It Happen Simultaneously?

The evangelicals of America, the Islamism of Iran, the Hindu nationalism of India. Why did these movements, wholly different in the content of their faith and in their social circumstances, gain momentum almost simultaneously from the end of the 1970s into the 1980s?

One explanation is the shared motive of backlash against secularization. Rapid modernization and globalization, while bringing people material wealth, shook traditional values and the bonds of community. Amid that unease, faith was rediscovered as a foundation for confirming ‘who we are’: not a few commentators see it this way. It is the paradox that the further secularization advances, the stronger the backlash against it also grows.

Another is the framework of the politics of identity. A mode of politics that mobilizes people around a sense of belonging such as religion or ethnicity, rather than around economics or class, spread in this period in many places across the world. Religion easily becomes a banner that binds people strongly together. For that very reason, the political side too seeks to use faith as a resource for mobilization. On the side of people of faith there is also a legitimate wish to reflect their own values in politics, and when the two join together, religion is transformed into a great political energy.

These movements are by no means a thing of the past. Even after entering the twenty-first century, parties and movements with religious backgrounds continue to occupy a corner of politics in many places across the world. The simple prediction that secularization would wipe out faith has already been forced into revision. Rather, the age we live in is a complex one in which secularization and re-religionization advance at the same time.

We have viewed across regions the global rise of religious conservatism and fundamentalism. Much of it has grown its strength within the frame of democracy, of elections and parliaments. Yet when faith binds together with politics and society, extreme movements also appear that overrun that channel and seek to rule the human heart itself. At the farthest extreme of that shadow lay an incident that shook society itself.