Who Are the Real Christian Fundamentalists?

Jim Lindgren of the Volokh Conspiracy:

CNN is broadcasting a mini-series on “fundamentalism”: Jewish, Muslim and Christian. While these forms of fundamentalism have a few things in common, the dissimilarities are so stark that carelessly juxtaposing them tends to create a false sense of similarity.

Both academics and journalists sometimes depict Christian fundamentalists in the U.S. as particularly dangerous people, but these accounts seldom report what sorts of people tend to be fundamentalists in the U.S.

The group that most disproportionately belongs to fundamentalist Protestant sects is African-American females. In the 2000-2006 General Social Surveys, 62% of African-American females (and 54% of African American males) report that they belong to Protestant denominations that the GSS classifies as fundamentalist.

Read the whole thing.