Ok, please educate me. What is the difference between an evangelical and a fundamentalist.?

Question

Someone informed me of this in my last question. I have always considered them to be the same. I will be nice and not elaborate on my exact opinion.

Answer 1

Evangelical is some one who preaches ,teaches, a missionary who teaches the word of God that salvation is attained by faith. In the bible in the book of Romans 10:17 "Faith commeth by hearing , hearing by the word of God ".
Fundamentalist is someone who believes that all the words in the bible is a foundation (constitution) and is to be taken literally.In the book of 2 Timothy 3:16 "All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine , for reproof ,for correction, for instruction in righteousness "

Answer 2

Both of those terms are labels that can be misleading when applied to people as a group since there are many variations within each group.

In general, an evangelical is a Bible believing Christian who feels called to fulfill the great commission that Jesus left to his disciples.

Matthew 28:19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Fundamentalists are portrayed by their critics as narrow minded, harsh legalists who are slightly paranoid and who look down on others. That's a sterotypical view that has probably originated because SOME who use that name, especially some of the televangelists, put forth that image. But the term "fundamentalist" basically means that a person is a follower of the sola scriptura (scripture alone) school of Christian teaching.

Answer 3

Right here;I`m both according to today`s society.I consider myself to be an evangelical born again christian.But usually I tell everyone I`m just a christian filled with the HOLY Spirit.The word fundamentalist was added to us because of prejudice and confusion.The 2 words you refer to are not really the same.I do prefer evangelical though because I have an urgency to get the word of the God out so you don`t go to hell.Like a fireman trying to save a person in a burning building but they don`t know it`s burning.

Answer 4

evangelical means to believe in the message of the New Testament (Christ died for your sins etc) and proselytizing that message to the world. Specifically that the canon of the gospels is true, and that part of being a Christian is to share the message with others, i.e. to evangelize

fundamentalist means they believe in the literal truth of the entire bible, that it is a factual account of things that actually happened. By definition, they would also be evangelical.

But an evangelical isn't necessarily a fundamentalist, if they believe much of the bible is allegory.

Answer 5

Just saw your question, and since I brought it up here is my understanding:

A Fundamentalist is someone who believes in the infallibility of the Scriptures and has a literal interpretation. It started as a reaction to modernism in the early 20th century.

An Evangelical is someone who stresses the personal relationship with Christ, and Christ as the only means of salvation and forgivness of sins. It's movement started more in the later 20th century.

Answer 6

Both believed in the Bible, but one group wanted to separate from modern culture while the other wanted to engage it.

In the early 1940s, a distinct split grew between evangelicals and fundamentalists over how to apply the "fundamentals" of faith to the modern world. In 1941 Rev. Carl McIntire founded the American Council of Christian Churches, an extreme group that favored separatism from hostile cultural forces. Some went so far as to refuse contact with anyone who did interact with the culture. Not all "fundamentalists" (that is, those who believed in the fundamentals) felt this way, however. One branch of Bible believers-evangelicals-wanted to engage the culture, while the other branch-fundamentalists-moved away from it, sometimes belligerently.

The word inerrancy is derived from the Latin, meaning "not wandering." Its usage in this context implies: "not wandering from the truth." For evangelicals, inerrancy means that when Scripture says something, it is telling the truth and not "wandering" into falsehood. Does this mean that evangelicals believe that God dictated the Bible word for word, thus making each word unflawed? Many would say no. But if you asked if they embraced the traditional tenets of faith of the Protestant Reformation-the authority of the Scripture, the virgin birth and divinity of Christ, Jesus' atonement for sin, the bodily resurrection, and the second coming of Christ-evangelicals would say yes, unequivocally.

If your father said, "She won't listen to anyone and always makes bad decisions."

A fundamentalists way of thinking is that "There is not one single person on the planet she will listen to and she never ever makes good decisions.

An evangelical way of thinking is "She doesn't listen to most people, probably for a variety of reasons, and this causes her to make a lot of bad decisions."

Atheists and agnostics are always confused about this as they think it's all the same.

One other point they always get wrong is that evangelists have something to do with evangelical or fundamentalism.

FWIW, what you see on TV isn't typical of what your neighborhood Christians see in their local Church.

Answer 7

Not necessarily. They are aspects of a Christian.

Evangel is another name for Gospel. In a way, whoever studies and seeks to bring the Gospel to those who don't know, or who have abandoned or never learned the Faith, are Evangelicals.

Fundamentalists seek to return to what they perceive as "the gounding or fundament of the faith." They look to principals evident in the Word of God as taught in the Bible. They reject tradition, which is accepted and even cherished by Catholic, Anglican, Orthodox, and other older Christian sects.

According to Lloyd Geering, the word fundamentalism is "derived from a series of 12 booklets entitled The Fundamentals, which were published between 1909 and 1915. By courtesy of two oil millionaires in the United States, about three million of these booklets were distributed free to every minister and Sunday School superintendent in America.

"The booklets were intended to counter the spread of liberal religious thought in the churches of America, which the publishers believed to be undermining the eternal Christian truths – "the fundamentals". The booklets reaffirmed what the writers took to be the fundamental and unchangeable doctrines of Christianity: the infallibility of the Bible, the deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, miracles, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the substitutionary view of the Atonement."

Answer 8

Evangelical what? Fandamentalist what? If you mean Christians...

An evangelical Christian is one who goes around believing and/or preaching the good news of Jesus Christ. The good news of Jesus Christ is called the gospel of Christ which is that God came to earth in the flesh as man in order to live a perfect life for us so that we could present this life as our own before God in the judgment. But first He had to take our punishment, so He died in our place, and rose again from the dead so that we too can live by merely accepting His free gift of love and by following Jesus our Saviour.

A fundamentalist Christian is like Jesus Christ. They try to get right down to the roots, the reason, and the purpose of the plan that God set out for all of us. They believe that Jesus Christ is Almighty God, is infalliable, and is the Word of God. They believe that all things were created by and for Jesus Christ, God the Son. They acknowledge the trinity nature of God, but worship the one and only true Almighty God, and make Him their personal God, Lord and Master of their lives.

All true fundamentalist Christians are evangelical Christians because they follow Jesus and Jesus told them to preach the gospel to everyone and to everything throughout all the world.

It is very hard to be an evangelical Christian and not be fundamentalist. However we can often see in the stereotypical example of the charlatan TV "evangelists" who are not at all interested in God's will, but in their own power or fortune. They are rather like those who claim to be doctors, but who do not have a license, training, schooling, or right to practice. Such charlatans are certainly not Christians and certainly not evangelical at heart and purpose.

Answer 9

Fundamentalist refers to a set of beliefs about the nature of faith and its practice. Evangelical refers to an attitude about how those beliefs should be expressed. Many evangelicals are fundamentalists, but the concepts are neither identical nor exclusive.

Answer 10

An evangelical is one who feels the need to spread Christianity to other people. Fundamentalists are old-school Christians, who do things the 'old' way, and frown upon any attempts to change Christian practices. They follow the Bible tit-for-tat.

For all sakes and purposes, if one is the latter, they are likely going to be the former also, since the Bible does tend to encourage evangelism.