My friend John Armstrong has recently written about the need to correct the spirit of fundamentalism. He sees the ditch on the right side of the road (fundamentalism) as presenting a greater danger to evangelicalism than the ditch on the left side (liberalism, postmodernism). Now I happen to think that there are more denominational and seminarial cars in the left ditch than in the right (not to mention the errant publishing house vans), but I quite agree with John that it is a bad deal whichever one you go in. The point is to drive down the road.
And I agree that fundamentalism does not realize what spirit it is of. But part of the reason that “fightin’ fundamentalists” do not see that they are fighting heresy and unbelief the wrong way is because they are the only ones actually fighting, and hence they have nothing better to compare their actions to. In an ecclesiastical world full of error, and given that we are to contend for the faith once delivered, we should be able to point to a group of Christians who do a better job fighting than do the fundamentalists. Do we not like how the fundamentalists fight? Then somebody should show them how.