Christianism

[chefranden]

My Problem with Christianism

 

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

By ANDREW SULLIVAN

 

May 15, 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.

 

The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. There are very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. That doesn't threaten their faith. Sometimes the contrast helps them understand their own faith better.

 

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.

 

I would say a clear majority of Christians in the U.S. fall into one or many of those camps. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. "Sides are being chosen," Tom DeLay recently told his supporters, "and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will." So Christ is a conservative Republican?

 

Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Ann Coulter, with her usual subtlety, simply calls her political opponents "godless," the title of her new book. And the largely nonreligious media have taken the bait. The "Christian" vote has become shorthand in journalism for the Republican base.

 

What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?

 

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.

 

That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.

[Fweethawt]

Why not just call them Fundies?

 

Seriously now, whoever wrote that article made it more complicated than it has to be.

[Lycorth]

Why not just call them Fundies?

 

Seriously now, whoever wrote that article made it more complicated than it has to be.

 

The telltale sign of a fundy

[Thackerie]

Not sure what to make of this - but I'm never sure what to make of sullivan. He's a conservative catholic and also an HIV+ gay who advertises for partners for unprotected anal sex and he's been condemned for publishing racist articles.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Sullivan

[Antlerman]

Yep. This is what I know is true and it is good to hear it articulated this way.

 

There actually already is a term for the religious right in politics, "Dominionists". However, I like the term Christianist better. In fact, I plan to use it myself now to describe the political wing of the religious conservative.

 

An intersting distinction I should make, that not all biblical literalists are fundamentalists, and not all fundamentalists are Dominionists or "Christianists", and not all Christianists are fundamenalists, but usually are literalists. Confused? Honestly, he is correct that these political Christians are not representitive of mainstream Christianity. Most of them "believe", but are not these sorts of annoying SOB's we all love so much.

[quicksand]

Liberal Xians have no choice than to get organized if they don't want the right to run all over them.

 

But, I would object to that too as much as the right has become the ascendency.

 

"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."

At this point any sane, rational person would then examine the rest of their beliefs going beyond even this foundationalism, but no, the fearful still cling to the religion.

 

But he's correct tho. Doubt does strengthen one's faith. A Christian must ignore all doubts and continue to believe in irrational and incohorent garabage to be faithful. Paul is smiling from rotten teeth in his shallow grave over that one, the bone pile that he is. Really, a Christian can't have any values is really what he's arguing for. Of course, he doesn't see this enormous pandora's box he's opened, but continues happily as a Christian in cognitive dissonance and irrationality like the rest of them.

 

What a fucking mess. Glad I'm free to confront reality and have irreducible values, based in this world, without this trash interfering in my life – except when a Christian gets in my way.

[Padreko]

Andrew Sullivan is twisted....