Fair enough, Ben. I actually singled you out primarily because of your remarkably perceptive coinage of the term “fundie porn.” That, and a couple of thread titles I seem to remember. But considering that the objects of the term receive it (justifiably, IMHO) as derogatory and mean-spirited, I would suggest that using “fundamentalist” would promote useful dialogue about ideas without any unnesessary rhetorical marginalization.
Also, I for one get “FC” with no problem, at least in context.
In my younger days, the phrase “Fundamentalist Christian” didn’t have a specific meaning to me. So I broke it down and assumed that it meant any Christian who believed in the fundamental aspects of Christianity (believing in Jesus, that he is the messiah, that you can be forgiven through him). With time I learned that it was basically a term you wouldn’t want to be called. Even then I wasn’t sure why. UNTIL I saw who was being called a “fundie.” Then I realized it was basically people who thump bibles, but rarely open them, their habitat consists of nice houses, they wear suits, and announce their generosity with trumpets, and they live on a diet consisting mostly of crow.
I agree with deb2world. By Fenris’ definition of Fundamentalist Christian, I qualify. (As I’ve said before, I’m fairly sure the folks to which that label would be applied would be highly offended if I and others of my faith are looped into that description.) However, I don’t believe in the “God hates Fags” garbage that you mentioned above and I find the Jack Chick tracts highly offensive. So I feel that painting the entire group that falls in such a broad description with such a derogatory term is more than harsh, it’s narrow minded.
Most humble apologies for the botched coding above.
In common usage, “Fundamentalist” no longer means “one who believes in fundamentals”; it has come to take on a very specific definition referring to a very specific group of people. It’s not the only word this has happened to, ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’ and ‘gay’ are big examples that spring to mind. Saying that “fundamentalist” includes someone who fits the dictionary meaning is as much in error as saying the same about any of the other terms. The evolution of language in action.
As for the slang…considering when it’s usually used, of course “fundie” is meant to be derogatory. That’s not the point. For the people using it, even the longer form “Fundamentalist” has the exact same meaning, the exact same negative connotation, and would be said/written in the exact same disparaging tone.
It’s not the word that matters, it’s the inflection behind it.
Except, of course, that fundamentalists don’t object to “fundamentalist.”
No problem. I wasn’t upset or offended in any way by your post!
It’s just that the “Jews, race or religion?” debate is of those arguments that rarely goes anywhere and is often so mixed up with other stuff from Zionism to anti-Semitism to Nazi beliefs that it never goes anywhere.
Fenris
FTR, Duck Duck Goose refers to herself as a “Fightin’ Fundie,” and I’m not under the impression that she coined the term after seeing “fundie” in use at the SDMB, but I could be wrong. Not that it necessarily affects the debate either way, just offering it up as an additional datum.
Not really. Or, at least, too broadly painted.
I have immense respect for most of the Fundamentalists that I know, who hold to their faith in the face of many aspects of society (from science classrooms to the depiction of sex on TV) that tear at their beliefs. When I have ever used fundie, it has been exactly limited to those Creationists, such as Hovind, who have repeatedly lied to try to impose Creationism in biology classes or to Fred Phelps and company. For example, I do not generally label Falwell a fundie, as I suspect that he is simply straightjacketed into a particular mindset by his beliefs. (Although his distribution of the Clinton “murder” tape got his name added to my list of Nine Commandment Christians.)
The argument may carry some weight that using the term fundie, even to be dismissive of jerks and haters, is offensive. The assertion that everyone who uses fundie feels the same way toward Fundamentalists is simply not correct.
How true. I would also advocate that words not only affect the receiver… but also the giver.
How un-P.C. of me. Perhaps I should refer to them as the Theologically Challenged?
I have always used “fundie” without qualms, not as a perjorative, but because it’s short. IRL I was close friends with a some fundementalist Christians who informally referred to themselves as “fundies,” e.g. “Well, we fundies might disagree with that statement,” or “We’re going to have a fundie picnic this weekend with some folks from church,” etc.
Since it has been brought to my attention that some fundi–er, I mean, fundementalists–are offended by it, I’ve tried to avoid using it, but it’s a habit of many years.
I think “fundie” is more on the lines of “bitch” than raghead. Slightly offensive, but useful shorthand. If I tell you at work that I work for a real bitch, you get an instant picture of my boss (I don’t, although I have). If I say my boss is a fundie, you also have a pretty good picture of what I mean.
I have used fundie, and I’ve almost always used it in a derrogotory sense (I’ve also used bitch, but hesitate to use (and its hard to even type) nigger, kike, cunt, fag, etc.) But I don’t use fundie to mean that deeply committed conservative christian I work with who thinks his religion is his own business.
It does get thrown around this board way too much, and used way too broadly around here (and I may be guilty of it)
Now that I’ve cleaned off my keyboard after bagkitty’s post, here’s my 2¢:
‘Fundamentalist’ is a term used by fundamentalists themselves; they coined it, as has been pointed out earlier in the thread. It has a fairly clear meaning, having to do with believing in the historical and scientific truth of the Bible, as well as its theological truth.
One who is a fundamentalist is more or less in the same place as one who believes in Biblical inerrancy. (I’ve been repeatedly told that there are some distinctions between one and the other, but those distinctions seem to be too fine for my mind to be able to remember for very long.)
All this is by way of saying that ‘fundamentalist’, within Christianity, is not a derogatory term (although non-fundamentalists have been known to use it that way) but a term that has been defined and is used by the people it describes. Driving by churches, one more than occasionally sees the word ‘fundamental’ used on their signboards, to let the potential churchgoer know where they’re coming from.
We’re going to abbreviate frequently-used long terms. I mean, does ‘by the way’ need an abbreviation that desperately? But it’s got one. Given my regular participation in religious discussions, I’m certainly going to abbreviate ‘fundamentalist’ somehow, and I don’t see ‘FC’ for ‘fundamentalist Christian’ gaining wide recognition.
So I don’t see a comfortable alternative to ‘fundie’ as an abbreviation for ‘fundamentalist’. I would say that ‘fundie’ is vulnerable to being used disparagingly in the same manner that ‘fundamentalist’ itself is.
In the past few decades, ‘fundamentalist’ has come to have been identified with an evangelical Church Militant due to the rise of Falwell, Robertson, Dobson, the LaHayes, Wildmon, Schlafly, and all them sorts, and a whole army of local preachers, less well known, taking the same positions: that America somehow belongs to them (‘Christian nation’, ‘take back America’, etc.), and that, despite the First Amendment, this type of Christianity is owed special standing and recognition in our public institutions, and that its beliefs (creationism), tenets (the Ten Commandments), practices (organized prayer), and dislikes (gays) deserve special respect and pride of place within those institutions.
While I realize that many fundamentalist Christians do not approve of this sort of Church Militant stance, the reality is that opposition to it within the conservative Christian community, by whatever name, has been muted. The balance of opinion in the pews of fundamentalist churches clearly leans strongly toward belief in and/or sympathy for the Church Militant position.
Given the prevalence of the Church Militant within fundamentalism, and given the low regard for the Church Militant outside of conservative Christianity, it’s not surprising that a certain amount of low regard clings to whatever term or abbreviation is used as a handle for any portion of Christianity that heavily coincides with the Church Militant, when used by those that the term doesn’t apply to.
So I’m going to keep using ‘fundie’. I’ll try to be careful of how I use it, but I already am aware that it applies to real people with real lives: they’re people I’ve lived among and fellowshipped with; they’ve been my professorial colleagues and my students; they’re still my in-laws. So I’ll try to use both ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘fundie’ in as respectful a manner as possible, but I’m sure that my use of the term will be more than occasionally colored by my feelings about the Church Militant. Far more often than not, they’re the same people, and as a result, it’s frequently hard to emotionally separate one from the other.
I’d certainly understand someone being offended by “fundie” and have never used the term butt anybody that wants to call me a “modie” or “conservie” is more than welcome.
A big gold star to Buckner for his masterful disquisition on the history of Fundamentalism on Page 1. Buckner, you may put a “Good Helper!” sticker on your chart… 
PLD: The term “Fightin’ Fundie” was in my life LONG before I met the SDMB. Years. Decades, even. My best friend in high school was the daughter of an Assembly of God pastor (Pentecostal, you know–“holy rollers”), and I picked up the term from her. She was proud to call herself that, and she was also pleased to refer to herself as a “holy roller”, too.
Not all of us are totally devoid of senses of humor when it comes to our religion.
The term “Fundie” used in a derogatory, knee-jerk sense on the boards seems to be exclusive to two kinds of threads: the Creationism vs. Evolution threads, and the “SOCAS” threads, where it’s used as verbal shorthand for “person who believes in Special Creation” and “person who believes America is a Christian nation.” I don’t see any way to make the folks involved stop doing this, so I just don’t worry about it.
But thank you, Fenris, for thinking of us. 
Terminology sucks. I look at any political discussion and it rapidly begins liberal (ha ha) usage of words like, well, liberal, conservative, right-wing-nutjob, leftist, democrats, republicans, etc ad nauseum and I do mean nauseum. Like, for instance, the frequent (and loud) discussions of the two guys in my row at work who start a discussion with “Those damn liberals are now…” How do you combat usage of a legitimate word in an inappropriate way to intentionally belittle a set of ideas or a political position by the virtues of that position itself?
And I think that’s at the root of the usage of “fundie”. The position itself is what is being attacked, by virtue of what that position stands for. Calling them a “fundamentalist christian” instead of “fundie” will not stop it, no matter how much you want to believe that the shorter word is an epithet but the longer word is just a self-applied label. Like the examples above, a person can identify himself with the left without being a leftist, and a person can be on the right of the spectrum without being a rightwinger.
I’ll throw another one out for comparison and see what people think. In the recent string of moon hoax believer threads, a term has popped up as an abbreviation - HB or HBers - Hoax Believers. This is used as a quick reference to the people intended, but it also has a derogatory sense to it - especially because the people using it have a derogatory attitude to the idiots - I mean posters espousing those views. 
So is it inappropriate to label people like SeeThruArt as an HBer because of the impervious-to-logic views they are spewing?
What comes to mind when “fundie” is used is a Pat Robertson, a Jerry Falwell, a Fred Phelps. The word “fundie” is an epithet because the people to which it applies are despised. Is the word “rapist” an epithet or a descriptive term? Is “child molester” an epithet or a descriptive term? I submit that “fundie” is the same way - it is an epithet only because the actions of the people described are vile. If I apply that label to a person, it can be descriptive, but you get a negative connotation for that person because of what it stands for. And just like “child molester”, it can be inappropriately applied. Note that common usage of the word does not apply to every conservative christian. Just the loud-mouthed, self-righteous, hate-filled ones.
I’m torn; on the one hand, I can see where a fundamentalist could consider “fundie” as a slur. On the other hand, it seems that taking that sensitive of a viewpoint would mean that “tree-hugger” and “bleeding-heart liberal” would also be slurs as well.
I think the big issue is that, for the majority of people, “fundie” is not currently considered offensive and insensitive (at least not on the level that “towelhead” would be). Generalizing broadly, I think the typical Westerner would be more upset at the use of “jap” or “towelhead” than s/he would at the use of “fundie” – because Japanese and Middle Eastern people have made it known that they do not wish to be referred to with those words, while AFAIK fundamentalists have not spoken up against the use of the word “fundie”.
Perhaps this will change as time goes by (and the fundamentalists complain more), but for the time being, I’ll leave “fundie” in the “mildly annoying but inoffensive terms” bucket.
Aren’t they? They certainly seem slurs to me, though admittedly ones that aren’t considered very offensive by most people. Nevertheless, they’re both disparaging labels meant to dismiss the groups they’re applied to as inferior in some way, and what is a slur if not that?
FWIW, awhile back, in a thread about Basic morality and right and wrong, I used the word “fundamental” to mean basic. I said something to the effect that “certain things were fundamental truths that everyone accepted”. Someone (I don’t remember who and I’m too lazy to search) immediatly chimed in that “fundamental” things are hardly accepted by everyone. It seemed strange to me at the time. It was as thought the word “fundamental” had no meaning other than a religious one. I threw this in because, to me, it adds a little fuel to the fire that fundie is a slur.
OC,TJMO. ICBW.