What is a Christian?

Is everyone being heard from? Or are millions of Christians being left out of the debate about the nature of the religion which bears that name?

My fear is that slowly, inexorably, the word "Christian" is being distorted by a process of collusion involving the granting to fundamentalist Christians a monopoly over the word. I hope I am wrong about this, but I fear that fundamentalists are being assisted by assorted activists who dislike Christianity and atheists happy to define God in the most untenable and ridiculous manner possible. ("If you believe in God, you have to believe in Noah's Ark and that the earth is 7,000 years old!" or "If you believe in Jesus, you must believe that homosexuals should be executed!")

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9077.htm
http://www.trumbore.org/sam/sermons/s6c3.htm

I have long complained about fundamentalists and atheists working hand in hand, and while I don't think it's intentional, it strikes me that both sides have a mutual interest in aiding and abetting each other, for both sides gain.

Many atheists are all too happy to see Christianity equated with what they consider "bigotry," while fundamentalists want nothing more than to have the word "Christianity" mean fundamentalist Christianity only.

When I was a kid, of course, fundamentalist Christianity was one variation of Christianity, but by no means the majority version. What worries me the most right now is to see a movement of fundamentalist Christians claiming that non-fundamentalist Christians are not Christians.

Sayyid Qutb maintained that Muslims who aren't fundamentalists are not "real" Muslims. While I'm not comparing Qutb to American fundamentalist Christians (and I have gone out of my way to distinguish fundamentalist Islam from fundamentalist Christianity), I do think that those who define Christianity as fundamentalism are making a religious and philosophical mistake which will only invite such comparisons, and may further the decline of Christianity. Why is it that more non-fundamentalists fail to speak up?

I don't know, but I do know that as a pagan who considers himself a Christian, I'm not part of the visible spectrum of anything. I don't even count as one of the "moderates" I claim "aren't being heard from." I shrug it all off by saying, "These are only labels, after all!"

Is there any meaning in a label?