Christianist
GOODLY Number of folks on the leftish/blueish side of my personal Blogosphere have begun using the term "Christianist" to describe a certain sort of right winged American political animal which they see as parallel to the Islamicists of various places around the world.
If your hackles have been raised already - if you've heard the term before or not - good: this is their intention, and to drive home a point. But, generally, most of them don't mean the term for Christians. They draw a line: that line is what I'd like to look at.
Ironically, conservative Andrew Sullivan is generally credited with making the term popular among liberals in his essay, My Problem with Christianism
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.
Although Sullivan popularised it, according to the Wiki article, the terms Christianist and Christianism are synonyms for Dominionism (emphasis mine):
Dominionism is a trend in Protestant Christian evangelicalism and fundamentalism, primarily, though not exclusively, in the United States, that seeks to establish specific political policies based on religious beliefs.Our term, Christianist, was in use as far back as 1992: perhaps before we heard the term "Islamicist" as such. I think we stuck with "Islamic Fandamentalist" until the mid - late 90s. I may be wrong. So, Christianist may be first out of the block.
It is most often used to describe politically active conservative Christians with a specific agenda. The term is rarely used as a self-description; many feel it is a loaded or pejorative term, and use of the term is primarily limited to critics of the Christian Right.
After some evaluation I've decided it's a useful term - perhaps way better than my constant flinging of the term "Neo-con". However I need to note the pejorative sense and the definition and realise we're not covering all the territory.
The Red-Right folks are not the only Christianists out there, seeking to impose their too-narrow views of Christian morality on everyone via the secular government. No, by this definition there are Left-Blue folks out there too, who also have too-narrow views of Christian morality they wish to enforce upon the everyone via the secular government. Thus there is a lefty Dominionism as well as a righty one. Both are to be avoided. The Gov't should be left out of the equation entirely.
In this I note that Andrew agrees:
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?
And even though in my own thinking I am rather lefty-blue, now, I still stick with "Christians should participate" and there is no Authority but Jesus is Lord. I think you can use that credo of the Early Church and STILL be Red-Right or Green, or Purple.
If you really believe Jesus is calling you to one moral action or another, go for it. But some of your Christian brothers and sisters will go another direction. Yet neither you nor they should presume to force, in the name of God, anyone else along for the ride nor, especially, should you try and get the Gov't to enact laws that enforce your limited view of Christian morality on others - including Non Christians.
Despite the actions of Christianists since Constantine, it is not the Gov't's job to enforce the Gospel - especially only one tiny fragment of it.
