Steve Bruce Fundamentalism Analysis

In his book Fundamentalism, Steve Bruce starts by admitting that religion is a “very rich diet” for most. Most people are not willing to put their entire lives into religious traditions and choose instead to practice religion with few rituals, helping fund their religious communities, and trying to work with what their religious leaders say is a moral, good life. After all, not everybody can be a monk or priest, as there have always needed to be people keeping the secular life functioning, tending the farms and running the local shops, so very early on there became a clear divide in spiritual labor. In the text, Bruce introduces a group that is eager to consume the “rich diet”, a group of people that he calls the “modern religions zealots”, …show more content…
The separation of church and state was one of the consequences of diversity. Another cause for change within religious communities is that the changes in gender are causing changes, even mores than other means of discrimination, as race and class shift within societies, but gender relations are relevant to everybody, in any aspect of life. Rationalization also played a role in the modernization of the west. Bruce explains rationalization as “a process that concerns changes in the way people think and consequently the way they act”. Bruce says that The Reformation and the rise in science/technology played big roles in “demystifying the world”. Bruce does make a point to say that, while people see religion and science as conflicting opposites, religion is challenged less by specific science than by the underlying logic of sciences, as the logic causes people to look for answers and “undermines the notion of a fixed and unchanging …show more content…
He takes the time to summarize a lot of the actions and goals from the fundamentalists he discusses throughout the text and brings up points that are often made in the case of dismissing the ideas of fundamentalists. Bruce explains that most of these dismissive conclusions come from liberals who are pushing away from tradition and walks the reader through some of the abnormalities and stereotypes that come from the opposers. Fundamentalists are seen as possibly insane because they are an active group in our modern day who believe so much in their less popular cause, often to a fault. Bruce talks about a politician who tries to keep their more traditional beliefs for their core audience and share more broad, agreeable beliefs with the general public. This kind of decision is necessary for fundamentalists to get very far with their beliefs, as the general public often sees their traditional ideas with such a negative