Now, if you are looking at the Christian Fundamentalists of the US you can make a strong case that religion is separate from Ethics and Religion, but that is the product of the South's lead in separating Religion from the State in the Post American revolutionary period (and the move was more to cut out the cost of Welfare, i.e.care for the old, widows, disabled and orphans then any "Religious" reason). As a result of the move to separate the Church and State, you ended up with a religious void in the South, out of which fundamentalism arouse in the early 1800s (out of the Baptist and Pentecostal churches. Those churches to this day tend to be more fundamentalist then the main line churches through fundamentalism, as that term is used by fundamentalists, is NOT a core belief in either religion).
One of the divisions between the Catholic Church and Protestantism is "Good Works". i.e, ethics, morality and what you have done for your fellow man. "Good Works" is a core element in Catholicism, but it was rejected by Martin Luther and John Calvin who both decided St Paul's statement that a person can get to heaven on belief alone meant "Good Works" were not needed. While Fundamentalist like citing both John Calvin and Martin Luther, both refused to reject "good works", instead both said a good Christian still did "Good Works" but it was NOT needed to get to heaven. In the early 1800 radical Southern Fundamentalists took this another step in that doing evil things could be undone if you believe in Jesus Christ, this rapid acceptance of fundamentalism is tied in with Slavery
If you study Slavery, you find out about the required amount of brutality needed to maintain such a system. That level of Brutality was the reason slavery died out in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire (Slavery was replaced by Serfdom, but Serfs were free to all but their lords, and to their lords, they only had certain duties, in effect Serfdom was more like serving in the Army then in prison, slavery is more like being in prison). When Slavery was "rediscovered" (Slavery never really ended in Europe, but was rare after the fall of the Roman Empire till the 1400s when it was "Rediscovered" as part of Roman Law. The Readoption of Roman Law and Roman Law replacing custom and barbarian law was one of the key to the Renaissance) Slavery spread into Spain and Italy and from Spain it went to the New World and then into the English Colonies in the 16t00s. Thus slavery was part of the Culture of the South in the 1600s and 1700s, but kept in check by the Anglican Church which accepted Slavery, but refused to say it was right. In the 1790s the South disestablished the Anglican Church, but the real effect of this move was to dechurch almost the whole population and into that vacuum the fundamentalist thrived. especially a they took parts of the bible to justify slavery and all of its inhumanity for such talk appeased the slave owners that what they were doing to their slaves (Beating, whipping and killing them) was sanctioned in the bible (The bible actually does NOT sanction such treatment just report that such treatment was done to slaves in Israel and elsewhere, where the bible does give a value judgment to such treatment it is condemnation, but those sections were ignored by the fundamentalists).
Thus fundamentalism gave slave owners a religion that justified their treatment of their slaves and thus boomed in the South prior to the Civil War. In the post Civil War Era, fundamentalism (mostly Baptists and Pentecostals) again provided the justification for the violence the whites did to the freed slaves, and thus boomed again (Leading to a three way split in many protestant religions, one pro southern white, very pro violent, one southern African Americans, very anti-violent but also turning the other check, and one in the North, much weaker then the other two, except in the main line Protestant churches which were all weak in the South but dominate in the North, that oppose violence, slavery and the hostile treatment of African Americans in the South, but saying any effort to reduce that violence is the duty of the Federal Government. Please note the Federal Government gave up protecting Southern African Americans after 1877 and did nothing for such African Americans till the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act).
Fundamentalism is one of the dangers of NOT having a State Church, or a dominate religion. Such a situation existed in the deep south after 1800 and as a result people looked to preachers with simple solutions to their problems and out of that lack of Religion we get modern American Fundamentalism. That Fundamentalism is tied in with Slavery and Segregation and the use of violence to suppress African Americans. It concentrate of the use of FORCE, it cites the wars of Moses, David, Solomon and the other Kings of Israel, but tend to ignore the Prophets except when the Prophets are involved with violence (Which was the EXCEPTION not the rule in the Bible). In many ways Fundamentalism is almost a Godless Religion, I mean that in the sense that God will NOT judge you on how you lived your life but only if you believe in him, thus anything you do while alive will have no bearing on God's judgment as long as you believe in God. That is a rejection of Jewish, Islamic, Catholic, Doctrine and a radical rewrite of Protestantism (And rewrite both Luther and Calvin would have rejected). You can all Fundamentalism Atheism with a belief in an afterlife (i.e. what you do on earth had no affect on your soul and what happens to your soul in the afterlife) in that God will NOT judge you on what you did while alive, but that you believed in him and that is all that truly matters. That is a rejection of Christianity was taught till fundamentalism was invented in the early 1800s.
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