Fundamentalism

Quick meaning: Fundamentalism is a noun meaning (religion) The tendency to reduce a religion to its most fundamental tenets, based on strict interpretation of core texts.

Meaning

(religion) The tendency to reduce a religion to its most fundamental tenets, based on strict interpretation of core texts.

More Meanings

1. (by extension) A rigid conformity to any set of basic tenets.
2. (finance) The belief that fundamental financial quantities are the best predictor of the price of a financial instrument.
3. (theology) A Christian movement that started in the late 19th and early 20th centuries among British and American Protestants, which emphasizes literal interpretation of the Bible, and came up as a reaction to liberal theology and cultural modernism

Example Sentences

Recent books by philosopher Roger Scruton (1999, 2000) and music educator Robert Walker (2007) may be interpreted as a last desperate gasp of this form of musical fundamentalism or neoconservativism—the kind that tells the masses what is "good for them" on the grounds that they lack adequate bases for judgments on their own […]

Word Forms

• fundamentalisms

Synonyms for fundamentalism

Depending on context, synonyms include bibliolatry.

Related Words

Related dictionary entries include fanaticism, extremist, extremism, conservatism, radicalism, radical.

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