You judge what a belief system truly, in their foundation, stands for by the actions of the fundamentalists.

I hate to disagree, but if we go by the things Christian fundamentalist’s believe then we're totally hosed. You see, things like handling snakes falls under “Christian Fundamentalism” (after all, they’re simply following scripture). Fundamentalists are also responsible for actions like the pilot who called non-Christians on the plane “crazy”. You can argue all day long that these people have misunderstood the scriptures that they claim to be following, but at the end of the day they’ll say “I’m just following “God’s Word” and that will be the end of the discussion.

Now take my church. We are very evangelical and believe in the divine inspiration of scripture as well as every other essential Christian doctrine (many of which are rejected by “Fundamentalists”). We are “Fundamentalists” in that we do our best in every way to obey scripture; however we also apply critical thinking, contextual reference, historical information, and all sorts of other criteria necessary for properly interpreting scripture. I’d much prefer our church be what people see when they think of the core of Christianity, not those who are risking people’s lives and demeaning them.

Of course this all depends on how you define “fundamentalism”, but you should know most people are going to use it to mean “anyone who blindly follows the tenets of faith” which is a group I don’t want to be lumped into and certainly not the group I’d like Christianity judged by.