Richm
Since we have had this debate so many times now, and because there are now seven of us on here who either occasionally or frequently use the term, here is how the man who coined this neologism explains it.
I hope this helps. Really, it is not an attack on Christians.
Quoting Andrew Sullivan, Time Magazine, Sunday, May. 07, 2006, on the term "christianist":
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.
More Related
* My Problem with Christianism
* How the Democrats Got Religion
* Reverend Jim Wallis
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.
end quote
Richm, I genuinely hope that explains things. Lots of people here firmly believe that the major opposition to human status for gays and transgendered comes from the far right Christians. Not surprising, it does. So we describe those people as what they are, instead of attacking all Christians.
Nothing wrong with being a Christian. Nothing wrong with being an observant Jew (since you are Jewish if your mother is Jewish, I make the distinction here, but I know someone will grab that and run with it, otherwise.) Nothing wrong with being a cute witch with a twitchy nose and lots of biceps. Lots wrong with being any of the above and thinking that gives you the right to discriminate against homosexuals and transgendered.
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