Social Justice Fundamentalism

I have long been concerned with what I’ve come to call “movement fundamentalism.” A rigid, dogmatic, and exclusionary way of relating to social justice ideology.

I write this as someone raised in social movements. Someone who still dares to long for a more just society. And I write as someone who also grew up immersed in religious fundamentalism. I recognize the pattern. I know the taste and the scent of fundamentalism.

Some might wonder why I’m writing about this now, when the values that so many of us have lived for are so violently attacked. And that is precisely why. Because this is the right moment for us to ask important questions not so much about what our values are, but about what might be a wiser way to hold them.

Fundamentalism seems to be a human tendency. We see it in the nationalist extremes of right-wing ideologues now running the country. And we feel its reverberations in the fear of “used to be moderate” policymakers, who keep falling in line behind this machinery of domination. Fundamentalism begets fear. And it demands people fall in line.

Fundamentalism is a human tendency. It can be seen across the breadth of ideology and belief. But this note is more personal, more specific. Because today I am inviting us to consider fundamentalism among those of us who stand for justice.

To do so, it is good to return to the spark. To that flash of insight that first moved our souls to take a stand for justice. Many of us made a vow to devote our lives to building a more just society. And to the imperative of living our way into a sustainable human presence on the planet.

We can call it a moment of awakening.

I grew up in Borikén (Puerto Rico), which remains very much a colony of the United States. The question of sovereignty is always in the air when you live in a colony. You have to ask yourself, what exactly do we mean by freedom?

But I would say that my awakening came after we moved to the mainland. That’s when I became a “minority,” a “person of color.” And for the first time in my life, I experienced what it was like to be seen as undesirable, even dangerous.

I was 12 years old.

The big aha came when I read The Autobiography of Malcolm X. I was 15 and this was before Spike Lee even said he’d make the film. Shout out to my boy Juan, who put the book in my hands.

It lit something up inside me. It told me I wasn’t crazy. It corroborated that something was terribly wrong. And it wasn’t us.

This realization really mattered.

There were many moments before and after. But that book shaped the course of my life. It gave language to something I had only felt. It turned disorientation into direction.

How about you? How did you wake up to the call for justice?

It is a powerful moment — or maybe a series of moments — that opens us to a sense of purpose. A meaningful connection to a cause bigger than ourselves. A lineage of righteous struggle. A hope that we might find a way out.

We turn on. We orient our lives. We look for others. For the groups and organizations, the writings, the history, the elders. And we make new friends, peers who are also finding their way.

As we walk the path, we begin to accept certain ideas about the best way to do the work. The best way to take a stand. These ideas shape our posture toward justice, toward what needs to be done, and toward what is ours to do.

This is good. It is a powerful and life-orienting call.

What I’m getting to here is that, much like a spiritual awakening, we can relate to this calling from a place of trust. From a grounded faith in something we know to be true, good, and even beautiful.

Or we can come at it with rigidity. With fundamentalism.

What is the difference between faith and fundamentalism?

There’s a powerful, perceptible — even if not easily describable — difference between the convert’s fundamentalism and the quiet faith of some abuelas.

One comes with rigidity and judgment. The other rarely preaches. Often drops quiet gems of wisdom. And seems to embody a compassionate kindness that can’t be mistaken for permissiveness.

The person of faith has come to understand the narrow path of wisdom.

They don’t need to make someone else wrong to trust what they know.
They stand for what is just. But they refuse to deny anyone’s humanity.

They’ve turned their lives over to a path of surrender. Not surrender to evil. But surrender before the mystery.

An embodied acknowledgment that we will never fully understand the miracle of our aliveness. That suffering doesn’t make sense, and yet it is part of our lot.

Fundamentalism wants to close the book on mystery. It resents the human condition.

It claims absolute understanding. It declares itself right . And anything beyond itself wrong.

It is rigid. And its rigidity belies an underlying fear. A deep insecurity beneath the bravado. A fear of the unknown, of what has not yet been understood.

Our walk isn’t as simple as saying, “I now walk the path of the abuelas.”

Our relationship to our deepest beliefs often moves in a kind of oscillation. Between the rigidity of fundamentalism, and the unmoored relativism that arises when we hold things too loosely.

When we lack conviction.
When we refuse to take a stand.
When we fear being wrong more than we desire being real.

The path of wisdom is rooted in deep faith.

It trusts. It listens. It is humble before the mystery.
It dances with the unknown.

It serves.

Accepts where necessary, and acts courageously when needed.

It is welcoming. Kind. Compassionate.

It lacks neither strength nor conviction. It is rich and powerful in both.

Equity Work Today

I have been working with a set of organizations that are deeply committed to equity. I’ve been excited by the nuance that they are looking for. They know it would not be wise to replicate the dogmatic approach that has come to define the field. They want what we want. But they are looking for a wiser way to hold it.

Again and again, we come to the same conclusions. We articulate the same values: