Unthinking Fundamentalism

Unthinking Fundamentalism is the title of a special workshop to be held in Cambridge this week.

The workshop is intended to propose new ways of thinking about fundamentalism, and also to launch the idea of establishing a Centre for the Study of Religious Movements in Cambridge.

Dr David Lehmann, from the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, and principal researcher in the proposed project, said that questions about fundamentalism are also general questions about religion in the contemporary world.

"How can we continue to think of fundamentalism as a deviant or minority phenomenon when it claims millions of followers and is active and growing in all the major world religions and across the globe?

"Why has fundamentalism grown so much precisely in the modern world when the standard expectation is that disbelief and agnosticism are on the increase - which of course they are, as if in parallel with their opposite?"

The proposed Centre would have at its heart a documentation centre collecting pamphlet literature from churches, synagogues and mosques all over the world. It would support research by people within and beyond Cambridge and would pay special attention to bringing together scholars from different disciplines.

"It is particularly important to bring political and moral philosophers into the debate, because they deal with issues of tolerance which continue to plague us, as witness the controversial recent law passed by the French Parliament with the express aim of combating 'sects'. These are not easy issues," said Dr Lehmann.

A further aim is to build bridges between theology and the social sciences.

Other speakers at the meeting are Dr Mariane Ferme of the Department of Social Anthropology; Dr Jeremy Stolow of the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences; Dr Nurit Stadler of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Dr Sara Savage of the University's Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies (CARTS), and Dr Arvind Rajagopal of New York University.

All, in their different ways, will be discussing the construction of fundamentalist networks, communities and movements across national, and cultural boundaries through all sorts of media and organisational forms.

The Workshop is jointly sponsored by CARTS and the University's new Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities and is being held in the Runcie Room (B1), Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge from 9am to 1pm on Friday 29 June 2001 and all are welcome to attend.