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DAVID WESTERLUND, ED, Questioning the Secular State: The Worldwide Resurgence of Religion in Politics. London: Hurst, 1996, xii + 428 pp, ISBN 1-85065-241-4, 14.95.
'Fundamentalism' has become the catch-all expression for any radical political movement with a strong religious flavour. It invariably translates as 'extremism' or 'fanaticism', so betraying the bewilderment or distaste of the majority of Western journalists at the spectacle of religious conviction becoming once again a driving force in public affairs. Yet a new British government in which many leading members are church-going Christians should alert us to new realities, and to the enduring ability of religion to underpin political movements, alien and even dangerous as this may seem in a secularized culture.
The usual target for such hostility is Islam, but here is a book edited by an Associate Professor of Religion at Uppsala which demonstrates that Islam is by no means unique in challenging the secular orthodoxy that religion should be confined to...