GOLDSTEIN_f1_i-x

5. They seize on historical moments and reinterpret them in light of this
   cosmic struggle;


6. They demonize their opposition and are reactionary;


7. Fundamentalists are selective in what parts of their tradition and heritage
   they stress;


8. They are led by males;


9. They envy modernist cultural hegemony and try to overturn the distri-
   bution of power.

Further, they argue that there are five ideological characteristics.

1. Fundamentalists are concerned with the erosion of religion and its proper
   role in society.


2. Fundamentalism is selective of their tradition and what part of modernity
   they accept or choose to react against.


3. They embrace some form of Manichean (dualism.)


4. Fundamentalists stress absolutism and inerrancy in their sources of reve-
   lation; and


5. They opt for some form of Millennialism or Messianism.

There are certain characteristics of fundamental religion common to all its vari-
ants.Fundamentalism as a reaction to contemporary social, cultural and moral
stresses and strains associated with modernity – though it is quite selective
about which aspects of modernity to utilize or condemn. (It can use tech-
nologies such as computers, the Internet, tapes and cell phones, but it abhors
democracy, secular law and/or hedonistic popular culture.) Fundamentalism
as a reaction against the decline and marginalization of religion and what
has traditionally been a moral life. It would reclaim what is believed to be
traditional morality and virtues as the path to a golden future. Its leadership
tends to be quite authoritarian, demanding obedience and subordination of
members. It is scriptural and its “holy book” is absolutist, without error, and
its morality requires its elect believers adhere to a strict code of ethical behav-
ior founded on a Manichean moral dualism that maintains strict boundaries
between the moral insider and infidel outsider. Writing for the twentieth-
century Fund, Grant Wacker has put it quite succinctly. Fundamentalism can
be seen as:

...a global religious impulse, particularly evident in the twentieth century,

that seeks to recover and publicly institutionalize aspects of the past that

modern life has obscured. It typically sees the secular state as the primary

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