People often get confused between the terms evangelical and fundamentalist. They mean two different things. Evangelicals are a very broad group. It’s probably a third or 40 percent of the population of the United States. Fundamentalists are a subset of that. They are very conservative politically. Have a literalist view of the Bible.

Evangelicals have a much wider range of political views. A lot of them are conservatives, but not all of them. About a third of evangelicals voted for Al Gore. So it’s a pretty broad range.

And you tend to think of evangelicals as being fundamentalists because the most well known evangelicals are people like Jerry Falwell who are fundamentalists and are very conservative. But in fact, the evangelicals who are part of Bush’s inner circle are not all fundamentalists. They are often very devout evangelicals. But their approach to politics is much more nuanced than the fundamentalist approach. …

photo of green john c. green Author, Religion and the Culture Wars

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The differences between fundamentalism and evangelicalism are a bit subtle, and oftentimes difficult to understand […]