{"id":476,"date":"2011-07-24T11:27:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-24T17:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=476"},"modified":"2011-07-24T11:35:32","modified_gmt":"2011-07-24T17:35:32","slug":"fundamentalist-or-zealot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/fundamentalist-or-zealot-476.htm","title":{"rendered":"Fundamentalist, Zealot, or Fanatic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The media are describing Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, as a Christian fundamentalist.<\/span><\/p>\n

Fundamentalism has a specific theological meaning, and I doubt that Breivik has any strong opinions on the Virgin Birth or Substitutionary Atonement.<\/span><\/p>\n

What the media seem to mean by a fundamentalist is a person with strong beliefs in a traditional religion of any sort, especially a person who takes those beliefs literally. But obviously a Thomist or a von Balthasarian can hold to Catholic doctrines strictly without thinking that Genesis describes 7 days of 24 hours each.<\/span><\/p>\n

Zealot might be a better world \u2013 a Christian zealot, a Moslem zealot, a Jewish zealot, an environmentalist zealot, a Marxist zealot. Zeal is a virtue, but a minor one and one too easily disconnected from other virtues, such as justice and charity.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

An even better term might be fanatic \u2013 that word conveys the disconnection from reality that terrorists usually manifest as well as a willingness to use violence on other people. It became a term of praise in Nazi Germany.<\/span><\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The media are describing Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist, as a Christian fundamentalist. Fundamentalism has a specific theological meaning, and I doubt that Breivik has any strong opinions on the Virgin Birth or Substitutionary Atonement. What the media seem to mean by a fundamentalist is a person with strong beliefs in a traditional religion of any […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[534,535,532,1160,533],"class_list":["post-476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-terrorism","tag-breivik","tag-fanaticism","tag-fundamentalism","tag-terrorism","tag-zealotry","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}