Andrew Sullivan Likens Christian Conservatives To Islamists; Coins Term "Christianists"

Man, where's that Andrew Sullivan Outrage Meter when I need it most?

So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all.

No, not at all, darling.

I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Bear in mind, four years ago Andrew Sullivan was complaining of a similar term used on the left to describe Christians-- "Christers," as the British left likes to call them.

What a difference the FMA has made. Now he's coining his own cutesy-derogatory terms for Christians who don't follow Church of St. Andrew of the Sacred Heart-Ache.

His point, incidentally, is childishly stupid. Everyone's politics are partly formed by their moral and religious beliefs, or lack thereof, or hatred thereof. It's a rather stupid thing to note that conservative Christians' politics are indeed shaped by 1) conservatism 2) Christiantity and 3) Christian conservatism.

The whole hook of this piece -- the big reveal -- is that he's invented a cute new word for this strange new phenomenon.

posted by Ace at 01:51 PM

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