WHY?

Why? A question I have been musing on in recent days. Why is there the current, overt interest (current is a bit relative, this has been going on for well over a decade) in all things within the conservative wing of evangelicalism by some fundamentalists? Why does a fundamentalist college send its students to T4G, or fundamentalist colleges/seminaries invite conservative evangelicals in to speak on their platform and teach in their classrooms? These kinds of overtures call into question the validity of the original break back in the 40's/50's.

I know it is not because they (the conservative evangelicals) are writing the books, or that they are defending this or that. The very nature of evangelicalism causes them to have to be writing and defending. The break that brought about new evangelicalsim was in part because of their desire to hold hands (however loosely or tightly) with liberals, thus creating a rather large "tent" as it were, stretching from liberalism on the left and going all the way to the break at the right with fundamentalism. It seems evident over the past 50+ years since that break that this "tent" has been stretched much further than the original evangelicals thought would happen. And with this stretching has brought about the need by some to articulate/defend their position on various Biblical issues as they came under attack. Their books have been common fare for fundamentalists over the past 50+ years without any overt interest by fundamentalists toward evangelicalism, so why now?

I also know it is not because we (fundamentalists) think that they (conservative evangelicals) are not brothers in Christ. While I am admittedly rather limited in my knowledge here, I don't know of any mainstream fundamentalist who has declared that any conservative evangelical (or some evangelicals for that matter) is not a fellow believer. Are there fringe elements that claim to be fundamentalists who have said such things, probably, but then because of their own aberrant teachings about various issues they have moved outside of mainstream fundamentalism and outside of serious discussion. So again, why the overt interest now?

Which brings me to my question, why? Anyone reading this, feel free to drop your thoughts and let's talk.