There is quite an interesting post, and follow-up discussion, to be found here. Tim Bayly defines the sine qua non of fundamentalism as a willingness to fight in order to defend the faith once delivered. There is a good fundamentalism that acquired a bad name through its faithfulness. “There’s another sense, though, that hearkens back to the early decades of the twentieth century when Christians first starting fighting with some zeal against modernism’s heresies and got a bad name for it…”
This analysis is right on the money, but I would want develop the thought just a tad further. I would want to distinguish sectarian fundamentalists (willing to fight over the gnats) and catholic fundamentalists (willing to fight over the camels). If someone is simply pugnacious and combative, fighting over the “truth of the gospel” for no better reason than that he fights over everything, that’s obviously no good. But in reaction to this, the invertebrates of the modern evangelical world won’t fight for anything.
There are those among us who will swallow both the gnats and the camels — liberals. There are those who will not swallow the gnats and will swallow the camels — precisionist sectarians. There are those who will swallow the gnats, but not the camels — evangelicals at the better end of the conveyor belt of compromise. And there are those who don’t want to swallow either one — catholic fundamentalists.