A Conservatism for the Age of Fundamentalism?

Scott Horton

Our major newsweeklies regularly feature religiously themed pieces exploiting pop phenomena. But this week's Time magazine offers something quite different. In "Why Not Seeing Is Believing," Andrew Sullivan presents us with an extended essay derived from his new book, The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It; How To Get It Back. Those who expected the usual screed along the lines of "this is not my conservatism" are in for a surprise, because the core of Sullivan's work is a struggle between religious conviction and an Oakeshottian conservatism of doubt. The path is rather long, but fascinating, and filled with vivid vignettes, of which the portrait of President Ahmadinejad and Sullivan's accounts of church-going experiences with his own grandmother are particularly powerful.

Sullivan argues that the rise of materialism and secularism around the world has unleashed a powerful countercurrent of religious thought. It is multifaceted to be sure, but Sullivan looks with particular care at the rise of fundamentalist thinking – among the Religious Right in the United States, the Wahhabis of Sunni Islam, the millenarian thinking of Shiia leaders like Iran's new president and or ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups in Israel. Relying on sources as diverse as his own first-hand experiences, the writings of William James and the Pew Charitable Trusts fundamentalism project, he discerns essential similarities of these fundamentalist movements. Sullivan's account is strengthened by the fact that it is presented by a believer – a person who readily accepts the redemptive power of religious experience, and who therefore rejects the satirical approach of many who write about fundamentalism today. Which is not to say that his attitude is uncritical. Indeed, Sullivan unleashes sharp attacks on groups he calls "Christianists" who present a partisan political agenda which is tarted up in religious guise. And he is far more devastating in his critique of Salafi Islamists, as well as the millenarian Shiia thinking of figures like Ahmadinejad, both of which embrace overt racism and terrorist tactics.

Sullivan offers a compelling case for the proposition that the dichotomy between secularism and fundamentalism is radically false. And he bases this case in principles of conservatism – citing Montaigne, Burke and Oakeshott in the process. The claim to full and absolute knowledge implicit in all forms of fundamentalism rests on arrogant assumptions about the capacity of man to know and to understand God. In a sense it forgets the essential role of humility in religious experience.

The essay ends with famous lines of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, found in his Anti-Goetze – a retort against a famous fundamentalist pastor in Hamburg. Lessing, himself a preacher's son who devoted a lifetime to the reconciliation of faith and reason, wrote: "If God were to hold all Truth concealed in his right hand, and in his left hand only the steady and diligent drive for Truth, albeit with the proviso that I would always and forever err in the process, and to offer me the choice, I would with all humility take the left hand, and say, Father, I will take this--the pure Truth is for You alone."

Lessing was the librarian to the Duke of Brunswick and he lived at the other end of the great Hanoverian Empire from the provinces which would soon become the United States. But we know that, even as he was penning these lines, he followed the American Revolution with a passionate attachment. His thinking is very close to that of America's Founding Fathers. In the end, it seems to me, Sullivan is telling us to take heart in the values on which this country was founded and which have served it so well for over two centuries – values which command respect for religion even while insisting that it be disentangled from the state. This legacy leaves America well placed to deal with fundamentalism as Sullivan does – with respect for the good that religious faith can bring, while holding its excesses in check for the peace and happiness of all humanity.
Posted 10:18 PM by Scott Horton [link]