I don't understand why there's so much concern about "Islamists" being voted into power in Egypt. Fundamentalist Christians do their best to dominate politics in the United States. So do fundamentalist Jews in Israel.
Why isn't there an equally fervent outcry about "Christianists" or "Judaists" taking over? Well, there is. Andrew Sullivan wrote a good piece about this back in 2006.
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.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1191826,00.html#ixzz1f7ricOmO
It is a shame that 'conservative', 'republican' and 'religious fundamentalist' all go together in the minds of some. I think they have nothing to do with each other.
I would rather have christian fundamentalists living next to me than fundamentalist islamists.
If I do not accept their faith, the former merely want to convert me, the latter want to kill me.
Posted by: tucson | December 01, 2011 at 09:08 PM