I think one symptom of religious fundamentalism today is the reliance on 'the book' (and let's be realistic, the major world religions today all have scriptures of a kind, the major ones being the Bible and the Quran, then we have various Dharmic texts).
We see people pointing out verses and demanding they be followed to the letter and understood in exactly the same way. Before the 16th.c in Europe this wouldn't have been possible and this situation would be lengthened further in the Middle East and Africa, where literacy rates remained low. Even regular churchgoing was rare in Mediaeval Europe and Mediaeval Masses did not require lay participation. 'Religious' was a formal term applied to monastics and others employed in Church business. Everyone else would not have thought of themselves in this way, but more so simply as 'Christian' (Or 'Muslim' or 'Jewish'). Rites and practices varied considerably and this was not problematic. Bibles were extremely expensive to make and were often chained to churches in later periods.
Whilst I don't advocate for scriptural illiteracy, I think the widespread printing and reading of scriptures has left us with a problem, that we read and hone in on things that, frankly, only we may care about. Social issues of our day such as abortion, homosexuality, were barely touched upon in the Middle Ages, let alone damned with scripture. Nor were they straightforwardly understood in binary terms we know today. Either way, modern people now seem overly reliant on scriptures and many groups determine this to be a good quality.
Sometimes though, I think we can miss the wood for the trees. Many would simply have had prayer books if they could read, or beads or other counting devices if not. For most of history layfolk would not have been pointing to this or that verse, but will have been praying well-worn prayers, creeds, songs and so on. They would have known the basics of their faith and been content not to be bothered with any more. Some would argue this is a bad thing and they should have been bothered, but has this uptake in scriptural literacy really helped? Or has it caused more division, confusion, hatred and fundamentalism? Has the book merely become a tool to bash others where before we may have simply recited an Our Father, Apostles' Creed, agreed together and gone on our way, except for a few nutcases?
We see people pointing out verses and demanding they be followed to the letter and understood in exactly the same way. Before the 16th.c in Europe this wouldn't have been possible and this situation would be lengthened further in the Middle East and Africa, where literacy rates remained low. Even regular churchgoing was rare in Mediaeval Europe and Mediaeval Masses did not require lay participation. 'Religious' was a formal term applied to monastics and others employed in Church business. Everyone else would not have thought of themselves in this way, but more so simply as 'Christian' (Or 'Muslim' or 'Jewish'). Rites and practices varied considerably and this was not problematic. Bibles were extremely expensive to make and were often chained to churches in later periods.
Whilst I don't advocate for scriptural illiteracy, I think the widespread printing and reading of scriptures has left us with a problem, that we read and hone in on things that, frankly, only we may care about. Social issues of our day such as abortion, homosexuality, were barely touched upon in the Middle Ages, let alone damned with scripture. Nor were they straightforwardly understood in binary terms we know today. Either way, modern people now seem overly reliant on scriptures and many groups determine this to be a good quality.
Sometimes though, I think we can miss the wood for the trees. Many would simply have had prayer books if they could read, or beads or other counting devices if not. For most of history layfolk would not have been pointing to this or that verse, but will have been praying well-worn prayers, creeds, songs and so on. They would have known the basics of their faith and been content not to be bothered with any more. Some would argue this is a bad thing and they should have been bothered, but has this uptake in scriptural literacy really helped? Or has it caused more division, confusion, hatred and fundamentalism? Has the book merely become a tool to bash others where before we may have simply recited an Our Father, Apostles' Creed, agreed together and gone on our way, except for a few nutcases?
