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Between Relativism & Fundamentalism: religious resources for a middle position

Author:	Peter L Berger (Ed.)
Published By:	Eerdmans (Grand Rapids/Cambridge)
Pages:	209
Price:	£11.99
ISBN:	978 0 8028 6387 4

Reviewed by Philip Joy.

When J I Packer wrote his seminal Fundamentalism and Word of God over 50 years ago, it was a positive evangelical response to a debate within British Christianity about the authority of the Bible. In the pluralism of today’s world, however, ‘fundamentalism’ has become a dirty word associated with dangerous radicals in a variety of faiths: e.g. Islamists, Zionists and Creationists. Contemporary ‘fundamentalism’ is contrasted with ‘relativism’: sole possession of absolute truth versus the rejection of truth claims altogether. This set of essays, edited by the American sociologist Peter Berger (author of In Praise of Doubt: how to have Convictions without Becoming a Fanatic), offers a middle ground, in which specific truth claims may be affirmed without intolerance towards the claims of others.

The book is in the form of a series of seminar essays given at the Institute of Culture, Religion and World Affairs at BostonUniversity. After an introductory overview by Berger, the collection is in two parts: three essays - “sociological descriptions” - give an objective picture on how relativism and fundamentalism play out in today’s world; whilst in the second part - “theological direction” - authors from several Christian traditions and one Jewish author flesh out a middle ground which rejects either extreme of fundamentalism or relativism. For those in a multi-faith context, or those with a particular interest in sociology, this would be well worth having, but it is perhaps a little too ‘academic’ in style for the busy minister with little time to spare (for this reason I trust readers will forgive my somewhat lengthy appraisal - read the review rather than the book!).

Berger helpfully kicks off with a historical description of the two responses to contemporary pluralism. As modernity has spread across the globe it has had a relativising effect on communities which hitherto knew little of one another. Fundamentalism, on the other hand, offers certainty in an age of relativism. Both, however, are thoroughly products of our age; neither is found in traditional faith communities of the past. A middle ground crucially enables belief without the rejection of modernity.

So what of the essays? James Davison Hunter traces the emergence of fundamentalism and relativism from their modernist enlightenment background to the present day angst of everyman, pointing out that both ‘isms’ are actually nihilistic responses, for even fundamentalism defines itself negatively. Grace Davie shows how British Anglican Christian affiliation (considered as an ‘economy’) has now become relativist, a matter of the ‘market’ - merely another personal choice - with all the attendant tensions deriving from its more fundamentalist Christian communities around the globe. Craig Gay considers the way American Evangelicalism has adopted a midway position committed to underpinning the contemporary American political system; this adaptionist regressive theology is contrasted with various American attempts to rediscover a genuinely Christian political theology. Certainly these analyses give British evangelicals pause for thought. Do we define ourselves negatively - anti-abortion, anti-gay etc., so that we are known for what we are against, rather than what we stand for? Considering personal choice, the phrase ‘church shopping’ springs uncomfortably to mind, and could what we regard as essential gospel teaching about choosing Christ be merely another form of secular individualism? Again, uncomfortably, to what extent are Evangelicals in this country lazily adapted to the public status quo: disengaged from politics rather than engaged in political action whether party politics or radical action?

In the second part, the Jewish scholar David Gordis shows how the Hebrew narratives, which present characters living out their faith in real-life situations, offer the reader the chance to converse with the text, and via the Talmudic tradition, offer a faith community the chance to converse with alternative narratives, to view other religious positions with appreciation rather than suspicion. For the Roman Catholics, Ingeborg Gabriel shows how Vatican II finally admitted the concurrency of Catholic and humanist values in political and social justice, the centrality of religious freedom in a secular society and the affirmation of reasoning (rejected by relativism and fundamentalism alike); as a global institution the Catholic Church additionally offers to believers a middle way unhindered by a purely eurocentric viewpoint. Peter Berger offers a variety of Lutheran perspectives which uphold a middle way through esteeming the manifold uses of the law, an inclusive understanding of the communion (consubstantiation), and the valuing of what is ‘extra nos’ - beyond ourselves, the body of public, historical Christianity, whether biblical or confessional to which we continue to return for fresh insight. In “Pilgrim at the Spaghetti Junction”, Os Guinness (author of the seminal Doubt) speaks in much the same tone for English Evangelicals who have come to faith by an examination of the evidence and who can therefore continue to remain open to a plurality of traditions without losing inner conviction or distinctiveness. Michael Plekon rounds off the volume with an Eastern Orthodox perspective drawing on the tradition of tolerant monasticism, the early Fathers’ acceptance of diversity without compromising essential Trinitarian or Christological tenets and the post-revolutionary Paris School of Russian Orthodox emigrés who recognized alternatives to the extreme positions thrown up by the clash between religious tradition and modernity.

Truly comprehensive, despite its accidental lack of an Islamic contributor, this volume of essays indeed does provide religious resources for a middle position between the twin horns of relativism and fundamentalism. My reading of it left me with a kind of peace in my heart that I and others need not react to the pluralistic blurr of postmodernity with a retreat into relativism or retrenchment into fundamentalism: history and the diversity of worldwide monotheistic traditions provide solid reasons and potent examples of, to use the late Colin Gunton’s phrase, “faith thinking”.