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Rick Warren

Evangelicals are often equated with fundamentalists or the religious right, which annoys Warren. Although he's politically conservative - opposing abortion and gay marriage and supporting the death penalty - he pushes a much broader agenda and disdains both politics and fundamentalism.
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Warren predicts that fundamentalism, of all varieties, will be "one of the big enemies of the 21st century."

"Muslim fundamentalism, Christian fundamentalism, Jewish fundamentalism, secular fundamentalism - they're all motivated by fear. Fear of each other."

Rick Warren defines Fundamentalists:

WARREN:But what happened is Protestantism split into two wings, the fundamentalists and the mainline churches. And the mainline churches tended to take the social action issues of Christianity – caring for the sick, for the poor, the dispossessed, racial justice and things like that. Today there really aren't that many Fundamentalists left; I don't know if you know that or not, but they are such a minority; there aren't that many Fundamentalists left in America.

Anyway, the fundamentalist and evangelical movement said they were just going to care about personal salvation when they split from the mainline churches. What happened is the mainline churches cared about the social morality and the evangelicals cared about personal morality. That's what happened when they split. But they really are all part of the total gospel – social justice, personal morality and salvation. And today a lot more people, evangelicals, are caring about those issues.

Well, the other thing that I would say is that we need – and I'm not speaking of you here – but we need to help journalists use the right terms. There is a difference between "evangelicalism" and "fundamentalism" and "the religious right." And people use them like they are synonyms. They are not – they are very, very different. I am an evangelical. I'm not a member of the religious right and I'm not a fundamentalist.

Now the word "fundamentalist" actually comes from a document in the 1920s called the Five Fundamentals of the Faith. And it is a very legalistic, narrow view of Christianity, and when I say there are very few fundamentalists, I mean in the sense that they are all actually called fundamentalist churches, and those would be quite small. There are no large ones.

MR. WILLIAMS: What's the difference between a fundamentalist and a Pentecostal?

MR. WARREN: A fundamentalist would deny the miraculous today. They would – for instance, one of the hallmarks of a Pentecostal would be praying for miracles of healing and speaking in an unknown tongue and things like that. Those would be hallmarks of Pentecostalism and fundamentalists would say, "Oh no, all that stuff died at the end of the New Testament." They would not accept the miraculous today.

MR. WILLIAMS: So what's the difference between you and the fundamentalists?

MR. WARREN: Well, I don't agree with that. I believe there are miracles today.

MR. CROMARTIE: Let me give you a quick answer to that. The difference between an evangelical and a fundamentalist is an evangelical is someone who really, really, really likes Billy Graham. A fundamentalist is someone who thinks Billy Graham is a liberal.

MR. WARREN: That would be true. A fundamentalist basically would look at many others in Christianity and say, "You're not even a Christian." They'd say it about Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Catholics. You know – even evangelicals. It's interesting – maybe 15-20 years ago, Falwell stopped calling himself a fundamentalist, and actually left the fundamentalist fellowship, and he went and joined the Southern Baptist Convention – which is as wide – I mean you can find anything in that.