Posted on 05/12/2006 9:47:02 PM PDT by Unam Sanctam
What does the term "Christianist" mean and why is Time peddling it?
Time columnist Andrew Sullivan uses the term to describe evangelicals with whom he disagrees. He says his goal is to "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."
He explains further, "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."
Most pundits have rejected "Christianist" because it obviously tries to link Islamists and those evangelicals Mr. Sullivan loathes. He is attempting to dress up hate speech as simple precision, but given the vast spectrum of political opinions among believers on the center-right, "Christianist" is a howler. Still, no one should be laughing when a once-respected newsweekly defines a huge portion of the American mainstream as the equivalent of the Islamists who attacked the country on 9/11. Be prepared as others pick up Time's term.
"He says his goal is to "take back the word Christian"
Andrew Sullivan can't take back what he never possessed in the first place.
The "All fundamentalisms are the same" meme, again. The absurdity of this belief would be obvious to a five year old--Christians don't behead people, last time I looked--but not to vile Christian-baiters like our bug-chasin', bareback-lovin' Andrew.
I've been fighting the use of the word "fundamentalist" to describe Islamists for some time. When applied to Christians it describes a very specific group with very specific beliefs.
"He says his goal is to "take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist."
The freaks of this world are not surprising. Jesus never called his followers "christians". the followers later identified with this roman tag due to their default reluctance to deny their faith. The 'christian' label is irrelevant. Following Jesus in your heart is a passion for eternal glory. boy, am i getting sappy in my older years.
Good sappy, though... :)
***What does the term "Christianist" mean and why is Time peddling it? ***
Much like a local lib letter writer who constantly uses the term "Christian Taliban" in his datribes.
It's an attempt to further secularize our society and demonize any hint of "religion" or "faith" that dares to oppose or question the intelligentsia of the left-wing MSM and elitist left-wingers who are busily designing their version of utopian social "policy".
Hmm, was that a bit of a run-on sentence?:)
He'd be on much more familiar ground, attempting to popularize use of the term "penist" to describe himself and others like him.
"Expect nothing less from a homosexual."
Is that right? Gee, I guess I was dead-on about that "further secularization/left-wing version of social utopian policy" thing, lol.
he probably made up the new word in a bath house. :\
PBS hack.
Sullivan thought long and hard about how to coin a catchy slur. That's all the term "Christianist" is about, nothing more.
So are the people who agree with Sullivan, "homosexualists"?
The word "Christian" is thrown about in ignorance as though anyone has even bothered to note what Christian scripture defines the concept to mean. A follower of Christ is well defined in the New Testament. But, there are plenty of 'houses of philosophy' as opposed to 'houses of worship' that have created their own religion as a spinoff from Christianity and seek to pretend they're the same thing. The Christian Scripture itself denounces this approach noting that one cannot follow two masters - Christ and a philosopher in this case. Wherever that happenstance stands, it is not Christianity that one is looking at, it is a philosophy begging a label inspite of itself. Some of them may be friendly to Christianity; but, that doesn't make them Christian.. any more than a Krishan becomes Budhist by clothing himself in Shaolin robes and meditating over thoughts of Krishna. Sheepdipping one's self in something in pretense is nothing more than fraud.
This said, the guy's approach is more than a little misguided. Knowing what one wants to say is no substitute for being right when saying it.
sullivan needs to be tagged as a sodomist.
Idiotist
No Cheers, unfortunately.
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