5: The Advent and Impact of Fundamentalist State Religion

Onward, Christian soldiers! Marching as to war…  - Sabine Baring-Gould

In this post: How the balance between atheism and religion has shifted. Why state fundamentalism is not a good thing. Enter secularism — the separation of religious belief and civil governance.

In Europe, freedom of religion was a very rare thing from Roman times until the 1800s or so. When nations did begin to embrace that freedom, a lot of things changed, including the balance of power in the atheist-theist debate.

There are three natural enemies of religious fundamentalism. The first is atheism, which goes against the primary assertion of all Abrahamic religions, and many other religions as well, that there is a God. The second is science, which often proclaims findings that are heresy to the beliefs promulgated by the scriptures. Third are beliefs of other religions or variant groups within the dominant religion that are considered heresies because they don’t agree with the scriptures.

History shows us that when there is a  fundamentalist state religion,  most progress towards scientific truth, freedom of speech and thought, improvement of the quality of life, and democratic principles come to a halt. Minority religious rights  and freedom of religion, of course, disappear and atheism goes underground.

For most of the last millennium Christianity and Islam, in one form or another, were the “bully-boys” in such debates. In their eyes, heresy referred to anything that suggested that the scriptures were not totally true in all their teachings. Being state religions, they usually had the power to force heretics to recant or submit to torture, or ultimately, to die. In other words, the fundamentalists were in charge, scientists were cautious and atheists and religious dissenters were very silent. Those who believed in a variant of the dominant religion often faced torture or death, and other religions, if tolerated at all, trod with great caution. In spite of all this, science progressed, albeit slowly, despite being stifled by the authority of the state-empowered fundamentalist church, particularly when it did not conflict with doctrine.

Enter secularism: the separation of religion and civil governance. With the gradual rise of secularism, and the reduction of the role of fundamentalist religion in the state, these fundamentalist state religions could no longer tell people what to believe. Although overt atheism might cause someone to be isolated from neighbours and family, it was no longer physically dangerous to espouse except when the occasional crazed fundamentalist reacted.

In the early 20th century, the authority of religions in the West was mostly eliminated, and science took off. By that time, many religions had become trapped in beliefs and practices that couldn’t stand the test of rational analysis. Having lost the power of coercion and having to rely only on persuasion, most religious groups mostly left science alone, even expressing support for theories such as the Big Bang that are deemed not incompatible with scripture.

Ignoring the Scopes Monkey Trial (1925) and other minor battles, a degree of peace was achieved between church and science in the 20th century, given that the church had lost its advantage of power, and scientists were not that interested in re-entering such debates. Atheism could overtly thrive, and many bookstores introduced an “Atheism” subsection in their “Religion” collection. Atheists could say what they wanted to, theists could read atheists’ books for new ideas, and fundamentalists, for the most part ignored them or heaped scorn on them.

There are, of course, several Muslim states today in which this freedom does not exist because the power struggle between fundamentalist religion and secularism has not been settled. I might add that there are also Jewish fundamentalists in Israel, who work to impose their religious views on the rest of the Jewish population.

Interestingly, state atheism, a new type of state fundamentalism, formed during the 20th century. It was a phenomenon of some communist countries such as the USSR, Cuba, China, Albania and North Korea. In those states, conventional religions were outlawed or strongly discouraged, and veneration of leaders, the State, and communist dogma took their place. (Consider the resemblance of Lenin’s tomb in Red Square, where the mummified body of Lenin is on display for the “faithful,” to religious edifices and the reverence accorded religious relics.) With the fall of communism, this state atheism has been considerably relaxed, much exemplified, for example, by papal visits in the 21st century. State fundamentalism, state- atheism or any state-sponsored belief system imposes enormous damage to thinking, research and progress, just as theistic state fundamentalism does.

Fundamentalism is bad. State fundamentalism or theocracy in any form is extremely bad.