Fundamentalism in Eastern Christianity

Patriotism, Nationalism, Illiberalism in Their Relation to Religion: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

“…The strategy of fundamentalism is to radically change the social system, sometimes not only in one's own country, but also outside it, up to the reorganization of the whole world (Eisenstadt 1999;Lustick 1988). Although the latter peculiarity is disputed today by researchers (Hovorun 2021;Mitrofanova 2005). Mitrofanova, for example, considers the claim to influence the whole world as a feature of political religion and not of fundamentalism itself.…”

“…More extreme forms of nationalism may be connected to particularly fundamentalistoriented actors who claim to hold the exclusive truth, to be superior, demand universal validity and demand the restoration of the past (Pollack et al 2022). They advocate for especially rigid religious norms not only within the church environment, but also at the broader level of society as a whole, and aim to consolidate these norms at the level of state laws that are obligatory for everyone (Verkhovskiy 2003;Hovorun 2021;Appleby 2007). In many different ways, such forms of fundamentalism, then, become closely linked to religious notions and symbols; we are dealing with post-secular processes (Uzlaner 2013) and the de-privatization of religion (Casanova [1994(Casanova [ ] 2001.…”

“…That is, fundamentalists are shaping a new reality, not restoring the old one (see also Pollack et al 2022). Variations of fundamentalism that attempt to master the world, then, represent not so much a movement of those striving to restore the traditional social structures destroyed during modernization processes, but a "political religion" (Hovorun 2021;Mitrofanova 2005). Therefore, Mitrofanova proposes to distinguish between fundamentalism and "political religion" where the first understanding means using concepts of the past to change modernity, while the latter means using modernity to change concepts of the past (Mitrofanova 2005, pp.…”