Ideological Harm
When religious teachings negatively impact how someone sees themselves and the world around them, it creates harm.
SHAME BASED IDEOLOGY
“You are not good”.
These teachings heavily reinforce the idea that a person’s core nature is bad, sinful, untrustworthy, broken, evil, etc. Shame-based religious teachings tear down critical internal resources like self trust and self esteem.
Purity culture its an example of this type of ideology because it targets many healthy expressions of human sexuality with shame.
FEAR-BASED Ideology
“You are not safe”.
Fear based ideology degrades a person’s sense of personal safety. Teachings centered on hell, divine punishments, demonic attacks, or a violent ending of the world are fear based ideologies.
Labelling non religious members as dangerous or evil “outsiders” is a fear based teaching that isolates religious members from access to external information, resources, and social supports.
Fundamentalism
Definition
Fundamentalism is an extreme approach to religion in devotion and practice.
Across most fundamentalist groups there is usually:
Adherence to a literal interpretation of a sacred text
Exclusive truth claims about the world and why we are here
Rigid behavioral expectations
High control group dynamics
Sharp boundaries between insiders and the outsiders
Black and white thinking
Fundamentalism is an approach to religion. It occurs across multiple types of religion. For example, there is Fundamentalist Christianity, Fundamentalist Judaism, Fundamentalist Islam, Fundamentalist Mormonism, etc.
Prevalence
Sociologists have noted that fundamentalism increases during times of rapid change, and social unease. The high rigidity and the structure of fundamentalism can be a response to society's feeling out of control or chaotic when change feels destabilizing.
Costs
Unfortunately there are high costs associated with fundamentalist religious approaches. Rigid hierarchical structures leads to oppression of women and minorities. Abuses of power, sexual abuse, violence, and extreme rhetoric are also common. Fundamentalist absolutism shuts down critical thinking and individual autonomy which are critical resources for safety.