Sure.
But that doctrinal inflexibility can often be a new thing, a response to secular modernity. This is precisely what we’re seeing with groups like ISIS and Christians like the Dominionists. These are all very new ways of thinking about the texts, in many ways. The past they imagine is a modern construct, because it’s an imagined past.
Yeah, exactly, hence, it’s new interpretations of religious texts. So, despite being intolerant, hateful, and ignorant about the history of their faith, they are actually quite novel in a historical sense.
