It is today vigorously alive at home and abroad, and Pope Francis is right: "Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions".

Fundamentalism is a form of organised anger in reaction to the unsettling consequences of rapid social and religious change. The atmosphere is ripe for the unsophisticated solutions offered by populist and charismatic leaders.

Fundamentalists find rapid global change emotionally extremely disturbing and dangerous. Cultural, religious and personal certitudes are shaken.

Consequently, fundamentalists simplistically yearn to return to a utopian past or golden age, purified of dangerous ideas and practices.

They band together in order to put things right again - according to what they decide are orthodox principles. History must be reversed.

To get things back to ‘normal', fundamentalists react to threats to their identity in militant ways, whether in the use of words and ideas or ballots or, in extreme cases, bullets and bombs.

Because fundamentalism is at depth an emotional reaction to the disorienting experience of change, fundamentalists are not open to rational discussion.

Here in Australia there is a political fundamentalist movement to preserve the ‘pure, orthodox Australian culture' from the ‘endangering ways of foreigners', particularly Muslims. It matters little to adherents that such a culture has never existed.

Role of Religion

Religion has re-surfaced as a global social force in the rise of fundamentalist movements.

Since religion is an important basis of moral certainty, people frequently and passionately turn to it as a motivating force in shaping identity, values and movements.

Yet we must broaden our understanding of religion and cease making religion synonymous only with traditional institutional religions.

Religion is whatever offers people an ultimate means of interpreting the world in which they live.

Understood in this sense, people can change any belief into a religion. "For where your treasure is, there your heart is also" (Matthew 6:21). Thus people can become so attached to free market economics, that is, markets unrestrained by government interference, or to nationalism, that they turn them into religions. They become idolatrous, a substitute for God, as Pope Francis indicates.

Islam

For most people, fundamentalism in the modern world has become synonymous with a radical form of Islam.

Islamic fundamentalism has supplanted communism as the ghost haunting many Western minds, a ghost that looms ever larger following the terrorist attacks on

• New York and Washington DC, September 11, 2001,
• the recent appalling terrorist assaults in London, Paris, Brussels, Orlando, Istanbul, Baghdad, Dhaka, Nice and Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray, and
• the ostensible incapacity of the Western powers to destroy the shadowy, furtive and murderous al-Qaeda network, and the public butchering cruelty of the Islamic State (ISIS).

In the Middle East Islamic extremists are slaughtering fellow Muslims and persecuting, even murdering, Christians and other minorities.

The West, however, has yet to realise that the military response may provide interim solutions to terrorism, but in the long term they are most likely to intensify religious anger and more fanaticism.

We first need to understand the multifaceted political, economic and social causes of Islamic fundamentalism.

Yet, Islamic fundamentalist movements have received a disproportionate degree of media attention in recent times due to the physically vicious nature of their actions.

This is unfortunate because fundamentalism in many shapes and forms is very much present in our Western societies, though most often less observably violent.

Right-wing, populist, anti-immigrant movements are on the rise in Europe, United States, Australia and elsewhere.

We in the West have to stop thinking of ourselves as virtuous and that Islam is evil incarnate, after all, the Western world has significantly contributed to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism.

Contemporary Fundamentalism

Fundamentalist movements often become populist movements. That is, the main quality they share is an appeal to the people as a whole, with an emphasis on the ordinary citizen as opposed to political and religious power elites.

The elites are described as trampling in an unlawful manner upon the rights, values, and voice of the legitimate people and populist leaders, with the use of extremist language and behaviour, assert that innocent citizens are plagued by remote, powerful and malign enemies who must be named and marginalised or silenced.

Populism is increasingly evident in Asia, for example, led by Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, and on both sides of the Atlantic today.

Right-wing populism is active in Europe: Nigel Farage and other initiators on Brexit; Marine Le Pen, leader of the Front National in France, once compared Muslims praying in the French street to the Nazi Occupation; Geert Wilders, Party for Freedom, believes that Muslim immigration should be halted; Siv Jensen, leader of the Progress Party in Norway, has achieved large popular gains through her attacks on Muslim immigration.

In Germany in early 2016, the Alternative for Germany Party (AFD) achieved double-digit results in elections in three German states; the party officials have said it may be necessary to shoot at migrants trying to enter the country illegally and they have mooted the idea of banning mosques.

The supporters of these movements are angry because unemployment in Europe is high and rising.

They complain that immigrants grasp unemployment benefits, commit crimes and scoff at local customs.

Above them, overseeing the financial crisis and Europe's stagnation, they assert there are impotent self-interested elites in Brussels. In addition, particularly the refugee crisis and international jihadist networks are further eroding confidence that state governments can continue to protect their citizens.

Even in Australia the right-wing movement under Pauline Hanson is a growing political force. She persistently taps into the fears that people have of migrants from Asia and Islamic countries.

Trumpism

In the United States Trumpism is a fundamentalist movement.

Followers of populist Donald Trump are feeding on the economic and cultural turmoil that they believe has been overwhelming the nation for some time.

For liberals, the chief anxiety for the past 40 or so years is the assumed injustices of the economy - near income stagnation for most workers, huge financial benefits for the top one per cent, made worse by the hesitant economic recovery from the most recent recession.

For conservatives, the main worry is what we might broadly term ‘culture'.

This is the anger and bitterness felt by older white Americans.

They complain that the country is no longer ‘their own'. Their former social status and authority have slipped from them. The ‘culture' that they now loathe and fear embraces a number of issues - immigration, especially illegal and Muslim immigration; a black president in the White House; and same-sex marriage.

They sense that this ‘cultural disease' is deeply infesting every institution in their once-great-nation and is destroying the nation as they look powerlessly on.

When Donald Trump began to campaign with the catchcry "Make America Great Again", this existing anger and xenophobic bitterness reached a new level of vicious cultic fundamentalism.

It continues to flourish under his demagogic leadership. He has become a ‘rage machine' striking out at whatever his followers feel furious and resentful about.

At various times he has demanded a total and complete shutdown of America's borders to Muslim migrants and visitors, proposing to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants en masse, building a wall along the Mexican-American border to be paid for by the Mexican government, and inciting violence against protesters at his rallies.

In addition to using belittling words of women, he has referred to Mexicans crossing the border as rapists, called enthusiastically for the use of torture, and advocated killing the families of terrorists.

The more vulgar and intolerant he has become the more his widespread following has increased.

His popularity is being built on fostering ever-increasing fear in his audiences, hatred and violence.

Like his Tea Party followers, Trump has vowed to overturn Obamacare legislation that ensures the poor have medical insurance.

No one has been spared his abuse, even accusing President Obama of having no legitimate American birth certificate.

He has little respect, and to some degree, outright antipathy, for his party's leaders. And his followers have been unable to get enough of his unrestrained conspiracy accusations and anger.

God destines America to be great and Trump's task is to make it great again!

Reflection

"Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions… Religious fundamentalism is not religious, because it lacks God.

It is idolatry, like idolatry of money… We Catholics," says Pope Francis, "have some - and not some, many - who… go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil… This is not the gospel."

The disturbing fact is that every individual and culture is capable of fundamentalist attitudes and actions.

Imprisoned in their prejudices, fundamentalists are absolutely certain they are right and people who differ from them have nothing to offer them.

We need to be alerted to the danger that our own prejudices, if left unchecked, can solidify into fundamentalist behaviour.

Rudyard Kipling's comment is right: "We learn that ‘All good people agree. And all good people say, All nice people like Us, are We. And everyone else is They'."

We personally, first and foremost, learn tragic prejudices about other people through absorbing, so often unconsciously, the prejudices already existing in our own culture.

Who are the "They" in Australian culture?

Are "They" Muslim people? Or people from Asia? Or other minority groups in Australia?

Prejudice, the jumping to conclusions without considering the facts, has two dimensions: the meaning and feeling aspects.

The meaning aspect is commonly referred to as a stereotype, that is a pre-formed image or picture that we have of things or people; it is a shorthand, but faulty method of handling or grasping a complex world.

The stereotype is a negative pre-judgement.

It is the judgement that I make without first checking the facts about things or people.

The feeling aspect is the ‘blinding power' in prejudice, that is, it obstructs objectivity; it forces the prejudiced person to see only what they want to see, even to see things that are not there at all.

Jesus described how people received John the Baptist and himself: "For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say: ‘He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!'" (Matthew 11:18-19).

No matter what Jesus does, his enemies see only evil in him!

Thus, a fundamentalist will see evil in every person or group that does not think or believe as they do.

Pontius Pilate claimed to be an open Roman ruler, a so-called liberal thinker, but he remained a fundamentalist.

"Pilate asked [Jesus Christ], ‘What is truth?'" "After he had said this, he went out to the Jews again" (John 18:38).

He was so committed to his prejudices that he refused to listen to any opinion to the contrary.

He asked his question of Jesus, but immediately rushed off to avoid hearing the answer.

The truth Pilate did not want to hear was the revelation that Christ brings from the Father, the revelation that God loves us and that we are called to love our neighbours as ourselves.

Jesus Christ, by example and parables, fought against all kinds of racial and sexist prejudices of his day. Remember a basic axiom of Christ: "So always treat others as you would like them to treat you" (Matthew 7:12).

And love must always be the motivating force.

At the time of Christ, Jews looked on Samaritans in a fundamentalist and racist manner; they were pictured as stupid, lazy and heretical.

And the Samaritans had similar stereotypes of their Jewish neighbours.

Scripture scholar John McKenzie writes this out: "there was no deeper break of human relations in the contemporary world than the feud of Jews and Samaritans, and the breadth and depth of Jesus' doctrine of love could demand no greater act of a Jew than to accept a Samaritan as a brother".

Hence, when Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan, his listeners would have been left in no doubt about its meaning for them (Luke 10:29-37).

A man is left to die on the roadside. Some very important people in the Jewish hierarchical social-status system see him dying, but excuse themselves from any obligation to do anything because they are too busy. But the one considered by the Jewish people to be stupid and uncouth - a Samaritan - sees the dying Jew and immediately goes to his aid.

Jesus' listeners must have been stunned to hear him say: "Go and do likewise" (Luke 10: 37).

They could no longer live as Christians and at the same time hold on to fundamentalist ethnic or racist prejudices. The same choice is spectacularly clear for each of us today.

Dr Gerald A. Arbuckle is a New Zealand Marist priest, cultural anthropologist and an award-winning author. His book upon which this article is based was launched on 4 May, 2017: Fundamentalism at Home and Abroad: Analysis and Pastoral Responses and is available via Liturgical Press and Garratt Publishing.

This article was first published in the April 2017 edition of The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters www.goodsams.org.au

Since loyalty is often the pre-eminent virtue in corporate and other institutions, the pressure to maintain silence is considerable. People daring to break the code of secrecy and silence to reveal unethical behaviour are in danger of automatic expulsion from the group. It is rare indeed for a whistleblower to survive without significant personal cost to themselves. They may suffer severe consequences for their integrity.

The responsibility for exposing ethical cover-ups increases as one moves higher in the hierarchical structures of an organization. All ordinary avenues for dealing with unethical practices need to be followed before a person reveals them to outsiders. However, whistleblowers may have no option but to go public, especially when they reasonably judge they will not be listened to by the appropriate internal authorities. This is especially a challenge when the whistleblower encounters a culture of corruption so that no one in the organization can be trusted.

Jesus sets the Scene

Jesus confronted the problem of whistleblowing in one of his parables, the parable usually referred to as ‘the parable of the talents.' The parable begins simply with a nobleman about to leave for a distant country in order to be crowned king, despite the fact that his citizens hate him so much that they do not want him back as their ruler (Luke 19: 14). So he calls three of his slaves and gives them each one pound (‘talent') which in the currency of the day is a considerable amount, equal to one hundred days' wages for a common labourer. They are commanded to invest this money: "Do business with these until I come back"(Luke 19: 12).

The central stage of the drama begins when the king returns. How will the king and the slaves react when summoned to give an account of their investments. And how will the king question them? Two of them have been very active and are extravagantly rewarded: the first has made ten pounds, so is given charge over ten cities; the second made five pounds and is to govern five cities (Luke 19: 16-19).

But the third, who in fact is the whistleblower in the story, comes to the king and responds in vivid contrast to the previous slaves. He has buried the pound which evokes an incredibly harsh punishment from the angry king: "…you wicked slave! You knew…that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest" (Luke 19: 23). The pound was immediately taken from him and given to the one who had ten and he would have suffered the same fate as the enemies of the tyrannical: "as for these enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them - bring them here and slaughter them in my presence" (Luke 19: 27).

The traditional understanding of this parable stresses the duty that everyone has to use to the fullest the gifts given us by God.

However, this interpretation has been seriously questioned in light of contemporary social science research. Scripture scholar Luise Schottroff writes that to see the "third slave as the embodiment of people who reject God's righteousness and God's Torah is simply unbearable." In Matthew's text (Matt 25: 14-30) the parable is immediately followed by the great vision of the Last Judgement. The ultimate test before the judgment seat of God will be whether or not we have fed the hungry and clothed the naked (Matt: 25: 31-46). The investments of the two first slaves result in exorbitant monetary returns. To have achieved this they would have had to exploit peasants by demanding increases in such things as rents over property. Or the peasants would have had to take out loans from banks at ridiculously excessive interest rates to save their crops or properties with the consequence of further enslaving them. It was normal to torture and imprison defaulting debtors (Luke 12: 58; Matt 18: 28-34).

Whistleblower

But it is the third slave who refuses to collude in the financially corrupt behaviour of the king and the other two slaves. In other words, the third slave is a whistleblower and suffers the fate of one who refuses to participate in the economic oppression of the poor. The parable, therefore, is a scathing condemnation of contemporary free market economies where unrestrained greed for profits by investment bankers is considered an esteemed virtue.

Contemporary followers of Occupy Wall Street may well be reminding us of the incredible relevance of this parable of Jesus Christ, the Master ethicist (and whistleblower).

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Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, is the author of Violence, Society, and the Church (2004).

This longest-running cartoon series on American prime-time network television since 1989 recounts the animated adventures of Homer Simpson and his lower-middle class family who live in the city of Springfield. The father, Homer, is a lazy, unintelligent, beer-drinking safety inspector for the local nuclear power plant at the fictional city of Springfield. Marge, his wife, is a somewhat spacey woman with a huge beehive hairstyle and Bart, their ten-year old son, is a borderline juvenile delinquent. Lisa, the middle child, is a gifted, sensitive and perceptive saxophone player. Maggie is the voiceless toddler, observing all while sucking her pacifier. In addition there are other equally dysfunctional members of the community.

Though the program first appeals to children because the cartoons are immensely funny, like Dean Swift's Gulliver's Travels it is a biting satire on reality. One of the program's writers comments: "We're really writing a show that has some of the most esoteric references in television…We're writing it for adults and intelligent adults at that."

Thus, it is richly laced with satire, sarcasm, irony, and caricature as the authors seek to expose reality as it is, namely chaotic and violent. Hypocrisy, the incompetence of pop psychology, modern child-rearing, commercialism, consumerism, fundamentalism in religion, environmental abuse, corporate greed and deceits of American education are all uncovered in stark and often parodied ways. Homer tells his daughter Lisa that it is quite alright to steal things "from people you don't like." Reverend Lovejoy lies to Lisa about the contents of the Bible to succeed in an argument. There are plenty of disreputable characters in Springfield, but the most loathsome is Mr Burns, the owner of a nuclear power-plant and a cruel example of the worst form of contemporary neo-capitalism. Speaking to a group of school children he said: "Family, religion, friendship: these are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business."

The spectacular emphasis on violence is especially evident in the television show that Lisa and Bart regularly enjoy, namely "The Itchy and Scratchy Show". The interaction between a cat and mouse is not confined to slapstick mixed with a little violence, but the violence goes to extremes of stark gruesomeness.

The creators of The Simpsons get away with it because it is in the form of a cartoon and, more particularly, because viewers condone violence in many areas of contemporary life. The writers know this and are focused on mirroring back to their audiences what society has come to accept as normal, namely that violence is condoned even for children provided it does not affect the interests of individual viewers. Bart says to Lisa at one point, when she is becoming squeamish about the violence they see on television: "If you don't watch the violence, you'll never get desensitised to it." The show appears to condone in comedic form pervasive and blatant violence, such as bullying in all its ghastly forms, but in fact it is morally critiquing the social, capitalistic and physical brutality that American (and others) people accept as normal. Yet, unlike much contemporary literature and films, this series, while accepting the evil in the world, recognizes that people are capable of goodness at times.

While uncovering hypocrisy in religion, it recognizes the indisputable role it has in American life. Homer does go to Church and he speaks to God from time to time, but his image of God is rather confused. God for Homer is like a parachute that he hopes he will never have to open, but he needs God just in case. Homer's God is a more forgiving and compassionate than the God of Homer's local minister. Lisa and her mother Marge at times do become the social conscience of the family and others (including viewers), reminding them that in the midst of a neo-capitalist world of greed the fundamental virtues of compassion and justice can and should be lived.

________________________________________

Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, is the author of Laughing with God: Humor, Culture, and Transformation. Foreword by Jean Vanier (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2008).

It is happening in Australia at the moment. Asylum seekers, people on welfare, are ready targets for scapegoating. How often in Israel are all Palestinian people scapegoated, dismissed as terrorists! Once marginalized, not "good like us," they can be subjected to all kinds of indignities.

To be honest, it is surely a problem that we all indulge in: the desire to simplify problems and pass the blame on to innocent others. For example, for centuries men blamed women for their problems and they were politically powerless to protest.

What is scapegoating?

• Scapegoating (or witch-hunting) is the process of passionately searching for and stigmatizing people believed to be causing harm to individuals and groups.
• By passing the blame for their afflictions on to others, people are able to conveniently distract themselves from the real causes and the efforts we must take to remove them.
• Individuals and groups displace their fears of the unknown and their aggression onto groups or individuals who are visible, already disliked, and politically powerless to respond.

Think of how people who are poor are treated. Politicians commonly like to "go after" those on welfare, blaming them for their own poverty. And rarely do we voters question them for doing this. Once we demonise people, implicitly telling them they are non-persons, we can do or say anything negative about them. They are politically powerless to respond.

A few years ago a newspaper published the fact that four thousand people in Australia had been identified as "welfare cheats." Some politicians rapidly used this information to seek dramatic cutbacks of welfare support for people, people who are disabled, solo parents, the mentally ill. What the paper did not say was that the four thousand represented a miniscule fraction of those seeking benefits. Few readers complained.

There are terrible example in history in recent times when scapegoating led to incredible tragedies, and few questioned what was happening. Following the First World War Adolph Hitler and other anti-Semites blamed the defeat of Germany on Jewish people. The Allies were too powerful to be scapegoated, at least for several decades, so Hitler and his supporters turned their rage on the vulnerable Jews. Millions died.

Think back two thousand years. The chief priests are motivated by jealousy when they scapegoat Jesus. Their behaviour is increasingly being criticized by the people and they fear they will lose their privileged social status. Rather than evaluate their own behaviour, the priests prefer to make Jesus the scapegoat for all their fears: "The chief priests answered [to Pilate], ‘We have no king except Caesar.'"(John 19:16). Self-preservation motivated this scapegoating. As Caiphas shrewdly said: "It is better for one to die for the people." (John 18:14).

What did Jesus do about scapegoating?

There is this wonderful example of the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Mark 10:46-52). Because of a particular type of blindness he has been cast out of society for he is thought to ritually endanger the clean. For his family and former friends he no longer exists as a person. Jesus is passing by and Bartimaeus cries out for help. The crowd, believing all blind beggars are evil, bluntly tell him to shut up. Not Jesus. He calls Bartimaeus and converses with him. He breaks through the pattern of scapegoating and blaming. Jesus engages Bartimaeus in conversation, contrary to the culture of his time.

Now, some questions: What examples of scapegoating vulnerable and politically powerless people are occurring in New Zealand today? Is this happening in conversations at my workplace? How can I challenge, like Jesus Christ did, this social and demeaning evil?

__________________________

Gerald A. Arbuckle, sm, is the author of Violence, Society, and the Church: A Cultural Critique (2004). His most recent book is: Culture, Inculturation, and Theologians: A Postmodern Critique (2010).