Fundamentalism or Tradition: Christianity after Secularism
Aristotle Papanikolaou and George E. Demacopoulos
Abstract
Tradition, secularization and fundamentalism—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation, they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. The discussion around the mutually implicated meanings of the “secular” and “fundamentalism” bring to the foreground more than ever, and in a way unprecedented in the pre-modern context, the question of what it means to think and live as Tradition. The Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, in particular, have always emphasized Tradition not as a dead letter but as a living presence of the Holy Spi ... More
Tradition, secularization and fundamentalism—all three categories are contested, yet in their contestation, they shape our sensibilities and are mutually implicated, the one with the others. The discussion around the mutually implicated meanings of the “secular” and “fundamentalism” bring to the foreground more than ever, and in a way unprecedented in the pre-modern context, the question of what it means to think and live as Tradition. The Orthodox theologians of the twentieth century, in particular, have always emphasized Tradition not as a dead letter but as a living presence of the Holy Spirit. But how can we discern when Tradition as living discernment is not fundamentalism? And what does it mean to think as a Tradition and live in Tradition when surrounded by something like the “secular”? The essays in this volume continue both the interrogation of the categories of the “secular” and “fundamentalism,” all the while either implicitly or explicitly exploring ways of thinking about tradition in relation to these interrogations. In this interrogation, however, one witnesses a consensus that whatever the secular or fundamentalism may mean, it is not Tradition, which is historical, particularistic, in motion, ambiguous and pluralistic, while simultaneously not being relativistic. If the wider debates about the secular and fundamentalism seem interminable and often frustrating, perhaps the real contribution of those discussions is a clearer sense of what it means to live and think like—to be as Tradition.
Keywords:
fundamentalism,
ecumenism,
Orthodox Christianity,
religion and politics,
Roman Catholicism
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2019 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780823285792 |
Published to Fordham Scholarship Online: May 2020 |
DOI:10.5422/fordham/9780823285792.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Aristotle Papanikolaou, editor
Fordham University
George E. Demacopoulos, editor
Fordham University
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