Creed & Politics

Andrew Sullivan has made a splash with his latest column in Time magazine attempting to find a parallel between Islamists and Christianists.

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.

One of the problems with Sullivan's view is that very, very few Christians believe that "religion dictates politics."  Many Christians, including me, think that there are implications for the political views one should hold based on the Bible and Christians values.  However, it's not always a straight line, rather a consequence of a conviction about Christianity.  This is why I'll argue with another Christian over some of these political consequences, but I'll exercise charity toward them because I recognize the distinction between creed and politics.

I think there's something else going on in Sullivan's piece that Ramesh Ponnuru makes clear.  It's much easier to dismiss an different point of view rather than argue with it when you label it and let the rhetorical label carry the polemical weight.

But the terms aren’t at all parallel. If "Christianist" is truly to be the equivalent of "Islamist," then it has to refer only to a tiny number of people who call themselves “Christian reconstructionists” or “theonomists”—people, that is, who think that American governments should impose Biblical law. If, on the other hand, "Christianist" is to refer to people who think abortion should be outlawed, same-sex marriage should not be accorded legal recognition, public schools should include prayer, and so forth, which is how Sullivan actually uses the term, then the parallel isn’t to “Islamists.” It’s to the vast majority of Muslims.

 

In one of his most recent posts, Sullivan tries to maintain that the problem isn't the positions of the "Christianists," but the explicitly religious arguments they make for them. The same problem obtains, since, again, the vast majority of Muslims support various policies on explicitly religious grounds. But it's obviously not true that Sullivan objects only to social conservatives' rhetoric. Making non-religious arguments against early-term abortion has, for example, led him to label me a "religious fundamentalist." Here, again, we have a case of the spurious tiny distinction on which everything hangs. It's okay for Sullivan's opposition to the death penalty to be informed by his religious views. But the minute you take a religiously informed view that he does not share, you're a theocrat.

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Sullivan is trying to disqualify some arguments from the political realm by labeling them extreme and religious.  Look, everyone has a worldview that has consequences for political positions they hold.  We don't exclude some citizens by labeling them and disquaifying them.  We all get to bring our views, the whole variety of them, to the public square, express our opinions, agree and disagree, argue and dispute, and vote.  The non-establishment Constitutional clause was one-way, meant to keep the government out of religion, not Christians out of politics.

Comments

[alan aronson]

"It's much easier to dismiss an different point of view rather than argue with it when you label it and let the rhetorical label carry the polemical weight."

I will assume you all will remember this line the next time some conservative uses liberal as an epithet.

BTW, Sullivan has a point - Schaivo and ID clearly fit the Christianist meme. The lockstep nature of the Christianist/Republican axis is the problem here. This was clearly demonstrated by this blog's reaction to the Evangelical letter on climate change.

[alan aronson]

Here is the horses mouth, the second one relates specifically to the topic.

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/christianism_de_3.html

[alan aronson]

Another tidbit:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114744013066710495

[alan aronson]

And another:

http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2006/05/12/goldberg/index_np.html

[alan aronson]

yet another:
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-college13may13,1,1045463.story

[alan aronson]

and more:
http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/christianism_an.html

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/05/christianism_u.html

[John]

"I will assume you all will remember this line the next time some conservative uses liberal as an epithet."

Alan, it's liberals who dismiss arguments and always fail to give any for their position. Like you, they only have the fringe to back them up.