by Peter Laurie

A MAN in Afghanistan just came close to losing his life because he converted to Christianity from Islam. That is a crime punishable by death in a nation ruled by Sharia Law.

Pat Robertson and other members of the Christian religious right in the United States would like to see the separation of church and state abolished and Biblical "values" imposed as the law of the land.

What do these two different situations have in common? They are both examples of religious fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists are people who are disenchanted with the modern world and believe that salvation is only possible by returning to a literal reading of their particular sacred text. Religion trumps reason, science and common sense.

The appeal of fundamentalism is that it seems to offer absolute ethical certainty and guidance in a world apparently adrift in a quagmire of moral relativism and soulless modernity.

More and more religious people are therefore retreating from this "contaminated" world into a fundamentalist bunker of purity and absolute ethical certainty based on a literal reading of their particular sacred text and/or unquestioning obedience to the traditional teaching of their church in all its detail.

Although Christian fundamentalism is more typical of Protestantism than Catholicism, the Catholic Church, after the surge of openness engendered by the Second Vatican Council, retreated under the papacy of John Paul II into a more authoritarian and traditionalist stance in the hope that this would stem the tide of liberal change that Vatican II threatened to unleash. This Catholic fundamentalism looks likely to be reinforced under Benedict XVI.

In the mass he celebrated before the conclave at which he was elected pope, Cardinal Ratzinger made a point of defending fundamentalism as eminently reasonable, when he said that "having a clear faith, based on the creed of the church, is often labelled today as fundamentalism, whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and 'swept along by every wind of teaching', looks like the only attitude acceptable to today's standards."

Indeed, "relativism" has become the bogey man of choice for the fundamentalists.

This defence of fundamentalism and absolutism on the grounds that the only alternative is to sink into a quagmire of relativism is an intellectual sleight of hand.

Relativism does indeed tend to moral confusion. It is the denial of the possibility that objective knowledge is attainable and that morality could be universal. Relativism invariably ends in moral nihilism.

The proper response to relativism is the assertion that there is external, objective, culture-transcending knowledge, and that knowledge is attainable by the scientific method, that is, by the proposing and testing of hypotheses. This response also asserts that there exists a universal morality (one of whose practical applications is the assertion of universal human rights) but that that morality is constantly evolving.

In Christian terms, this is to assert that the Bible contains universal and eternal truths, but that these truths have been necessarily clothed in the cultural concepts and limitations of their time and place.

The challenge for Christianity is not, as fundamentalism suggests, to cling absolutely to these truths as then expressed in the face of all change, but to constantly reinterpret those eternal and universal truths in the light of new advances both in science and ethical awareness.

The opposite of fundamentalism is not relativism, but a religion, anchored in faith and love of truth, which comes to terms with reason, science and social progress; accepts the ethical complexity of life; and fully engages the modern world, warts and all.

Jesus did not retreat from a "sinful" and "contaminated" world. In the face of constant rebuke by the Scribes and Pharisees, he lovingly mixed with the outcast, the diseased, the disabled and the sinners.

Far from fearing contamination, he revelled in it.

Peter Laurie is a retired diplomat and a commentator on social issues.