Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Analyzing Fundamentalism

该项目研究宗教原教旨主义，重点是在一个单一的政治实体对比群体。原教旨主义运动的信徒认为他们的宗教是一个绝对真理的体系，提倡严格遵守圣经中规定的宗教法律和道德戒律，近几十年来在一些地区聚集了相当大的影响力。然而，这里研究的群体在多大程度上持有原教旨主义信仰和态度，这一点还不清楚。为了进行这一评估，该项目将对宗教原教旨主义和其他文化和社会政治价值观进行全面调查。该项目以该区域先前对这一问题的研究为基础，评估整个区域不同群体的人在原教旨主义方面的异同。 该项目还衡量个人的原教旨主义信仰和态度如何与他们的（a）宗教信仰、（B）身份、（c）自由主义价值观、（d）不安全感和仇外心理、（e）信息来源和（f）人口统计相联系。 对影响社会价值观和削弱原教旨主义的因素的了解增加有助于更好地了解如何设计和平和避免冲突。亚伯拉罕信仰的追随者中原教旨主义运动的相当大的差异性的存在使对该主题的比较分析复杂化，阻碍了对这些信仰的经验概括，并在理论抽象方面造成了困难。为了克服这些挑战，这个项目的理论，原教旨主义者，尽管他们的宗教和教派的差异，共享对自己和其他宗教的核心取向。这些核心取向依赖于对神的纪律观念、字面意义或无误、宗教排他性和宗教不容忍。为了衡量这些取向，一个基要主义的基础上，电池的16个调查问题的规模构建和验证。这项研究采用了这个量表来衡量原教旨主义之间的代表性样本3,300成年受访者从对比组，使用面对面和在线访谈。通过开发一个原教旨主义量表，衡量所有亚伯拉罕信仰的主题，该项目作出了重大贡献的社会科学研究的原教旨主义和比较宗教研究。收集的数据集还将作为比较分析的基础设施，并使该地区及其他地区研究该主题的不同研究人员之间的科学对话成为可能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project studies religious fundamentalism, focusing on contrasting groups in a single political entity. The adherents of fundamentalist movements consider their religion to be a system of absolute truth, promote strict conformity to the religious laws and moral precepts specified in the scriptures, and have mustered considerable influence in some regions in recent decades. It is, however, unclear to what extent the groups studied here hold fundamentalist beliefs and attitudes. To make this assessment, this project will launch a full-scale survey of religious fundamentalism and other cultural and sociopolitical values. Building on a earlier study of the subject in the region, this project evaluates the similarities and differences in fundamentalism between people in different groups throughout the region. This project also gauges how fundamentalist beliefs and attitudes among individuals are linked to their (a) religiosity, (b) identity, (c) liberal values, (d) the feelings of insecurity and xenophobia, (e) sources of information, and (f) demographics. Increased understanding of what affects societal values and weakens fundamentalism contributes to a better knowledge of how to engineer peace and avoid conflict.The existence of considerable variability in the fundamentalist movements among the followers of the Abrahamic faiths complicates comparative analysis of the subject, hampers empirical generalization across these faiths, and poses difficulties in theoretical abstraction. To overcome these challenges, this project theorizes that fundamentalists, despite their variabilities across religions and sects, share core orientations toward their own and other religions. These core orientations rest on a disciplinarian conception of the deity, literalism or inerrancy, religious exclusivity, and religious intolerance. To measure these orientations, a fundamentalism scale based on a battery of sixteen survey questions was constructed and validated. This study employs this scale to gauge fundamentalism among a representative sample of 3,300 adult respondents from contrasting groups, using both face-to-face and online interviews. By developing a fundamentalism scale that measures the subject in all the Abrahamic faiths, this project makes a significant contribution to the social-scientific study of fundamentalism and comparative religious studies. The collected dataset will also serve as an infrastructure for comparative analysis and make it possible to engage in scientific dialogue among different researchers studying the subject in the region and beyond.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.