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The world's fastest growing religion is not any type of fundamentalism, but the Pentecostal wing of Christianity. While Christian fundamentalists are focused on doctrine and the inerrancy of Scripture, , what is most important for Pentecostals is what they call "spirit-filled" worship, including speaking in tongues and miracle healing. Brazil, where American missionaries planted Pentecostalism in the early 20th century, now has a congregation with its owns TV station, soccer team and political party.

Most scholars of Christianity believe that the world's largest church is a Pentecostal one - the Yoido Full Gospel Church in Seoul, South Korea, which was founded in 1958 by a converted Buddhist who held a prayer meeting in a tent he set up in a slum. More than 250,000 people show up for worship on a typical Sunday.

"If I were to buy stock in global Christianity, I would buy it in Pentecostalism," said Martin E. Marty, professor emeritus of the history of Christianity at the University of Chicago Divinity School and a coauthor of a study of fundamentalist movements. "I would not buy it in fundamentalism."

After the American presidential election in November, some liberal commentators warned that the nation was on the verge of a takeover by Christian "fundamentalists."

But in the United States today, most of the Protestants who make up what some call the Christian right are not fundamentalists, who are more prone to create separatist enclaves, but evangelicals, who engage the culture and share their faith. Professor Marty defines fundamentalism as essentially a backlash against secularism and modernity.

The NYT's understanding of groups and divisions within Christianity is, not surprisingly, incomplete at best. Most Pentecostals will merrily tell you that they are both Evangelical and Fundamentalist. The Assembly of God, which is at the forefront of the explosion of Pentecostal faith worldwide embraces both those titles but treats Pentecostalism as more of a "feature" of their greater faith experience.
The amount of overlap among these categories makes them wholly insufficient for classifying Christianity and Christians today. (I'm speaking only to the most basic and, if you will, fundamental meaning of these categories.)