Matthew_Green

Some conservative born-again Christians will bristle at the thought of being called a "Fundamentalist". They try to distance themselves from the label/title of "Fundamentalist" and instead identify themselves as "Evangelicals". I personally think that this is not an adequate distinction. Both are sides of the same coin, so to speak. I think what "Evangelicals" dislike and want to dis-associate from is classical fundamentalism because of the bad taste that it leaves in people's mouths. But still, I tend to think that "Evangelicalism" is just a different stripe of Fundamentalism. In this case, "classical" and "Evangelical" are just two qualifying adjectives for the same word-Fundamentalism. What we have, then, are two shades of the same color or two colors of the same brand of paint. Is there really any qualitative difference between the two? Both accept a physical resurrection, a virgin birth, a sacrificial death of Christ, the trinity of God, and biblical inerrancy. Where are the profound differences between the two that would disqualify Evangelicalism as simply being another stripe of Fundamentalism? I don't see any.

Matthew

quartodeciman

Fundamentalists seem to spend a lot of time, effort, money and enthusiasm on discrediting evolution, scientific cosmology, ancient earth and continuous spiritual warfare against an imagined dominant culture of materialist God-rejectors.

Evangelicals don't seem that much interested in these things. They will settle for "equal time" for "both" sides in a school cirriculum and they think rather of the "prevailing culture" as spiritually hungry lambs waiting to be fed rather than Satan's workers.

Physical resurrection/virgin birth/sacrificial death of Christ, the trinity of God are all safely tucked away into the past or into the eternal, so neither type of Christian fears successful challenge. Belief in biblical inerrancy is a deliberate choice. But BI comes in two flavors: inerrancy about essentials of faith and inerrancy about all statements reported to have been uttered by God directly, by God's prophets and Jesus Christ, and all narrative accounts from the Bible. In particular, Evangelicals worry little or not at all that the six days of creative activity by God may not be literal "days"; Fundamentalists go ballistic at the suggestion.

Beetle

When I was a conservative Christian I always defined myself as an evangelical rather than a fundamentalist. Doctrinally both groups are very similar, but as quartodeciman said there are some things that fundamentalists hold as essential that evangelicals tend to be more relaxed about. Examples would be KJV vs modern translations, end times theology, evolution/literal reading of genesis and so on. You won't find differences about the person of Jesus, his death and resurrection, or the fate of unbelievers. Also fundamentalists have historically been far more isolationist than evangelicals. Bob Jones is fundamentalist, Billy Graham is evangelical.

From outside the conservative christian camp the differences may look like minor or insignificant differences, but from inside they seem important.

fried beef sandwich

Fundamentalists are the evangelicals that evangelicals really don't want to be associated with.

That's all.

Stephen_BostonMA

A self-identified evangelical highlighted some of the differences in this article from the Boston Globe a few months back.

Here are some of his points:

dado

when i hear "evangelical" i think "proselytizer". i'll take a non-proslytizing fundie over a proselytizing non-fundie any day of the week.