John Ball, the priest who led the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381, was one of
many popular leaders who placed a more radical interpretation on the
Bible than did official church leaders. The radical possibilities of the
gospel message that the poor would inherit the earth and the
protestant stress on the sovereignty of the individual conscience have
strongly influenced the left of the British political tradition. The
Diggers and Levellers in the Civil War period threw doubt not only
upon the position of the established Church, but upon the existing
basis of property and political representation (Greenleaf, 1983: 351).
In the New World, in colonies such as seventeenth-century
Massachusetts and Connecticut, membership of the dominant
Christian sect was virtually the same as citizenship (Morison and
Commager, 1962, Vol. I: 57–65). Similarly, in such continental cities
as Calvin’s Geneva, the processes of government and the inter-
pretation of God’s word were virtually indistinguishable (Tawney,
1938: 132). At a later stage in American history (1847), the Mormon
leader Brigham Young led his people out of the United States to
found Salt Lake City. There they could practise their own religion
(including polygamy) in accordance with Young’s interpretation of
the Book of Mormon (Morison and Commager, 1962, Vol. I:
590–593).
Thus it is clear that Christian fundamentalism can be a
considerable political force – as it remains to this day in the United
States where the backing of the Evangelicals may have proved
decisive in securing victories for both Reagan and George W. Bush.
‘Fundamentalism’ – a literal approach to the interpretation of the
Bible – is, strictly speaking, a purely theological doctrine and not
equivalent to a belief in the political supremacy of the Church. Some
fundamentalists would endorse a strict separation of secular and
religious matters, but where they are in a majority this distinction
has often ceased to be of practical importance.
None the less it is Islamic fundamentalism which appears in many
ways the most dynamic political–religious movement of the early
twenty-first century. Islamic ‘fundamentalism’ is something of a
misnomer since virtually all Muslims take the same sort of literal
approach to the status and interpretation of the Koran that Protestant
evangelicals take to the Bible. Because of a historic legacy deriving
from European conflict with Islam during the crusades and as a part of
colonialism, there is a tendency in the West to identify Islamic82 IDEOLOGIES