Religious Fundamentalism

• Author: John G. West
• Pages: 2183-2185

Page 2183

Nathaniel Hawthorne perhaps best captured the paradox of religious fundamentalism in America in his stories about the Puritans. Repelled by the Puritans' intolerance, Hawthorne admired their realism and their unswerving devotion to principle. The latter trait he vividly depicted in his short story "The Gray Champion" (1835), where a first-generation Puritan mysteriously returns to Boston in 1689 to thwart the subjugation of the colonies by King James II. Like a fiery Old Testament prophet, the old Puritan?the "Gray Champion" of the story's title?denounces the usurpations of Royal Governor Sir Edmund Andros and urges the people to resistance.

The character of the Gray Champion symbolizes the Puritans' rigid idealism, an idealism that typifies religious fundamentalism in general. In Hawthorne's view, this idealism constituted both a threat and a promise to republican government. It constituted a threat because it fostered religious intolerance, which if enforced by the state, could destroy civil liberty. It represented a promise because it produced a firm commitment to moral principle, which if properly exercised, could help sustain republicanism. Hence the ultimate paradox of fundamentalism: Its intolerance may destroy republican government, but its rigorous attachment to moral principle may be needed to defend it.

One of the greatest achievements of American CONSITUTIONALISM was the manner in which it resolved this paradox by harnessing the moral idealism of fundamentalism while restraining its potential for bigotry. The Founders harnessed fundamentalism's moral idealism by stressing the importance of morality in civic life and by acknowledging the crucial role churches played in fostering this morality. At the same time, the Founders sought to temper fundamentalism's intolerance by ensuring that goverment power would never be used to resolve theological differences.

The Founders' arrangement produced an institutional separation between church and state even while forging a practical tie between religion and politics on the basis of morality. Religious fundamentalists were discouraged by the nature of the regime from using the government to promote their theological beliefs; but the door was left open for them to enter the political arena as citizens in order to promote government policies in accord with both the principles of the Constitution and the "laws of nature and nature's God" on which those principles are premised.

The political activities of religious fundamentalists in the new nation (primarily evangelical Christians) reflected the Founders' understanding of the role of religion in society. Many evangelicals opposed state funding of churches because they thought it corrupted religion, and gradually even the congregationalists who supported ESTABLISHMENTS OF RELIGION changed their minds. Hence, when evangelicals became involved in politics in the early nation, they generally sought to do so on the basis of principles of civic morality that were held in common by both reason and revelation. in the years before the CIVIL WAR, they entered the political arena by the thousands to spear-head crusades against dueling, lotteries, war, poverty, prostitution, alcoholism, and SLAVERY. These political activities on behalf of...