STRUGGLING AGAINST (ALL) FANATICISM

Jean-Marie de Bourqueney

Translation Canon Tony Dickinson

 

While there is an active terrorist fanaticism, there are also more insidious forms of fanaticism, just as dangerous, which affect us.

 

Mentioning fanaticism today obviously resonates in a particular way. Our society is deeply moved and will, I hope, reflect on this question, following the tragic events in January, February, and November. Paris, Copenhagen. But immediately we have to add that we sometimes have a short memory: In July, 2011, only yesterday… one man, Anders Breivik, caused seventy-seven deaths in Norway and wounded a hundred and fifty one. In the name of what did he do it? In the name of whom did he do it? In the name of God, of course, and in the name of a so-called Christian civilisation… Fanaticism consists in instrumentalising God, “making wrongful use of his name” (Exodus 20), in order to dominate the other because s/he worries us. To say “God is great” is praiseworthy. All our religions say that. Calvin, the great Reformer, and Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, whose paths crossed on the benches of the College Montaigu in Paris in the 1520’s, took their mottoes from that. For Calvin: “Soli Deo Gloria” (“to God alone the glory”). For Ignatius of Loyola: “ad majorem Dei gloriam” (“for a greater glory of God”). But to invoke the greatness of God in order to kill is to insult God, it is to renounce the two first Commandments on which all believers ought to be in agreement.

 

Three Types of Fanaticism:

Fanaticism is something we must all combat by every means. But to my way of thinking there is a need to differentiate between kinds of fanaticism. First of all, there is active fanaticism, the one which passes into action; the most dangerous, the most prone to terrorism. There would no doubt be a great deal to say about the psychological and social mechanisms which lead someone to tip over into the dark side of this fanaticism. There would be a lot to say about the fragile identities of the men and women who espouse the thesis and the actions of terrorist movements. Today’s terrorists are primarily individual cases to be treated.

 

But alas, we must also say that this passage into action is nurtured by a second kind of fanaticism, one that is theoretical and militant. This has always existed, but it is exploding today with the Internet, which has perhaps set free the word in a general way, but also the word at its most murderous and most idiotic… Islam, by the way, is a victim of this: 95% of Muslims are opposed to the radical tendency but it is that with represents more than 80% of communication on the Internet. Anti-Semitic networks (especially under the pretext of “humour”) flourish as much as ever. This theoretical fanaticism is constructed as an identity in opposition, as a rejection. That may be against modernity. People talk in that case about “traditionalism”: “It was so much better yesterday, or even the day before.” This opposition can also be against other convictions or other people. Then the talk is of “fundamentalism”: “I hold fast the fundamental truth.” When we Protestants reduce our identity to a form of opposition to Catholicism, for example, we run the risk of this fanaticism. Some fanatical Catholics, happily a minority, pay us back in the same coin.

 

But this theoretical fanaticism, sometimes highly structured, often permeates our subconscious and creates in us a third form of fanaticism: “passive” fanaticism. The other day a man, angered like all of us by the desecration of a Jewish cemetery used, no doubt unconsciously, and therefore passively, this unfortunate sentence (I quote), “people don’t do things like that, whether it’s a Jewish cemetery, a North African cemetery or a French one…” Here we can hear clearly the confusions and the denials, notably the denial of French nationality to our Jewish and Muslim fellow citizens. So there are some unconscious attitudes which are the seeds of fanaticism which we carry within us. We have to accept that in order better to combat it.

 

Fanaticism is about Idolatry:

Our fanaticisms function as a form of idolatry. A theological thought is a thought in the service of God, but if we end up by sacralising this thought, in making it a dogma in a way that is absolute and not open to discussion, we make an idol of it. We end up by being in the service of a dogma which can become a “murderous identity” and not a thought in the service of God. All our dogmas, during the 2,000 years of Christianity, ought to be examined from this critical angle.

 

Just four examples among so many others:

 

When we summon up “the power”, or even “the omnipotence”, of God in our words and our prayers, what are we talking about? About the power of God or about the power of our words better to convince or dominate the other?

 

When we summon up the Church as “people of God”, or even “the” people of God, are we allowing to others, the women and men who are not Christians, the right to be part of the people of God? Over a long time there has even developed the theology of “supersessionism”. This affirmed that the Church has superseded the people of Israel and replaced it in God’s plan. This nurtured a passive Christian anti-Judaism, which fed a theoretical Christian anti-Semitism, and all too often active, alas.

 

When we affirm that the Bible is “the Word of God, as if God were the author of the Bible, then it is enough for us to apply it literally, without nuance… denying the biblical authors their very existence makes us run the risk of feeling that we are the only guardians of a Word without the possibility of interpretation. Literalism is the beginning of fanaticism.

 

When we affirm the existence of a “paradise” (a word which occurs only once in the Bible, in reply to one of the “thieves” on the cross) which will of course be reserved for those who are “pure”, from the point of view of faith or of morals, are we not encouraging people to dream of a shining future even if it means forgetting their very real present? If my life is uninteresting, to dream of another even if it means getting there by murder… the only antidote is on the one hand to affirm the importance of our real existence, and on the other to confirm that there is a universal salvation, a sign of unconditional grace.

 

So, here we are in front of a huge building site, a huge challenge to our own stereotypes. Doubtless, we are not responsible for everything that flows from them. But through our stereotypes, through our apparently unimportant ways of speaking, we nurture the risk of a radicalism which leads to different forms of fanaticism. Combating fanaticism is therefore first of all work on oneself. Furthermore, a verse in John’s Gospel (14:6) has Jesus saying: “I am the way, the truth, the life.” “Truth” is not then shut up in a thought but it is set in the midst of a way, that is to say a journeying, a search, and a life, that is to say an existence, a mobility. Let us not render God immobile with our dogmas.

 

“You shall not make wrongful use of my name” (Exodus 20:7).

Pour faire un don, suivez ce lien