Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Analyzing Fundamentalism

这个项目研究宗教原教旨主义，专注于单一政治实体中的不同群体。原教旨主义运动的追随者认为他们的宗教是绝对真理的体系，提倡严格遵守经文规定的宗教法律和道德戒律，近几十年来在一些地区积累了相当大的影响力。然而，目前尚不清楚这里研究的群体在多大程度上持有原教旨主义的信仰和态度。为了进行这一评估，该项目将启动对宗教原教旨主义和其他文化和社会政治价值观的全面调查。该项目以该地区早先对这一主题的研究为基础，评估了该地区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(A)宗教信仰、(B)身份认同、(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)人口结构联系在一起。增加对影响社会价值观和削弱原教旨主义的理解，有助于更好地了解如何促成和平和避免冲突。在亚伯拉罕信仰的追随者中，原教旨主义运动中存在着相当大的变异性，这使得对这一主题的比较分析复杂化，阻碍了对这些信仰的经验性概括，并在理论抽象方面造成了困难。为了克服这些挑战，这个项目的理论是，尽管原教旨主义者在不同的宗教和教派之间存在差异，但他们对自己的宗教和其他宗教的核心取向是相同的。这些核心取向建立在对神、字面意思或无误、宗教排他性和宗教不容忍的纪律观念上。为了测量这些取向，编制了基于16个调查问题的原教旨主义量表，并进行了验证。本研究通过面对面访谈和在线访谈，对来自不同群体的3300名成年受访者的代表性样本--原教旨主义进行了测量。通过开发一个衡量所有亚伯拉罕信仰中的主题的原教旨主义量表，该项目对原教旨主义和比较宗教研究的社会科学研究做出了重大贡献。收集的数据集还将作为比较分析的基础设施，并使其能够在该地区和其他地区研究该主题的不同研究人员之间进行科学对话。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.