Word: fundamentalistism
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...social convention. Here, it suppresses godless ideologies. Yet another side of American nature is pragmatic and utilitarian, desiring rational justification for any act. Jones's philosophy embodied this conflict and, in a sense, mastered it. He could invest himself with religious charisma by using the traditions of American fundamentalist theology: faith healing, apocalyptic exhortations, visions of the promised land. But he could also provide his followers with a forceful rationalization: his church was an instrument of social revolution. The follower was to prove his convictions the old way--tithe and then some...
...Billie Sol Estes was paroled from a federal prison after serving six years for amassing a $ 150 million business empire through fraudulent land deals and nonexistent fertilizer tanks. He went to work in fundamentalist Abilene, Texas, as an overseer on his brother's cattle ranch and as a truck dispatcher for a petroleum company. Estes regularly assured his parole officer that, as required by the terms of his release, he was abstaining from business deals. He was happily working as a manual laborer, he said, and had "even washed trucks and fixed flats...
...Baron Ray Kroc, 76, founder of the McDonald's hamburger chain, has been bedeviled by a rumor that he donates money to the Church of Satan, a San Francisco-based cult. "The most vicious thing I've ever heard and all lies," sputters Kroc. Nonetheless, on many fundamentalist Christians in the Southern and Midwestern Bible Belt, the rumor has had the impact of a Big Mac attack in reverse: they are boycotting McDonald's. So far, the protests have had a negligible effect, but just to make sure, McDonald's Executive Doug Timberlake last week told...
...family is any bargain. They seem to be collateral relatives of the Snopeses. If the bride's sister has not been made pregnant by the groom, then the deed was done by one of his 20-odd barracks mates from the military academy. Her uncle is a fundamentalist minister who got the call from God speaking through a Holiday Inn TV set. Her mother spends much of the wedding day arranging to meet an absurdly romantic uncle of the groom's in a motel across from a Dairy Queen in Tallahassee...
...same time, it is not yet clear what the longterm political implications of these latest protests will be. The challenge does not appear to be explicitly political. Rather, it originates from the Iranian community of fundamentalist Moslem clergy--socially more conservative than the Shah--who oppose several of his recent moves toward Westernization. For the time being, one can only note the irony that the first dent in the armor or this fundamentally despotic government may come in response to its attempts at liberalization. It remains to be seen, however, whether there will be room at a later stage...