The 2001 American Religious Identification Survey found that 27,000 Americans identified themselves as fundamentalist Christians in 1990, and 61,000 gave themselves that identifier in 2001.

For an overview of the development of fundamentalism from its Christian roots a century ago, see this entry from the online version of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Society.

Read a transcript of an Oct. 21, 2005, interview by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life with Robert A. Pape after a forum titled, “In God’s Name? Evaluating the Links Between Religious Extremism and Terrorism.”

Read a July 23, 2011 Christianity Today article posted by Ed Stetzer about the danger of immediately associating the label “fundamentalist” with terrorism or extremism, as in the case of Norway killer, Anders Behring Breivik.

Read a Feb. 12, 2013 Patheos article by Roger E. Olson that analyzes the commonly misused word, “fundamentalism,” and what it means to be a religious fundamentalist.

Read a May 30, 2013 Huffington Post article about religious “fundamentalism” and Oxford University’s research scientist Kathleen Taylor’s claim that it can be treated as a mental illness and cured.

Read an April 22, 2007 New York Times review of the popular novel The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2007) by Mohsin Hamid that studies the constructed relationship between Islam and fundamentalism by Americans after 9/11.

Peter A. Huff is chairman of the department of religious studies at Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. Huff teaches courses on global fundamentalism and is the author of What Are They Saying About Fundamentalisms? (Paulist Press, 2008).

Camille Lewis is chairwoman of the department of rhetoric and public address at Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C., and author of Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism.