1. Fundamentalists and Evangelicals in America
This section starts with an explanation of the use of the terms "fundamentalist" and "evangelical".  "Fundamentalist" as a term seems to have started in 1920 by a Baptist editor who used the word to describe those who would "do battle royal for the Fundamentals" of Christianity in a rapidly modernizing world. Fast forward to 1940's - Rev. Billy Graham popularizes evangelism.  Not only should you defend fundamental Christianity, you should attempt to convert others. So, they aren't the same, but according to Altemeyer's studies, fundamentalists tend to be evangelical, and evangelicals tend to be fundamentalists, so we're basically talking about the same people in the US (and Canada).  Certainly, fundamentalists exist in all religions, but Fundamentalism has a particular meaning in the US.

2. Fundamentalism and Right-Wing Authoritarianism

Go figure, fundamentalists mostly score very high on the RWA scale.  According to Dr. Altemeyer:

A solid majority of them are authoritarian followers. The two traits,
authoritarianism and fundamentalism, go together so well that nearly everything I
have said about high RWAs in the previous chapters also applies to high Religious
Fundamentalists.

Since authoritarianism can produce fundamentalism if one grows up
submissively in a religiously conservative family, and (conversely), fundamentalism
can promote authoritarianism with its emphases on submission to religious authority,
dislike of out-groups, sticking to the straight and narrow, and so on, one immediately
wonders which is the chicken and which is the egg.

3. Fundamentalism as a template for prejudice

Who are you?  If asked that question, say by someone you've just met, would you mention your religious affiliation?  A fundamentalist likely would say "I'm a Christian" along with "My name is John, I'm 37, and I own a cleaning business".  People who are religions fundamentalists tend to very strongly, you could say extremely, self-identify with their religion, especially if they were raised in an environment that encouraged it and discouraged contact with out groups.  That can create a very strong "us versus them" mentality, which in turn sets up a fundamentalist perfectly for racial, ethnic, or sexual prejudice.

Dr. Altemeyer has a Religious Ethnocentrism scale that he uses, and fundamentalists tend to agree with statements like,

Our country should always be a Christian country, and other beliefs should be ignored in our public institutions.

Nonchristian religions have a lot of weird beliefs and pagan ways that Christians should avoid having any contact with.

All people may be entitled to their own religious beliefs, but I don't want to associate with people
whose views are quite different from my own.

They disagree with statements like these:

If there is a heaven, good people will go to it no matter what religion they belong to, if any.

You can trust members of all religions equally; no one religion produces better people than any
other does.

People who belong to different religions are probably just as nice and moral as those who belong to mine.

Charming.  

4. The Mental life of Evangelists

Now this is where it gets really interesting.  That nasty tendency to have double standards rears it's ugly head again, as does dogmatism.  Not surprisingly, fundamentalist Christians would have no problem with Christianity and proselytizing inserted into public education.  That would be the will of the majority, they say, so if you don't like it you can pay for private education or leave.  But if presented with the same scenario in an Arab country using Islam as the religious example , heavens no! Unacceptable!

When you asked them why, they said that obviously this would be unfair to people who help pay for public schools but who want their children raised in some other religion. If you ask them if the majority in an Arab country has a right to have its religion taught in public
schools, they say no, that the minority has rights too that must be respected. Nobody's
kids should have another religion forced upon them in the classroom, they say.

Altemeyer then goes on to talk about the fundamentalist obsessive opposition to the theory of Evolution.  I suggest for something fun and illuminating that you read this section, and then go to this link (there's sound, watch out!)- because ladies and gentlemen, Kirk Cameron is going to take you to school on evolution.  Excuse me while I die laughing, after which I will surely burn in hell for all eternity.

5. Happiness, Joy, and Comfort

Fundamentalists tend to poll very high in happiness - their faith, they say, brings them enormous amounts of happiness.  So why would anybody want to leave?
This chapter goes a bit into zealotry and proselytizing.  Altemeyer gives a survey to the parents of some of his students and finds an apparent double standard among the Fundamentalists, so he then gives the same survey to the students:

I probed this apparent double standard with a large sample of Manitoba students. Half were told a troubled teenager who had been raised in a strong Christian family went to an atheist for advice. "Would it be wrong for the atheist to try to get the teen to abandon his family's teachings?" A solid majority of both low and high
RWA students (70 percent in each case) said yes, it would be wrong.

The other half of the sample got the mirror image situation of a troubled teen raised an atheist who went to a Christian for advice. A solid majority (61 percent) of the low RWAs again said it would be wrong for the Christian to try to get the teen to abandon his family's teachings. But only 22 percent of the high RWAs thought proselytizing would be wrong in this case. Instead, the great majority of them thought it would be right for a Christian to try to convert the youth. That's a double standard big enough to drive a busload of missionaries through.

6. Keeping the Faith, Not

Does all that zealous proselytizing, evangelizing, and raising children in a Fundamentalist bubble pay off?  Dr. Altemeyer says it actually can backfire.  If you go to Kirk and what's-his-names creepy/funny segment  "Hell's Best Kept Secret"  he teaches you how to bypass that intellect so you can convert the unsaved because so many people end up leaving the church and not being decision makers for Jesus anymore. Or something. He literally admits, and is proud of, that they try to bypass the intellect.   The guy is clearly bananas.

7. Shortfalls in Fundamentalists' Behavior: Hypocrisy

Ronald J. Sider, a theologian at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently
followed up Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind with The Scandal of
the Evangelical Conscience. He observed that, despite Jesus' unequivocal stand on the
permanence of marriage, evangelical Christians divorce as often as others do. And
despite Jesus' great concern for the poor, the political agenda of prominent evangelical
political movements rarely includes justice for the impoverished. The number of
unmarried couples living together jumped more in the Bible Belt during the 1990s,
Sider pointed out, than in the nation as a whole. Of the evangelical youth who took a
"True Love Waits" pledge to abstain from intercourse until marriage, 88% broke it,
he reported. Evangelicals proved more likely to object to having African-American
neighbors than any other religious group. He reminded his readers that many
evangelical leaders either opposed the civil rights movement or else said nothing. And
"saved" men were reported just as likely to use pornography, and to physically abuse
their wives, as "unsaved" men.

Ahem.  This is one of the main things that keeps secular, and also a lot of religious types from taking Fundamentalism at all seriously as a path to enlightenment.  YOU think you need to save ME?  With your "cheap grace"?  Please.  If you really want to make some points, why don't you start with actually reading the Bible...

I'll let Dr. Altemeyer wrap this one up:

A Few Surprising Findings about Fundamentalists. Since fundamentalists insist
the Bible is the revealed word of God and without error, you would think they'd have
read it. But you'd often be wrong. I gave a listing of the sixty-six books in the King
James Bible to a large sample of parents and asked them, "How many of these have
you read, from beginning to end? (Example, if you have read parts of the Book of
Genesis, but not all of it, that does not count.)" Nineteen percent of the Christian High
fundamentalists said they had never read any of the books from beginning to end,
which was neatly counterbalanced by twenty percent (but only twenty percent) who
said they had read all sixty-six. (I tip my hat to anyone who put her head down and
plowed through the first nine chapters of Chronicles I. Look it up.)
On the average, the high fundamentalists said they had read about twenty of the
books in the Bible--about a third of what's there. So they may insist that the Bible is
totally accurate in all that it teaches, but most of them have never read a lot of what
they're so sure of. They are likely, again, merely repeating something they were told
while growing up, or accepted when they "got religion." Most of them literally don't
know all that they're talking about. (But they are Biblical scholars compared to others:
Most of the non-fundamentalist parents had not read even one chapter.)

I couldn't agree with him more on this:

The Most Amazing Discovery of All (to me, anyway). Isn't there something
profoundly strange about the fact that so many fundamentalists have apparently
skipped over so much of the Bible? Wouldn't you read the Bible, cover to cover, over
and over, until the end of your days, if you really thought this was the revealed word
of God? Let's remember who that is: GOD, damn it all, the almighty, eternal, omnipresent--
not to mention all-knowing--creator of the universe. What else could you
read that would be as important as God's message, if you believed that's what the
Bible is? What could be one-zillionth as important? What on earth is going on? Don't
the fundamentalists themselves believe what they preach to everyone else?

Okay, book clubbers, there you have it!  Let 'er rip.