–from The Battle for God, A History of Fundamentalism, by Karen Armstrong. Ballantine Books, pg. 366-369.

 

“FUNDAMENTALIST FURY reminds us that our modern culture imposes extremely difficult demands on human beings. It has certainly empowered us, opened new worlds, broadened our horizons, and enabled many of us to live happier, healthier lives. Yet it has often dented our self-esteem. At the same time as our rational worldview has proclaimed that humans are the measure of all things, and liberated us from an unseemly dependence on a supernatural God, it has also revealed our frailty, vulnerability, and lack of dignity.

 

Copernicus unseated us from the center of the universe, and relegated us to a peripheral role. Kant declared that we could never be certain that our ideas corresponded to any reality outside our own heads. Darwin suggested that we were simply animals, and Freud showed that far from being wholly rational creatures, human beings were at the mercy of the powerful, irrational forces of the unconscious, which could be accessed only with great difficulty.

 

This, indeed, was demonstrated by the modern experience. Despite the cult of rationality, modern history has been punctuated by witch-hunts and world wars which have been explosions of unreason. Without the ability to approach the deeper regions of the psyche, which the old myths, liturgies, and mystical practices of the best conservative faiths once provided, it seemed that reason sometimes lost its mind in our brave new world. At the [beginning of the twenty-first century], the liberal myth that humanity is progressing to an ever more enlightened and tolerant state looks as fantastic as any of the other myths…

 

The premillennial vision, which views some of the most positive institutions of modernity as diabolic, harbors genocidal dreams, and sees humanity as rushing toward a horrific End, is a clear indication of the dread and disappointment that modernity has inspired in many Protestant fundamentalists. We have seen the nihilism that can inform the fundamentalist program. It is impossible to reason such fear away or attempt to eradicate it by coercive measures. A more imaginative response would be to try to appreciate the depth of this neurosis, even if a liberal or a secularist cannot share this dread-ridden perspective.”

 

–from The Battle for God, A History of Fundamentalism, by Karen Armstrong. Ballantine Books, pgs. 366-369