Essay on Fundamentalism and Religion

In the early medieval period, the masses believed that earth was at the center of the universe and everything revolved around it. “...the judgement of many centuries has approved the view that the Earth remains fixed as center in the midst of the heavens…” Nicolaus Copernicus thought that this idea was absurd and continued to explain that the Earth actually moves. He was afraid to even discuss the idea as anyone during the period would just reject it immediately. The Earth being flat was in part influenced by religion and by writing his theories, he was almost apologetic for suggesting the heavens were different from what almost all people believed. “...that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false.” The change in culture was seen as a danger to religion as the new ideas went against a lot of factors in religion. The strict religious ideas caused almost a cultural revolt for new ideas. But because religion was being changed radically, it left room for new ideas like this to start spreading to the

In life, many people believe in things that others do not. Many beliefs are controversial, and may even promote conflict. One such instance, the most popular many would say, is the belief of Gods. The most common Religion, Christianity, sitting at 31.5% of the population (The World Factbook, 2014), is also, historically, the most aggressive. Starting many wars, controlling high-power nations, forcing assimilation, Christianity is a powerhouse of a religion. One of the most extreme cases of such would be the crusades in 1099. The success and failure of the crusades is heavily thanks to the Knights Templar. The Knights Templar’s rise to power and critical importance in the crusades can be attributed to their heavy presence on the battlefield,

Fundamentalism is a type of religious reaction to all forms of modernity. Within Christianity this phenomenon is mostly characteristic of Protestantism but is also found in Catholicism. In fact, the term fundamentalism was coined in the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, but it was only toward the end of that century that the term began to be applied to some

Chapter 9: Religious Fundamentalism by Luca Ozzano After reading this chapter, I have a greater understanding about fundamentalism and the various views. Fundamentalism is found within various religions and has changed since it came about in the 1920s. Since the 1920s, fundamentalism has increased within each culture/religion. Within the reading, it is said that many want to keep the Christianity background, while other reject the thought.

The Crusades were a series of military tours launched by Christian Europeans to attack the Muslims in an attempt to reclaim the Holy Land. The Western European Christians had different reasons for participating in the Crusades. Thus, crusading had a request to numerous Europeans. The Crusades took place between 1095 C.E. and 1270 C.E. The Crusades are known as one of the most brutal stages of our history. The starting point of the Crusades was when Pope Urban II made his important speech in Central France. The crowd’s response was positive and they were eager to fight for their religion. Soon after, fighting wasn’t for religion but because of gaining wealth and prosperity.

The Crusades were Christian soldiers who fought for the glory of God to protect their religion. The Crusades believed that it was acceptable to murder in war as long as it was for Jesus Christ. In 753 A.C., Pope Stephen II tells the ruler of the Franks Pepin Carolingian that “St. Peter would remit the sins of the men who goes to war for his church” (Lords and Ladies). “The priests could not fight in the wars with weapons but only to help celebrate mass and pray for Christian victories or to carry relies of saints” (Lords and Ladies).

Over the course of the last 50 years, America has had a slow decline of religious citizens (belief in the Christian god). Being founded by religious men, this fate was unforeseen by the Founding Fathers in which solely believed that God assisted in creating this country. With modern disaster and terror, people have less to grasp with their belief. Only 26% of the American population is religious opposed to around 75% sixty years ago. There are many beliefs in the reason in this change. “We are a nation of believers in our constitutional rights and our ability to exercise them.” (Wakefield, Stand for Church-State Separation). America is the nation who stands for having the right to NOT be religious as opposed to, not many years ago, fighting

Most of the evidence from the scientific revolution points the strong alliance at this period between science and religion on belief. It is significant that the Protestants churches, usually more concerned with biblical literalism than the Catholic Church, took no comparable action against copernicanism. The fact that the Catholic Church took no action until Galileo made the religious implications of copernicanism is highly public. The end of sixteenth century saw the beginnings of atheism in Europe, arising at least partly out of skeptical crisis among intellectuals as a result of the newly discovered alternative to Aristotle from ancient thoughts, including ancient skeptical writings. The most famous aspect of alliance between traditional authority in natural knowledge and orthodox religion is actually the alliance between Aristotelianism and about the stationary position of earth.

The author concludes that trying to define religion in terms of one kind of belief – for example, the belief in one god – may be explicable within the context of Western Europe, which has been dominated historically by Christianity, but is narrow and inflexible when considering religion as a global phenomenon example is

Throughout much of history, religion has been the more dominant of the two. The Catholic Church has been prominent in the development of western civilisation for centuries and, especially during the scientific renaissance, had a powerful and widespread influence. At a time when the Catholics and Protestants were battling over control of Europe, science was a controversial topic. The Church was vehemently against any scientific theory which could in any way be seen to undermine the principles of its religion. Scientists had to carefully navigate the Church to avoid prosecution for heresy. Galileo Galilei, himself a dedicated Christian, inspired vigorous opposition from the Church. He worked between the 16th and 17th Centuries and championed Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism, which placed the Sun at the centre of the universe instead of the Earth, despite the Bible stating ‘the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved’ . A principle such as his, accepted as common knowledge in today’s society, was found

Fundamentalism was first talked about during the debate by the Fundamentalist-Modernist in the 1920’s. Fundamentalism is defined as a type of religion that upholds very strict beliefs from the scripture they worship. There are several people and groups such as John Nelson Darby, William Bell Riley, and one group that, been in the news a lot lately, Westboro Baptist Church. The members of Westboro Baptist Church are known in modern day as a group of people known for hate speeches against homosexual, Jews, and politicians. The definition of fundamentalism could lead one to believe that the members of the Westboro Baptist Church are in fact fundamentalists; however, they are just the opposite of that. When thinking about fundamentalism and

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Christian belief encountered significant opposition. Until then, most of the world shared the belief of the “Medieval world view” that not only was the earth positioned at the center of the universe, but that God was all knowing, all powerful and all good. God was thought to have created and sustained the wondrous workings of the universe. This belief told the people all they needed to know about the meaning and purpose of life. Then, scientific discovery and methods began to undermine religious beliefs. Scientists began to reveal that natural laws and natural forces governed the world. Opposing beliefs, e.g. the Marxism belief, criticized Christian views. People like, Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler,

T.K Oommen (1994) defines fundamentalism as “text without context”; meaning the scriptures written back in history where relevant to that history and culture at that time and place (Christiano et al., 2016). Such texts without context then simply disregard current settings. Fundamentalists believe their religion is the objective truth, which as a result, defines other religions as myths (Christiano et al., 2016).

Undoubtedly, globalization has contributed to the growth of religious fundamentalism. As a rule, Christianity and Islamic religion form the basis for religious divide each being driven by varying beliefs that collectively guide the lives of the people (Williams, 1970). Concisely, religious fundamentalism seeks to hold on to traditions and cultural concerns that are

Religious fundamentalism was initially caused by the desire to recreate the golden age of the religion and improving the present, yet they were also unwilling to compromise with reality. Religious fundamental groups became more popular as they were able to convince the people that the mainstream groups were unable to do a good job in various areas thus leading to a rise in