This study attempts to incorporate religious fundamentalism into an existing framework for understanding spiritual variables from an object relations perspective of development. Out of this theory have emerged two constructs-image of God and spiritual maturity-which are both spiritually and developmentally oriented. Based on theoretical considerations, it was hypothesized that religious fundamentalism would be connected to lower levels of object relations development and spiritual maturity, and more negative God images. Eighty-five Christians from 18-68 years old were therefore administered four inventories that measured these four constructs. Although mainly weak correlations for the overall sample were found, for students religious fundamentalism was linked to lower levels of object relations development, as hypothesized. Implications of this and other findings are explored.

Thesis (M.A. in National Security Affairs)--Naval Postgraduate School, June 2004. / Thesis advisor(s): Lyman Miller, Donald Abenheim. Includes bibliographical references (p. 99-103). Also available online.

This thesis argues that a strong correlation exists between Islamic militancy and socio-economic and political conditions. Under 'normal' everyday conditions, passive elements of the Islamic community, the mutadayyin, dominate, but in times of crisis or challenge, it is the militants, the isl amiyyin, who react against the state, its institutions and its employees. The Egypt of Anwar al-S ad at (1970-1981) will be used in order to test this hypothesis. The everyday conditions in which the people live, work and survive will be examined in order to establish the constant, the invariable. These conditions include the sectarian strife between Muslims and Copts, especially in Upper Egypt; overpopulation; the lack of housing; the failure of education; the debt burden; the cost of war with Israel, and the 'brain-drain' from Egypt to the oil-rich countries. These aspects encouraged an increase in religiosity, both Muslim and Coptic. Egypt however was also faced with three periods of crisis during S ad at's presidency, namely the October War (1973), the 'open-door' economic policy of infit ah (April 1974+)/the Bread Riots (January 1977), and the peace process with Israel (November 1977+). Shortly after each period, the militants reacted against the state. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

With the rise of extremist fundamentalist groups, such as ISIS, it is important to note similar happenings in other traditions. This thesis traces the interpretive tradition of the Book of Revelation, from its composition in 90 C.E. through the dispensationalist usage of it by John Nelson Darby in the 19th century, and how its modern use by American Christian fundamentalist groups leads to rhetorical violence, including feelings of marginalization and societal targeting, and creation of insider/outsider dynamics with those outside the tradition. While rhetorical violence—language and behaviors that harm others and that occur so regularly that they often become routinized and habitual—does not directly involve killing and enacting of physical violence, it can lead to it. This thesis concludes that the instances of rhetorical violence occurring in mainstream American Christian fundamentalism, such as in Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind series and the author’s ethnographic case study of a church in Bowling Green, Kentucky, are problematic because of the possibility for physical violence.

All theories attempting to explain the rise of fundamentalism in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries agree that fundamentalism is a problematic and threatening response to a problematic and threatening modernity. This contention can be supported, inasmuch as fundamentalists do indeed seem very much at home in a technological world. However, how much can be extrapolated from this familiarity is highly debatable. To this end, it is vital for any discussion of fundamentalism to first attempt to achieve a clear-eyed view of the modern world. Such a view, at least that which is achievable, seems to suggest that the modern world is not, in fact, one of heretofore unimaginable horror. The recently uncovered scale of the genocide committed on the native peoples of the Caribbean and both hemispheres of the New World between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example, demonstrates that genocide is not, in any sense, a product of modern ways of thought or even the industrialization of slaughter. Likewise, most of the examples used to prove the contention of a uniquely traumatic modernity, for example, the rise of racism or the Holocaust, are, when considered closely, far less novel and idiosyncratically modern than often considered. Such a re-evaluation inevitably raises questions about culture, tradition, relativity, universalism, and not least morality, particularly the question of what morality is, where it comes from, and what if any role, does religion play in the formation of morals and ethics. This inevitably feeds back into the question of fundamentalism, most notably in the question of whether the fallen, sinful world against which fundamentalists so often proclaim themselves to be rebelling, is in fact, the world in which we live, or a Manichean world of their own imagining, invented to justify their rebellion.

American historians tend to oppose modernity and modern religion to pre-modern and traditional faith, a binary that has privileged certain religious forms and displays of sacredness over others. This thesis challenges the structuring dichotomy of modernity by arguing that Protestant evangelical revivals were sites on which modernity was made, defined, contested, and remade at the end of the nineteenth century. Examining the major revivals of Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday, among others, it rejects grand narratives and insists on understanding revival campaigns as existing in a braided relationship with the secular public sphere: one player in a symbolic marketplace where various partisans attempted to demonstrate that they were uniquely modern. This modernity was constructed through multiple categories of gender, age, class, ethnicity, and race, linking claims of modernity to common-sense masculinity, idealized family roles, and Anglo-Saxon identity as site upon which Americanness was made. / Graduate / 0320 / 0337 / 0330 / barak65@hotmail.com

American historians tend to oppose “modernity” and “modern religion” to pre-modern and “traditional” faith, a binary that has privileged certain religious forms and displays of sacredness over others. This thesis challenges the structuring dichotomy of modernity by arguing that Protestant evangelical revivals were sites on which “modernity” was made, defined, contested, and remade at the end of the nineteenth century. Examining the major revivals of Dwight Moody and Billy Sunday, among others, it rejects grand narratives and insists on understanding revival campaigns as existing in a braided relationship with the “secular” public sphere: one player in a symbolic marketplace where various partisans attempted to demonstrate that they were uniquely “modern.” This “modernity” was constructed through multiple categories of gender, age, class, ethnicity, and race, linking claims of “modernity” to common-sense masculinity, idealized family roles, and Anglo-Saxon identity as site upon which “Americanness” was made. / Graduate / 0320 / 0337 / 0330 / barak65@hotmail.com

This thesis presents a broad exploratory analysis of apostasy from religious fundamentalism in light of cognitive developmental theory. Reciprocally, the thesis provides a critique of cognitive developmental theory in light of its application to apostasy from fundamentalism. Autobiographical narratives of approximately 200 apostates from Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms are used to represent the experience of apostasy. Three related and representative cognitive developmental theories are used to inform the analysis of these apostate narratives. These theories include James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (FDT) (1981); Fritz Oser and Paul Gmünder’s Stages of Religious Judgment (RJT) (1991); and Helmut Reich’s Levels of Relational and Contextual Reasoning (RCR) (2002). These three representative theories are used to generate cognitive developmental hypotheses for the experiences of apostates from fundamentalisms. There are three primary hypotheses guiding the research: (i) Fundamentalist contents predispose a particular form of cognitive operations. (ii) Fundamentalist contents suspend equilibration between accommodation and assimilation. And (iii), some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism are the product of a sociocognitive conflict. These hypotheses are addressed through four research questions: (i) How do fundamentalist cultures sponsor or arrest cognitive development? (ii) What are the developmental characteristics of apostates’ experiences? (iii) What are the implications of cognitive development for apostasy and fundamentalism? And (iv), what are the implications of apostasy from fundamentalism for theories of cognitive development? The thesis utilises a paradigm of critical realism and a theory of interactionism. Critical realism assumes the existence of an objective reality, while acknowledging its exclusively subjective mediation. The interactionist approach acknowledges the potential influences of genetic predisposition, social-environmental context, and individual agency affecting cognitive development and apostasy from fundamentalism. A dual methodological approach is used to collect and analyse data relevant to the hypothesis. Data collection involves two phases: (i) Collection of existing unstructured apostate narratives. And (ii), collection of semi-structured apostate responses. The first phase narratives are collected using online databases, published anthologies, and solicited scripts. The second phase responses are collected using a semi-structured survey. The dual methodological analysis combines coded content analysis and narrative analysis. Coding is informed by the three developmental theories. The qualitative thesis findings may be summarised in two parts. The first pertains to apostasy from fundamentalism; the second pertains to cognitive developmental theory. Of the former, the research found: (i) Cognitive development represents a significant and even primary influence in some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism. And (ii), some forms of fundamentalism sponsor stage specific structures. Reflecting on cognitive theories of religious development, the research found: (i) Sociocultural, affective, and noncognitive physical influences may directly and indirectly facilitate or inhibit cognitive development. (ii) Specific stages and structures of cognitive development may be culturally embedded. (iii) Cognitive development may be compartmentalised. (iv) Cognitive development may regress or fracture when faced with transitional crises and environmental changes. (v) There are diverse trajectories of religious development. And (vi), fractured development at one stage may perpetuate fractured development in the next stage. Finally, the thesis discusses implications of these findings for contemporary dialogue on religious development. These collective findings provide support for a religious styles model (i.e. Streib’s Religious Styles Perspective, 2001) that integrates a cognitive stream based on Fowler’s faith development into a more multiperspective understanding of religious development. Such a model would account more adequately for the diverse influences interacting to produce different trajectories of religious development.

This thesis is concerned with the ideas of two of the most prominent thinkers within the 'fundamentalist' religious movements that have become so prominent over the last few decades in Pakistan and India; Maulana Maududi of the Muslim Jamaat-I-Islami and M.S. Golwalkar, of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Though both are now dead, their ideas live on in the thinking and deeds of others. This thesis explores a comparison of the ideas of these men and their radical/fundamentalist ideologies with a focus on the way they viewed the relationship between religon and the state. Others have established that such a comparison between significant individuals, who lived in the same historical timeframe, and in this case the same geographical and political contexts, offers valuable insight into the situations/nations in which they were directly involved.

This thesis presents a broad exploratory analysis of apostasy from religious fundamentalism in light of cognitive developmental theory. Reciprocally, the thesis provides a critique of cognitive developmental theory in light of its application to apostasy from fundamentalism. Autobiographical narratives of approximately 200 apostates from Christian and Muslim fundamentalisms are used to represent the experience of apostasy. Three related and representative cognitive developmental theories are used to inform the analysis of these apostate narratives. These theories include James Fowler’s Stages of Faith (FDT) (1981); Fritz Oser and Paul Gmünder’s Stages of Religious Judgment (RJT) (1991); and Helmut Reich’s Levels of Relational and Contextual Reasoning (RCR) (2002). These three representative theories are used to generate cognitive developmental hypotheses for the experiences of apostates from fundamentalisms. There are three primary hypotheses guiding the research: (i) Fundamentalist contents predispose a particular form of cognitive operations. (ii) Fundamentalist contents suspend equilibration between accommodation and assimilation. And (iii), some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism are the product of a sociocognitive conflict. These hypotheses are addressed through four research questions: (i) How do fundamentalist cultures sponsor or arrest cognitive development? (ii) What are the developmental characteristics of apostates’ experiences? (iii) What are the implications of cognitive development for apostasy and fundamentalism? And (iv), what are the implications of apostasy from fundamentalism for theories of cognitive development? The thesis utilises a paradigm of critical realism and a theory of interactionism. Critical realism assumes the existence of an objective reality, while acknowledging its exclusively subjective mediation. The interactionist approach acknowledges the potential influences of genetic predisposition, social-environmental context, and individual agency affecting cognitive development and apostasy from fundamentalism. A dual methodological approach is used to collect and analyse data relevant to the hypothesis. Data collection involves two phases: (i) Collection of existing unstructured apostate narratives. And (ii), collection of semi-structured apostate responses. The first phase narratives are collected using online databases, published anthologies, and solicited scripts. The second phase responses are collected using a semi-structured survey. The dual methodological analysis combines coded content analysis and narrative analysis. Coding is informed by the three developmental theories. The qualitative thesis findings may be summarised in two parts. The first pertains to apostasy from fundamentalism; the second pertains to cognitive developmental theory. Of the former, the research found: (i) Cognitive development represents a significant and even primary influence in some forms of apostasy from fundamentalism. And (ii), some forms of fundamentalism sponsor stage specific structures. Reflecting on cognitive theories of religious development, the research found: (i) Sociocultural, affective, and noncognitive physical influences may directly and indirectly facilitate or inhibit cognitive development. (ii) Specific stages and structures of cognitive development may be culturally embedded. (iii) Cognitive development may be compartmentalised. (iv) Cognitive development may regress or fracture when faced with transitional crises and environmental changes. (v) There are diverse trajectories of religious development. And (vi), fractured development at one stage may perpetuate fractured development in the next stage. Finally, the thesis discusses implications of these findings for contemporary dialogue on religious development. These collective findings provide support for a religious styles model (i.e. Streib’s Religious Styles Perspective, 2001) that integrates a cognitive stream based on Fowler’s faith development into a more multiperspective understanding of religious development. Such a model would account more adequately for the diverse influences interacting to produce different trajectories of religious development.