David Watt: Antifundamentalism in Modern America [Audio interview]

David Watt's book Antifundamentalism in a Modern America (Cornell University Press, 2017) chronicles and analyzes the origins and ongoing conversations surrounding fundamentalism, which began as an oppositional movement to liberal Protestantism in the 1920s and then morphed in the late 20th century to represent a dangerous religious orientation found in most major world religions. Early critics of fundamentalism, the antifundamentalists, were responding to Protestant fundamentalism. As the scholarly and societal conception of fundamentalism shifted, beginning in the late 1970s, so did the arguments and concerns of antifundamentalists. In sketching out the call and response of fundamentalists and antifundamentalists over the last 100 years, Professor Watt interrogates the utility of a term like fundamentalism, which in common usage has come to describe so many different religious phenomena and traditions in all parts of the globe. Fred Rowland interviewed David Watt on June 8th, 2017.