The term, Fundamentalist, tends to have a variable meaning. Historically, and for those who use the name to describe themselves, a Fundamentalist Christian is one who holds to all of the five Fundamentals of the Faith as a bare-minimum definition of Christian faith (see the Brief History of Christian fundamentalism below).
Derivatively, a fundamentalist Christian is a Christian who holds the Bible to be infallible, historically accurate, and decisive in all issues of controversy that the Bible is believed to directly address; which was the central issue for which the Christian Fundamentalist movement has contended.
Fundamentalism is not a denominational cause. Indeed, the movement is found in many denominations, and outside of any denominational structure. As the movement has developed, the term has evolved. Today's Fundamentalist is typically pessimistic in expectations for the future of the world (see dispensationalism), and committed to separation from theological, scientific and moral error. Fundamentalists often see secular humanism to be a mortal enemy and the work of Satan to deceive society from the true path. Militancy, not of a martial kind but rather, vocal stridency in prosecuting the fundamentalist war against unbelief among Christians, has been a connotation of Fundamentalism throughout the history of the movement.
Besides self-described Fundamentalists, many self-labelled Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Mennonites, and The Confessing Movement in the mainline denominations, are all otherwise diverse groups, which hold to the Five Fundamentals. On the other hand, the plasticity of the label can be seen, when one of these groups condemns another as a "fundamentalist".
Although the modern movement formed within many of the established denominations, the fundamentalist tendency toward separation has swelled the ranks of peripheral, spinoff denominations, has produced a multitude of new groups, and often has made the choice of congregational independence appear to be the more faithful choice. For this reason, Fundamentalist has the connotation of divisiveness or separatism.
Christian fundamentalism is characterized as well by a more strict moral code compared to mainstream Protestantism, by which the fundamentalist believer seeks to distinguish himself from the world and identify himself with the community of the faithful. Thus, the label has connotations of puritanical attitudes, and intolerance.
Evangelicals, Pentecostalists, and Fundamentalists share a high view of the authority of the Bible, and place a supremely high value on the individual, much higher than popular stereotypes can account for, and commonly hold a radically individualistic understanding of sola fide, and sola scriptura. For this reason, the term Fundamentalist is sometimes used negatively to imply a backward approach to modernity, a low view of the Christian Church, or a minimalist conception of the Christian faith. In reverse, Fundamentalist Christians refer to their more liberal opponents as Modernists or Liberals with rough equivalence.
Fundamentalists differ from Pentecostals in their strong insistence upon correct doctrine and separatism (which often also divides fundamentalists from each other) as opposed to the experiential emphasis of Pentecostals. Fundamentalists also criticize Evangelicals' lack of concern for doctrinal purity, for working cooperatively with other Christians, and for women in the ministry. Evangelist Billy Graham came from a Fundamentalist background, but is usually repudiated by them today, for his choice, early in his ministry, to cooperate with other Christians. He represents a movement that arose within Fundamentalism, but has increasingly become distinct from it, which Fundamentalists refer to, derisively, as Neo-evangelicalism.
Today, the self-described Fundamentalist Christian is quite different from the popular conception. While the common idea of a fundamentalist strongly implies political activism, the self-described Fundamentalist is rarely involved directly in politics. He holds to traditional conceptions of morality and sin, and believes that the truth and authority of Scripture are completely sufficient to furnish him with a perfect guide through life. He looks for the return of Christ, not the reform of the world.
The popular conception easily applies the term, Fundamentalism, to conservative Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, and other non-Protestant or Nontrinitarian groups. A self-described fundamentalist rejects the application of this term to himself, in any sense that can be applied to such groups - his use is antithetical. In addition, Fundamentalism has also been used to describe similarity in beliefs across different religions such as with Islamists. Both groups that have been described as Fundamentalist Christian and Muslim strongly object to this usage, as they strongly deny any connection or similarity with each other.
Within the United States, fundamentalism was originally a movement beginning in the late 19th century of Christian evangelical conservatives, who, in a reaction to modernism, insisted on adhering to a set of core beliefs. Fundamentalists, in this sense, have engaged in criticism of more liberal movements. The original formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs can be traced to the Niagara Bible Conference in 1878. In 1910, these beliefs later became distilled into what were known as the "five fundamentals", which were:
As the movement developed, and became more pessimistic in the face of its eroding social importance, dispensationalism and separatism began to overwhelmingly characterize the most influential leaders, which has also had an effect on the way that Evangelicals as a whole are perceived by outside observers. Dispensationalism became so successful for a time, that the Fundamentalist movement has practically become identified with its teachings, even though many of the first and most influential Fundamentalists, like B. B. Warfield and J. Gresham Machen, were strongly opposed to dispensationalism. Perhaps the modern dispensationalist theologian with the greatest name-familiarity, is Tim LaHaye, co-author of the popular Left Behind series, and author of several non-fiction books about apocalyptic prophecy.
Christian Fundamentalists argued that the Bible must be accepted as the literal word of God, correct not only in its religious or moral teachings, but also in its scientific and historical claims. A typical fundamentalist approach to the Bible, is a "literal where possible" framework of interpretation. That is, the interpretation is to be preferred which proposes the simplest possible meaning of the words: for example, God literally created the world in 6 days; God created Eve from Adam's rib; the Garden of Eden was a real place; Noah was a man who actually lived, built an ark and survived a great flood, and so on. Many other fundamentalists, however, insist on a "literal where intended" approach. The Bible should instead be interpreted as the original readers would have interpreted it - literally where the context shows the intention of a non-figurative meaning, as in the gospel narratives and other chronicles; but figuratively where the context shows an intended figurative sense, as in the Book of Revelation.
Almost all fundamentalists believe that macroevolution does not occur, since it contradicts their reading of the Bible. Thus, for example, William Jennings Bryan became an icon of fundamentalism for his part in prosecuting a teacher for teaching evolution in the Scopes Monkey Trial. Though the trial was viewed as publicity stunt by the people of Dayton, Tennessee, Bryan came to represent an emerging, new and politically disparate incarnation of Evangelical religious, political and educational activism. The trial signalled that a dramatic shift of status had already taken place for Evangelicalism, from the Establishment to the Basement of American politics and academia.
Militant distrust of modern science, special bitterness toward Evolution, commitment to Young earth creationism and Flood geology (which accounts for nearly all major geological features by reference to the Flood, described in Genesis), increasingly swept away the earlier Evangelical latitude on these issues, and became tests of orthodoxy in an unprecedented way, in the Fundamentalist movement. This remains predominantly true of broader conservative Evangelicalism, as well; but not nearly as uniformly as among self-described Fundamentalists.
Many Fundamentalists tend to oppose the conclusions of modern scholarship that call into question traditional beliefs about the Bible. For example, they accept the traditional ascriptions of Biblical authorship, which presuppose that individual books had a single author. They may also believe that to suggest that a given book of the Bible was a compilation or the result of an editorial effort would compromise fundamentalist assertions about biblical inerrancy and divine inspiration. They are generally hostile towards higher criticism, a form of literary analysis that attempts to discover the origins and sources of Biblical material. Thus, fundamentalists continue to assert that Moses was the primary or sole author of the first five books of the Old Testament against the documentary hypothesis of modern scholarship of that the Pentateuch was composed and shaped by many people over centuries. Some fundamentalists, on the other hand, may be willing to consider alternative authorship only where the Biblical text does not specify an author, insisting that books in which the author is identified must have been written by that author.
Similarly, Fundamentalists categorically reject any scholarship that undermines their belief in the inerrancy of the Biblical text but tend to be open to scholarship that attempts to resolve apparent contradictions.
Many fundamentalists believe that the public schools have become hopeless corrupted, and rather than attempting to change the curriculum they have withdrawn from the public school system. As a consequence, fundamentalists are also often very active in the homeschooling movement and in advocacy of private schools.
An important part of the political discourse of the United States (and some other countries) is the notion, often touted by political liberals in the U.S., that Fundamentalist political activity in some cases contradicts the doctrine of the separation of church and state. The Fundamentalists in view here are not the apolitical sort, but a relatively new breed which began to appear in American politics with the "Born-again" presidential campaign of Jimmy Carter, but came into its own with the rise of the Moral Majority under the leadership of the Fundamentalist preacher and lawyer, Jerry Falwell. The Moral Majority became one of the leading groups, which combined efforts with a broad consortium of conservative, Protestant Christians, but besides Evangelicals, Pentecostals, and conservative (Confessing Movement) members from mainline churches, also includes Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Mormons, and others. Together, these very widely diverse groups constitute what has since come to be known as the religious right. It should probably be considered an abuse of the term, to label the religious right a fundamentalist movement in any sense.
Dr. Carl F. H. Henry, an Evangelical scholar, in a major definitive work in 1947, criticized Fundamentalists for their tendency to withdraw from society in his book Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, which earned their scorn, but wrought little change among Fundamentalists. Many younger Fundamentalists have set up their own home churches, sometimes with strictly defined gender roles, home schooling, a simpler lifestyle, or other distinctions by which they might set themselves apart from broader society.
Revive Us Again: The Reawakening of American Fundamentalism, by Joel A. Carpenter, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0195129075, 1999
Noll, Mark. A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada. Eerdmans, 1992. (pages 311-389)
Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture by John Shelby Spong, Harper San Francisco; ISBN 0060675187, 1992A label
Fundamental subtleties
Brief History of Christian fundamentalism
Important early Christian fundamentalists included William Jennings Bryan, John Nelson Darby, Cyrus I. Scofield, Charles Caldwell Ryrie, Lewis Sperry Chafer, John Walvoord, B. B. Warfield, Carl McIntyre, and J. Gresham Machen. Modern Christian fundamentalists include Hal Lindsey, Jerry Falwell, Jack Chick, Bob Jones, Sr, Vernon McGee, and John R. Rice.Fundamentalist attitudes toward science and scholarship
King James Only fundamentalism
A subset of self-described Fundamentalists also reject all recent translations of the Bible in favor of the King James Version, and is known among Evangelicals as the King James Only Movement. This movement sprang from the fact that most modern translations of the New Testament come from texts based on Alexandrian manuscripts, and there is some doubt among certain Evangelical scholars as to the veracity of this text. Alexandrian manuscripts have come into wide use because they are among the oldest New Testament texts available. Critics counter that this is because the climate in Egypt lent itself to the preservation of papyri (as opposed to the climate of Turkey and Syria) and also because immediately before the oldest Byzantine manuscripts we have found there was major persecution by the Romans in the region in question which included the burning of many churches and Bibles. At any rate, many fundamentalists prefer the Byzantine manuscripts (called the "Majority Text" tradition or the "Received Text" tradition although these are not strictly identical) over the Alexandrian ones (called the "Critical Text") and so favor the King James Version over other popular translations such as the New International Version (NIV) and New Living Translation (NLT). There are, however, many fundamentalists who do not hold this view.Christian fundamentalism within Christianity
In Protestant Christian denominations modern Fundamentalism was born in controversy, and militantly perpetuates controversy. For example, the Southern Baptist Convention has had persistent conflicts instigated by fundamentalists attempting, successfully, to resist a drift of their denomination away from commitment to historical Christianity, toward control by liberal factions.Christian fundamentalism and US public schools
In some American school districts there is still controversy over whether public school students should be taught evolution, creationism, or some mixture of the two. There has been ongoing opposition to the legalization of abortion in Roe v. Wade. Arguably, an even wider array of issues than these are deeply informed by Fundamentalist religious views in the U.S. Currently, biology textbooks in Georgia are labelled with stickers advising that they contain the "controversial theory of evolution".Christian fundamentalism and US politics
References
Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism by George M. Marsden, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.; ISBN 0802805396, 1991