FUNDAMENTALISTS. - This term has two distinct meanings.
I. - The first denotes those Protestants who, concerned by the multiplication of sects and doctrines, have sought to establish a certain number of “fundamental” principles common to the greatest possible number of “Churches.” They have sought to divide fundamental principles into several categories, grouping in the first
the truths universally accepted, in the second those upon which the majority of the various sects agree, and in the third those upon which at least the most important and widespread “Churches” concur. But such a “canon” is far from meeting with general approval, and fundamentalism thus understood is reduced to a utopia, without concrete results.
II. - The second meaning of the term indicates a recent movement, widespread especially in the United States, whose followers, in clear opposition to rationalist and modernist tendencies, accept as fundamental certain truths, such as the inerrancy of Holy Scripture, the reality of the miracles attested by the Bible, the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection of Christ, as well as the possibility that He may have taken upon Himself the sins of the human race. These f., who are—at least in a certain sense—the Protestants least distant from Catholicism, are sometimes imbued with “Adventist” errors and believe in “millenarian” eschatology.
Renzo U. Momini