News and commentary on Religion, especially Southern religion.

Showing posts with label Christianists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christianists. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

When are militia Christianist (not Christian)?

Andrew Sullivan is a gay Catholic who gently suggests:

Surely we can all assent to the notion that a Christian militia of the type now accused of planning domestic terrorism is not Christian. This is why I call them Christianist. Anyone planning to murder innocents by way of IEDs cannot plausibly call himself or herself a follower of Jesus of Nazareth.

To which Skeptic PZ Myers replied at some easy-to-read length, asserting that there are Christians (the real thing). And Christianists, a term William Safire traced back to Andrew Sullivan, who on June 1, 2003, wrote:

I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam."
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No friend of matters mystical, Myers of course fences almost everyone we know up with Christianists, but that's a part of what he does. Whereas most of us may seriously entertain the possibility that the Hutaree are Christianists. And we are not.