Mousethief,

I never said that "a fundamentalist is someone who is going back to the fundamentals of Christianity". I said that a fundamentalist PROTESTANT is someone who is going back to the fundamentamentals of PROTESTANTISM.

In fact, I emphatically deny that Protestant fundamentalists go back to the fundamentals of CHRISTIANITY. That is the very reason I left fundamentalism and Protestantism. If they did go back to the fundamentals of Christianity itself, back to before Luther and Calvin, back to before the Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox split, before even the Nicene creed, back to the New Testament itself, they would simply be Christians.

However, many of the fundamentals of Protestantism ARE mentioned in the Nicene Creed. For example:
1. God the Creator
"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen..."
2. The Deity of Christ
"...We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being, with the Father..."
3. The Virgin Birth of Christ
"...by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man."
4. The Personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit
"...We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets..."
5. The Crucifixion
"...he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.
6. The Atonement
"...For our sake he was crucified..."
7. The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the Dead
"...On the third day he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures..."
8. Judgment to Come
"... he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,..."

You will notice that these are the very teachings which are common to the fundamentalist Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox churches, and the Roman Catholic Church, but which some "Modernist" Protestants deny.

My point is that the term "fundamentalist" does not mean whatever you or I or Billy Graham want it to mean. The fundamentals of Protestantism are a matter of historical record. If you and I decide, for example, that refusal to listen to jazz is "Protestant fundamentalism", then you and I are simply wrong. Opposition to jazz is not fundamental to Protestantism. That is the historical fact. If Preacher Jones of the First Fundamental Church of Lower Podunk says otherwise, then he is wrong too.

Kent