I guess calling us fundamentalists is not working for them

This editorial by Andrew Sullivan has so many points that would be interesting to discuss...but I am just going to pick one or two and let you click on the title and read the whole thing for yourself.


My Problem with Christianism

A believer spells out the difference between faith and a political view

Posted Sunday, May 7, 2006

Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.

snip

And there are those who simply believe that, by definition, God is unknowable to our limited, fallible human minds and souls. If God is ultimately unknowable, then how can we be so certain of what God's real position is on, say, the fate of Terri Schiavo? Or the morality of contraception? Or the role of women? Or the love of a gay couple? Also, faith for many of us is interwoven with doubt, a doubt that can strengthen faith and give it perspective and shadow. That doubt means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else.

snip

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. 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.

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So, are you a Christianist? Or are you a true, humble believer who believes that God is truly unknowable, that we really can't know what he is like or what stand he would take when it comes to things like abortion, homosexuality and other "religious right" concerns. I wonder why they think God gave us the Bible if not to reveal himself to us and to give us some direction in regards to what pleases and displeases him. Oh, right, I forgot...they question whether the Bible is from God or if it is a collection of writings from people about their thoughts and opinions about God.

And that bit about not wanting to imply that Christianists favor violence, don't believe it for a minute. He would not have drawn a parallel between Christianists and Islamists if he did not want to put that idea into people's heads. It is a tactic of the left wing media to yoke conservative Christians and conservatives in general with violent acts. Remember Matthew Shepherd? Oklahoma City?

It is scary to me that so many people see conservative Christians who enter the arena of politics as people who would impose a Taliban-like rule on the rest of us. It just isn't true. The real totalitarians are on the left. They are the ones who have given us hate crime legislation and hate speech codes on campus where you are punished for what you think or what you believe, for not being politically correct.

Sorry Mr. Sullivan, I am not buying it.

----Katie