Is there a difference between fundies and evangelists?

[ailsagirl]

My dictionary says not but I've read that there are differences.

????

[chicagojoe]

1. I guess it could be said that

all Evangelicals are fundies, but not all fundies are Evangelicals.
It's a very blurry line that divides them.

[MnFats]

3. i think you're right. 'fundies,' short for "fundamentalist"

can simply mean somebody who's very devout and follows very closely the tenets of their faith. i know people like that and they're not crazy to convert me & don't come with the lake of fire rhetoric for anybody who disagrees.

Evangelicals believe their mission in life is to save you and, well, make you exactly like they are, which of course is the only way to be and hey, you better get on board because the rapture is coming any day....i do think there are some evangelicals who are not all that crazy but...

[evlbstrd]

4. I vote for Post #3. n/t

[democraticrevolution]

2. I believe there is..

I believe there is a difference. Fundamentalists are like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. Evangelists would be anyone that is not an extremist I think Jim Wallis of Soujournes could be classified as an evangelist.

[Hekate]

6. Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners is an ally against the extremists

He's an evangelical from the word go, but he believes (and lives) the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount. He points out that both Testaments of the Bible mention poverty thousands of times and sexuality barely a handful. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality at all, but he sure did tell his followers to take care of the poor, the hungry, the sick, the orphans and widows, the strangers in our midst, and on and on in that vein.

Amy Goodman interviewed Wallis yesterday on Democracy Now, and I was interested in his call to return to "prophetic" religion, as opposed to the "false theology" of the radical Christian right. I didn't know what he meant until he began expounding on the prophet Micah, and talking about Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and how very much his religous faith put into practice influenced the civil rights movement and thus the whole nation.

His new book "God's Politics: why the Right gets it wrong and the Left doesn't get it" is worth looking up, as is Sojourner online. He's been periodically getting on tv since at least the election season last year; MSNBC, The Daily Show, some panels and some one-on-one interviews. He holds his own very well.

Hekate

[NAO]

5. Fundamentalism is narrow strict teaching; evangelism is spreading teaching

Fundamentalists are defined as those who follow the Bible in a very literal, narrow way. They do not take kindly to modern interpretations.

Evangelicals are those whose beliefs include the importance of spreading their beliefs to others.

These two often go together, but they emphasis two different things - adherence to dogma and dedication to spreading dogma, respectively.

[funflower]

7. Fundamentalists and evangelicals

Evangelicals are, literally, Christians who believe in spreading the "Good News" of Christ. More specifically, evangelicals, like many Christians, believe in the divinity of Christ and (although they generally don't use thise phrase) in the doctrine of substitutional atonement, which holds that Jesus died as a substitute for humanity, thereby paying the penalty, or atoning for the sins of humankind. Evangelicals also generally believe that the way a person takes avails herself of this pre-paying of the penalty for sin is to (a) believe the above, and (b) affirmatively choose to "accept" or follow Christ.

Fundamentalists are a subset of evangelicals (not the other way around) who believe all of the above but also tend to believe strongly in a number of additional doctrines, often including the "inerrancy" of the Bible, the idea that the world was created by God in six 24-hour days as described in Genesis 1 and, almost always, the "leadership" of males in the church and family. Some fundamentalists adhere to various other doctrines, which they usually consider to be supported by some portion of the Bible.

While most evangelicals are conservative, many are liberal. Very few fundamentalists are liberal.

As far as public figures, I would consider Billy Graham and James Dobson to be evangelicals, with Dobson being more conservative than Graham. Ralph Reed and Jerry Falwell are almost certainly fundamentalists. If you are familiar with some of the major Christian colleges, I would consider Baylor and Wheaton to be evangelical, while Bob Jones Univeristy and Patrick Henry College are fundamentalist.