AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM: Reflections on a visit to the holy lands
The Visit
In my early 20’s I decided to visit what we called the holy lands for Christmas. I was young, naive and very curious about the world, and despite being agnostic-atheist I was drawn to ‘spiritual and religious’ places. What better place to spend Christmas than Bethlehem I thought!
I had little money, I travelled alone with a backpack and sleeping bag roll. On arriving in Jerusalem, I met up with Manfred a Germany beatnik character, who had been on the road for months, and we quickly became friends. We slept in hostels and under the stars when necessary, and explored Jerusalem, finding the best falafel shop in town. I also spent time alone, happy to wander the streets and I visited Abrahamic holy sites such as the Dome of the Rock and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where I spent happy times drinking coffee on its roof, the home of Ethiopian church where the priests offered warm hospitality.
The Ethiopians get no rights in the church like the other Christian denominations, they only get permission to use the roof, which somehow felt to me like it brought them closer to Christ’s teachings about the poor and marginalised.
I sat for hours at the Western/wailing wall, watching Jews from different traditions and regions come to pray, Orthodox, Russian and liberal jews wearing different headwear and dress all mixed together at their holy place of prayer.
I sat in the garden of Gethsemane, imagining Christs last hours with his disciples and the betrayal, then walked the Via Dolorosa to where Christ was crucified. I loved being in Jerusalem, relishing the rich diversity in the old city, all senses were stimulated, visually the winding streets, ancient buildings and the variety of people were a spectacle. The smells in the different quarters of foods cooking and the tastes and sounds of the city immersed me into a different world. The human spirit and spirituality itself, seeped out of every pore of the city.
On Christmas eve I walked with Manfred and two other travellers from Jerusalem, across a rough path through the desert to Bethlehem, heading for the midnight mass. The walk was so peaceful and a special experience, my cultural upbringing came alive, as we walked past goatherds in the warm sun, and I imagined the three Magi and shepherds in this very same landscape, then Bethlehem came into site just as the first star came out over Bethlehem. I will never forget that magical moment. Bethlehem square wasn’t my favourite place, it was busy and felt a bit commercial, for many young travellers it was a party atmosphere which didn’t feel fitting. We left and found a Palestinian Christian church in Bethlehem, where they offered us kindness, tea, cake and prayer. A sanctuary of peace.
I left Jerusalem and visited Palestine and the west bank. I was travelling a year or two before the first intifada and at that time there was no wall separating Israel and the West Bank and no travel restrictions. I visited the west bank city of Nablus and was told to be careful, but I was welcomed. Palestinians there told me of growing tensions and how Israeli soldiers and settlers would destroy their families’ olive trees and shoot holes in their water tanks. Young men explained how things were very bad and that something would break soon. In the UK at the time we heard nothing of this and when the intifada occurred, I recalled the warnings.
I travelled to the Negev desert, to Masada the Jewish site of siege and resistance, onto the Sinai desert where I ate unleavened flatbread cooked over the fire with the Bedouin. Later I went north and visited Nazareth and the sea of Galilee, recalling the biblical stories of Christ, and then the beautiful Bahia temple and gardens in Haifa.
From there I ventured further north into the Golan heights where I passed warnings of entering a military area and met Druze people. Having recently come from the desert, I recall being shocked at the green hills which reminded me of the Yorkshire Dales in the UK
Reflections
This trip was an important part of my personal formation in two ways.
1. Spiritual awakening
The biblical stories I grew up with came to life, and so did the realisation that Christianity was not central to the story of these lands, that British and Westernised culture was but one of many stories and traditions here. Previously I was aware of the other religions, but the physical presence of seeing and being in these places awakened me to the realisation that ‘Our story’ and ‘our traditions’ were decentralised and became one among others. It was an early part of consciousness raising, some call it decolonising our minds. In Israel and Palestine I found the Jewish and Islamic sites spiritually uplifting; more so than the Christian ones which often had more of a tourist-observer feel, than the prayer-centered holy sites of the Muslims and Jewish sites. The Christian sites where I felt the most powerful spiritual impact were with the Ethiopian priests on the roof of the Church of Sepulchre, where they had been marginalised, and also in the natural landscapes rather than the churches.
Reflecting back on my trip to the holy lands, I can see that in my young adulthood I was a deep seeker; a seeker who later found Quakerism as a spiritual home,whilst embracing spirituality wherever I find it. I frequently pray in mosques, in Hindu temples and visit Catholic/Orthodox monasteries, I have spent Shabbat with Jewish friends and prayed in the synagogue, and find the forests, mountains and sea spiritual homes as well. My spiritual journey has enabled me to become a founder rather than a seeker, as I find spiritual grace in its many forms, in many religious traditions and in people’s hearts from all traditions and from none.
2. Political Awakening
This beautiful visit deepened my political awareness. I read about the history of the Jews and Palestinians, of the Nakba and of the Jewish persecutions and programs over the centuries and the holocaust, and also of the British role in the political founding of the state of Israel.
Today I feel the despair at what has happened since to those places and people I visited. The separation walls, the fear, the intimidations, persecutions and deaths and imprisonments. The failed and corrupt politics, and more recently the dreadful Hamas attack that killed innocent Jewish people and the terrible, terrible massacres/genocide of the innocents in Gaza. I wonder what has happened to our collective humanity?
Conclusion - Fundamentally Flawed
This trip was a formative part of my development spiritually and politically. It triggered me to reflect on the richness, creativity and pleasures that emerge from difference and diversity, and the opposing forces of fears, hate and inability to engage with others that come from enclosure of the minds (fundamentalist mindsets). This trip was part of a wider process of exploration, where I questioned totalitarianism, authoritarianism and fundamentalist mindsets.
What is it that lies beneath the surface of these tensions and conflicts, which have led to such desperate human tragedies, and which also underpin lesser societal challenges such as racism and totalising work cultures in our organisations and societies?
Without diminishing any of the causal factors such as the taking of land, the persecutions which explain the source of tensions and conflicts, there is something else that inflames these tensions and turns them into the devastating wars and entrenched conflicts we see.
Fundamentalist Mindsets
One of the key underlying factors are the fundamentalist mindsets that lie beneath social conflicts and oppressive regimes, and I include corporate and neo-liberal economic regimes in this. Karen Armstrong (2009) claims that religious fundamentalism, is not a return to a medieval belief system but that it is a contemporary movement that aims to undermine modernity and secularism. Fundamentalism is not only a religious phenomenon; secular forms exist and have carried out the world’s worst atrocities in the name of Hitler, Khmer Rouge, Stalin and Mao for example. These are extreme examples, but lesser forms of fundamentalism exist in the ‘democratic west’. Nationalist-populist leaders in Europe and the USA strive for a cultural, conservative Christianity to be imposed through state laws, with others being silenced or removed. In my book Leadership a critical text (Western 2019) I claimed that corporate fundamentalism led by Messiah leaders developed in the 1980s. This is not the same fundamentalism as a violent regime, but it does impose fundamentalist mindsets through totalising culture control. The impacts on the workforce is one of culture control whereby peer and self-surveillance create totalising cultures and employees are so entrenched that they are unaware of their subjugation to the corporate regime. The impacts of the neo-liberal corporate machine on the rest of the world and on the environment do have devastating consequences.
What I am arguing is that when a nation or any social grouping develop fundamentalist mindsets of certainty and righteousness, where they believe only their ‘messiah leaders’ can interpret the truth, and when they enforce this truth on others, then this leads to amplified tensions and oppression of any group representing difference.
Fundamentalist mindsets eradicate diversity and plurality, they cannot tolerate ambiguity anything that contaminates the pure race, or people are deemed evil or dangerous. Curiosity and empathy disappear and are replaced by hatred of difference and fear of the other. When a nation proclaims one religious or cultural belief system and oppresses all others then problems become extreme and conflicts intractable.
This post reflects on a personal journey that reminds me, and I hope us all, to be on our guard for the fundamentalist mindsets that can occur within ourselves, and within our own communities. Fundamentalist mindsets can creep up on us, and into us unconsciously and subtly and we need to guard against this. The task is to raise our consciousness to support those who are persecuted by and those who resist the oppression that fundamentalism imposes on them.
The struggle to resist fundamental mindsets wherever they occur is one of the vital struggles of our times. The pleasures and joys of celebrating diversity and plurality are great opportunities to grasp.
Shalom, Peace and Salaam to my Abrahamic brothers and sisters, and peace to all, from whichever rich and diverse entanglements you come from.
Making me ponder the overlap between fundamentalist thinking and ‘populism’. (Currently reading Nexus). How a belief in ‘power of the people’ and a distrust of ruling elites leads ironically to trust being placed in a single leader to monopolise all power (the messiah!) - or the ‘strongman’. It also assumes the ‘will of the people’ are a unified mystical body - not a diverse group of individuals of different interests, faiths and opinions. I worry about its insidious nature- dangerous because it masquerades as ‘people power’ when in reality it seeks to establish dictatorships. Certainly fundamentalists employ populist tactics and vice versa. I wonder how this might influence leadership in the coming years (accelerated by the AI age- driven through the hands of a few powerful tech giants)?
Lovely read, Simon. Thank you.