Christianism

I have found Andrew Sullivan's polemic about "Christianism" in America highly illuminating and on-target. And I am grateful for his introduction of the term to distinguish mainline Christians from the highly politicized and ideological Christian Right. Something I haven't seen him touch upon, however, is the new generation of Christianist lawyers, judges, and politicians being bred at Liberty University, the fundamentalist Baptist college in Virginia who boasted the country's top-ranked debate program in 2005. Even as the Bush Administration goes down in flames, the seeds are being sown for the continuation of hyper-conservative and religiously-fueled politics for the foreseeable future. What's interesting is the Christianists' abnegation of violence as a means to political ends--perhaps because they already wield considerable influence in the federal government. But why are Islamists so bent on overthrowing, for example, the Saud royal family in Saudi Arabia if Islam is already enshrined so deeply into the legal and political systems of the state? Because of corruption, ties to America, etc. and perhaps because of a greater tradition of armed conflict in Islam, although Medieval and Renaissance Christianity can certainly compete on these grounds. Islamists recognize that without being in charge themselves they cannot completely Islamisize the state, and the refusal of Al Qaeda and other Islamist groups to participate in legitimate political processes (a precedent which doesn't hold for Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood) speaks loudly--Western democracy and participatory politics, in their view, cannot be reconciled with Islam. For Christianists, on the other hand, somehow it can. Indeed, it's not called "Liberty University" for nothing. This seems promising, albeit a strange coincidence of contingent historical processes. For some reason Christianists in this country love America, democracy, capitalism and the war-mongering Republican party. I have trouble seeing how these things, except perhaps democracy, can be reconciled with a literalist reading of the Bible. In particular, I can see no easy way--without recourse to historical precedent or wild interpretations of Jesus's teachings--for a Christianist to justify his support for capitalism. Of course, Weber points out the historical connections between Calvinism and the "capitalist work ethic," but shouldn't Bible literalists take the social teachings of Jesus a little more seriously ("In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple," Lk 14:33)? And I won't even comment on the obvious contradictions of a Christian party supporting an unjustified war like the one in which we're currently involved in Iraq. Christianists tie themselves up so much in contradiction when they involve themselves in party politics that, at least for their own beliefs to be internally coherent, they should pay more heed to Jesus's recognition of the absolute irreconcilability of the City of God and the City of Man (Mt 22:21). I think the rise of the Christianists represents the greatest threat to this country and what it has always stood for: the inviolability of the individual conscience against the intrusions of the state's ideological or religious dogma. I think we're entering the age of the new theocracies, folks.