"Many evangelicals loathe my use of the word Christianism, rather than
Christianity, to describe the fusion of political power and religion to
police the moral lives of others. They recoil at the echo of Islamism -
although we know many Islamist parties, as in Turkey or Indonesia, that
do not engage in terrorism, but merely believe in the fusion of church
and state as emphatically as older American evangelicals do.
"That's why it's revealing to see a major figure in the American
Christianist movement, Pastor David Dykes, - he opened the 2008
Congress with a prayer - openly advocate the execution of gays, and
criminal penalties for exercise of free speech in defense of gays, in
Uganda. If these people could, they would do the same here. The
constitution protects us - especially our right to speech. But what
these theocrats want is as undeniable as it is repellent in a free or
humane society.
"More to the point, here is an alleged Christian demanding that those on
the margins of society not be embraced, as Jesus practised, but be
executed, as Jesus' Roman executioners did. It doesn't get more
anti-Christian than that. To even associate the word Christianity with
these sentiments is an attack on Jesus Christ." -
Andrew Sullivan, reacting to this
Box Turtle Bulletin story.
posted by Joe
