Frontline Fundamentalism & Me: The Irony of the Irony

def. Irony: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result.

And this in 1986:

During Fundamentalism’s history before 1950, the terms evangelical and conservative were virtually synonymous with Fundamentalist (David Beale, In Pursuit of Purity: American Fundamentalism Since 1950, p. 9). I penned in my copy as a college-age student, “I wonder if this is reversing?” In other words, even then I suspected the day would soon return when conservative evangelicals were the real fundamentalists.