Confronting Religious Fundamentalisms from within – Reflections of a Feminist Catholic Activist and Scholar: Challenging Fundamentalisms interview with Frances Kissling

Frances is a board member and former President of Catholics for the Right to Decide (Católicas por el derecho a decidir, CDD). Frances is also a prolific writer, speaker and facilitator. She has served as director of a number of abortion clinics in the United States, and helped to develop abortion services in Mexico and in Austria and Italy.

Interview by Cassandra Balchin; edited by Saira Zuberi

CB: How do you define religious fundamentalisms?

FK: Well, I define religious fundamentalisms as reactive movements within religion that base their values and positions on literal interpretations of religious texts. When I say reactive movements I mean movements reacting to what they see in the larger world as an assault on those values and those interpretations of texts that they hold, and within the context of a literal interpretation, they generally believe that their text is inerrant and applies to everybody in the world. Some religious fundamentalist movements withdraw from the world as a way of dealing with this assault, and some engage in an attempt to enforce their beliefs on everyone.

CB: Those that withdraw, as opposed to the ones who try to force their beliefs on others, would you still see them as fundamentalists?

FK: Yes, from where I stand as someone who has worked within a religious tradition as opposed to outside of one, fundamentalism exists within all religions, even if there is no desire for broad-based political power or political reinforcement of their ideas. A religious group that withdraws still has fundamentalist ideas and still expects that, within the family (not a nuclear family but within the family of the religion), everyone will follow these ideas forever and they will never change.

CB: I take your point completely that the fundamentalist, even if not attempting to capture political power, is still focused on power over the community or power within the family. So how do we distinguish then between conservatives and religious fundamentalists?

FK: To some extent these are matters of degree; it’s the degree to which one believes in the inerrancy and applicability of one’s ideas to everyone in every circumstance. I think the conservative is not necessarily like that – the conservative has conservative beliefs but they are not as rigidly cast. The conservative does not necessarily take those beliefs from a sacred text or appeal to an authority higher than reason. I mean, conservatives believe ‘this is what is good’ in the same way that liberals do. They look around at the world and propose solutions to the problems they see, but they don’t claim that God told them this or that no other ideas might have validity.

CB: And what about the link between religious fundamentalisms and patriarchy?

FK: I think that the world is largely patriarchal and any of us who have been through social movements understand that even the most liberal social movements are also patriarchal. Religious fundamentalism is as patriarchal if not more so, and has been less mitigated by modernity in terms of understanding and having a sense of equality between men and women so that, because they are wedded to texts, most of which are old, their conception of the world is a male one, with God as male, and man as the image of God.

CB: Has that not always been the case? How are religious fundamentalisms and patriarchal religion different?

FK: In some ways they’re not; some religion that is not fundamentalist has become more sensitive to the problems of patriarchy and has made attempts to accommodate women. No religion has fully accommodated women and those of us who work within religions just tend to feel that lack more in the religion we are closest to, but the reality is that even the Dalai Lama is no prize when it comes to women. Within modern fundamentalist groups, there is a particular fear of that aspect of modernity in which women have been recognized as equal to men; this particularly threatens their conception of man as the head of the household and decision-maker within the family and, by extension, the decision-maker within the state. Probably for many people, but particularly for fundamentalists, the family is the model or the blueprint for all other social structures.

CB: What do you think makes religious fundamentalisms so successful?

FK: Well, first of all, I think we have to say that in some senses they have not been successful, which is why they are so vehement. So the more appropriate question is, ‘why are they so vehement?’ and it’s because they are indeed reacting to the fact that their ideology has largely failed. The ultimate rejection of their ideas by, for example, what they see as world government, the United Nations, is a driver. When they see in the UN the representatives of 192 states sitting around a table talking about sexual orientation, it’s absolutely mind-boggling to them, and it should be mind-boggling to us too! When you live with these changes and when you are looking for more because they are so inadequate, you don’t actually see how radical they appear to middle-of-the road people and certainly to fundamentalists. With a variety of dominant countries starting to permit gay marriage, having legalized abortion, talking about women as equal to men, it appears that all that they believe in has been rejected.

So I think in the macro sense and in the battle for hearts and minds, they have largely lost – it is over. That doesn’t mean there aren’t really significant skirmishes. Most of them, however, are instrumental as opposed to really conceptually-based. So for example, Christian fundamentalists have had a profound effect on the policies of the US government. However, that is not due to a broad-based agreement by the conservative government with the ideals of fundamentalists; it’s based on political expediency, and political expediency changes much faster than concepts change. An outcome where fundamentalists succeed in putting the toothpaste back in the tube is not likely. The ability to pose a serious obstacle, and to cause temporary, possibly painful or violent setbacks to the agenda still exists.

CB: If religious fundamentalisms have not won the battle for hearts and minds but are still influential, what do you think are the longer term or deeper impacts of their influences on women?

FK: I think the impact is more specific and immediate than long-term. One of the things we all look at is the numbers of young women who affiliate with religious fundamentalist movements, and that takes a variety of forms, say, the woman suicide bomber or the virginity craze. But youth is a time of experimentation and social rebellion, so in that context, I wouldn’t assume that young women who find their space right now within fundamentalist movements, whether it’s as ‘oppressed housewives’ or as ‘political activists’ within that movement, will stay that way over time. Now, to some extent the prognosis for fundamentalist movements depends on externals, because there are certain forces within the larger sphere that feed fundamentalism, in addition to the fear of women, of the modern world, and of the loss of male power.

CB: What do you think the women’s movement needs to do to counteract religious fundamentalisms?

FK: I think the first thing is to heed the adage of ‘knowing thine enemy’. There needs to be a fairly deep understanding of religion and of religious fundamentalisms. Without that, it is very hard to effectively challenge, so that you get a very shallow kind of expression of what religion is and what religious fundamentalism is. For many women’s rights activists who are not themselves religious, it doesn’t seem that they take an approach to religion the way they would approach other subjects. Feminism is, for the most part, a secular movement; that’s true of everyone but proportionally it’s not a large number of women who work in the secular women’s movement and who are themselves religious. There is a rejection, as feminism is itself a rejection of patriarchy and patriarchy is at its strongest within religion. So you have a predisposition to be hostile to religion, which is a good thing by the way, I’m not complaining about that. You should be hostile to it. But to be politically successful, you have to temper your hostility with a desire to really learn and understand.

Secondly, there is to some extent within feminism and definitely within larger social movements, a profound reluctance to touch religion, period. So there is a constant need for women’s rights activists to understand religion in a fuller sense, so that when one as a women’s rights activists challenges religious fundamentalisms, one does not come across as a bigot; it is very easy to be seen as an anti-religious bigot by other social movements whose experiences of working with religion is positive. But we want them to treat religion with the same analytical lens and apply the same standards of justice as they would apply to any other social institution. That’s our goal and in order to accomplish it, we need to be able to fairly represent religion and religious fundamentalisms. We are going to have to recognize and challenge that reluctance. I often say that in the political sphere, religious fundamentalists have the same rights as feminists to participate in the political process. They have the same rights to go out there and try to impose their values on other people, the same as we have a right to try and impose our values on other people. We just don’t use those words about ourselves. So, they’re trying to impose their values, we’re trying to create a just society. But in essence we are both trying to affect public policy to reflect our values and vision.

CB: Well, feminists don’t use violence.

FK: Yes, feminists don’t have the capacity – we can’t guarantee that we wouldn’t use it if we could. So, it is the obligation of government to reject those ideas, and our attention has to be on government, not so much on the fundamentalists themselves. We really have to say to government that you can’t set policy based on the positions of these people. I think that there has to be respect for religiosity but a strong defence of secularity.

CB: Following on from that, what does secularism mean, because if you don’t adequately develop a feminist understanding of secularism, then what alternative are you offering to fundamentalism? What I’m grappling with is, what room does a secular state have for religion? Because you can’t simply say religion is a private matter. That just doesn’t work; all religion is political.

FK: Well, I think the best expositions of secularity are that it stands for the values of pluralism and tolerance and democracy. It has process-oriented principals. Because it shies away from religion, it doesn’t necessarily express its values as firmly or as clearly as it should, and I think part of the task is to be sure that the values behind what it is - women’s rights, human rights, and all - that those secular values are represented. Unfortunately secularity has also become confused with atheism. Secularism, in my opinion, should allow for all people to practice whatever religion they choose to practice within the confines of public safety. After that, one has to say no, but as long as public safety is not compromised, having people construct their lives around transcendental views, even views we would call literal and fundamentalist, is not our problem and is a right we should defend. Secularity should, at the same time, emphasize creating a level playing field within the larger society and within government for all interest groups to exist, so long as they co-exist in peace with each other.

CB: It seems that in the African context, there has been a positive engagement with religious fundamentalists, interestingly, on the question of HIV/AIDS. There have been some successful alliances on the ground between secular and faith-based organizations. What’s happening with this apparently positive image, in some instances, of the role of religious fundamentalisms in combating HIV/AIDS in Africa?

FK: AIDS is a massive problem, which is a huge understatement. When any ideology comes directly face to face with a major challenge to that ideology - a challenge of such proportions - that ideology will be influenced. So I think the encounter between religious fundamentalists and this reality can impact behaviour, and this is what has happened on the ground in Africa. So aid workers from religious groups have shifted their practice to some extent. How much they have shifted their beliefs, and what effect the shifts on the ground have on the guys in Washington, Kansas City, London, Saudi Arabia, wherever it may be that their home bases are, is an interesting question. Women’s rights activists have also tempered their demands because the need is so great, but there is still a basic ideological split. These fundamentalist groups have not changed their minds about same-sex relationship, or about determining how sexuality is or is not legitimate, but everyone has, in order to address the immediate crisis, agreed to do what needs to be done, and one would assume that in the long term this will have an effect on belief. That is how beliefs have changed over time; they change over time as a result of circumstances. If certain plagues and diseases had not occurred, if the Industrial Revolution had not happened… there are hundreds of historical moments that enabled people to get out of their mindset and say ‘the world has changed and we need to change with it.’

CB: This reminds me of an interview I did with a mufti in London who told me he was performing temporary, unregistered marriages, but marriages nevertheless, of young students. With a twinkle in his eyes he said, you know and we know that this is basically sanctifying sex, but we have to in order not to become irrelevant. If you don’t respond, you become irrelevant.

FK: You know, there is much to be learned from religion. It has survived a very long time as a social institution, and to understand why it has survived when so few institutions manage to survive for centuries, it must be acknowledged that these are smart people…