In looking at fundamentalism it may be helpful to refer to John Stackhouse. He wrote an article in christianscholars.com about how the Fundamentals aren’t fundamentalist.

Everyone knows that American Protestantism generally divided into fundamentalist and liberal camps in the 1920s. And many people know that fundamentalism derives from The Fundamentals, early-twentieth-century tracts that reduced the rich doctrinal heritage of Christianity down to five points of do-or-die orthodoxy. Neither of these putative facts, however, is true. This paper shows that The Fundamentals were not fundamentalistic in either respect and that they instead represent the broad mainstream of Anglo-American evangelicalism that continues to this day: not merely conservative, not fundamentalist, and certainly not liberal. John G. Stackhouse, Jr., holds the Samuel J. Mikolaski Chair of Religious Studies at Crandall University, Moncton, Canada. The author wishes to thank the extraordinarily assiduous and sapient reviewers marshalled by the editor to assist him in the revision of this article.

Arguably among the most famous American religious works of the twentieth century, The Fundamentals (1910-1915) gave its name to the movement whose implications are with us to this day. Paradoxically, however, The Fundamentals gave only its name to that movement. This series of small books does not, in fact, reflect the outlook nor the doctrine that would soon be characteristic of American fundamentalism. It does not, in fact, set out the famous Five Points with which it is often credited, including by the tribune of the contemporary vox populi, Wikipedia.¹ Instead, The Fundamentals represents the broad mainstream of Anglo-American evangelicalism flowing out of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. This mainstream might have appeared to submerge beneath the currents of fundamentalism, but it surfaced again into public attention a generation later as, indeed, evangelicalism: as authentic, vital, and missional Protestantism—not merely a kinder, gentler form of fundamentalis.²

John’s Footnotes:

1. The article “Christian fundamentalism” perpetuates the idea that The Fundamentals prompted fundamentalism and taught the elusive “five points”: “Christian Fundamental- ism,” Wikimedia Foundation, accessed October 5, 2019, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Christian_fundamentalism.

2. John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Evangelicalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2022).

This clears up a lot for me.

I look at Christian Fundamentalism as being a Christian Doctrine and a Christian Doctrinal Statement. Essentially a Statement of Faith.

When people rage against fundamentalism they are raging against Christianity and Christian religion and against all Christians who hold to that statement of faith. Some people write entire books about how horrible fundamentalists are. The word is used as a pejorative like the N word, or ‘white supremacy” or “christian nationalist”. When scholars do this I often ask them to define their terms. The reaction is mixed.

Stackhouse explains that The Fundamentals are the beliefs of evangelicalism, which is different from fundamentalistic-ism. The people raging against fundamentalism really mean fundamentalistic-ism, not evangelicalism. If they mean the latter then they are anti-Christian.

Keep in mind the irreligious can be fundamentalistic. If you are attacking anyone fundamentalistic then you may want to look in the mirror just to be sure you yourself are not being fundamentalistic.

But fundamentalistic-ism in the context of Christian belief is associated with evangelicalism because people who become evangelicals can go further and go off track and become militant over the wrong concepts. This is because of social movements and culture. It is a subset of evangelicalism and is a deviation from evangelicalism. Those attacking fundamentalistic-ism often conflate the two groups based on some arbitrary factor such as militantism. This is what George Marsden sounds like, at least at first. In 2024 I watched no less than four people blame fundamentalists using George Marsden as their excuse. This is why I started reading Marsden. To find out what he really says. He does a lot of analysis on CULTURE. But he calls himself a fundamentalist. How confusing! Stackhouse helps bring clarity.

Now, if I could just get my militant brother-in-law to just stop being militant about football and baseball I might get to go to heaven.