Fundamentalism Pt. 2

As a teenager, when I used the word, I meant something approximate to what the original term meant: that I subscribed to the truth of the Bible and the teachings of the Church. However, I also intended it to imply that I took the Bible absolutely literally and that the earth was 6000 years old and all the baggage which that entails. After all, you have to remember that I came from a cultish school which administered a home schooling system based on Southern Baptist curriculum from the seventies, and a less than intellectually rigorous church background. So to me at the time, to be a 'fundamentalist' was to be the right kind of Christian - the non-liberal kind. Such was my upbringing.

I doubt very much that the person I was speaking to had any idea what I meant. I didn't really, myself.

I understand that the word today has had its meaning misappropriated. Nevertheless, it is a very loaded term and I think most people have an instinctive understanding of what it implies, helped along by the vocal far right Christians in the US and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. I guess today it implies a literal reading and application of texts: a tendency to retreat into dogma when confronted: vociferous and 'militant' reaction to opposing views: perhaps also a tendency to lack intellectual rigour and an unwillingness to consider alternative points of view.

I agree absolutely that the original meaning of the term, as an objective definition involving the 'fundamentals' of orthodox Christian faith, has been distorted over time, but it does mean something different now, something subjective; it is a cultural term used by Christians and non-Christians alike, loaded with the meaning that I describe above. I guess that's what I was trying to address. If I were using the term in a purely theological discussion, I'd use it differently; but here I'm using it in a cultural sense, the kind that, for instance, journalists might use...

Thoughts?