Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Idiotist Slams Christianist.

The only gay in the blogosphere, Andrew Sullivan, has for the last year or so been trying to popularise his pet phrase "christianist", which means anyone (except Sullivan) who uses their religious beliefs to inform their politics. The phrase hasn't really caught on anywhere outside of Andrew Sullivan and those weird emails, which he certainly doesn't write himself, that feature on his site where people tell him how much they agree with him.

Today he reveals that Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts is The Christianist Candidate:
In case you were unaware, it's Mitt Romney. As with most Christianists, the idea of allowing different states to try different solutions to the same problem is dispensable when moral absolutes are involved.
So the candidate of the theocratic "christianists" is some who isn't even a christian! Mitt Romney is well known for his Mormonism except by a well paid political commentator who is bizarrely taken seriously by some people. Still why should Sullivan demean himself with mere facts when he is the conscience of the world.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Strictly speaking, Mormons consider themselves Christians, because: (a) They believe in the Bible as a largely accurate portrayal of real events (King James version is their official text, though heavily footnoted with alternate translations), including the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth, his being the Son of God, his prior role as Jehovah the Creator of the earth and the god who spoke to Abraham and Moses, his commissioning of the apostles as his representatives on earth, his performance of an atonement for the sins of mankind (and therefore faith in Christ's atonement being the only means of attaining salvation), his resurrection and ascension into heaven, and his promise to return to the earth again to reign as its rightful monarch; (b) They believe Christ appeared to a young man, Joseph Smith, and commissioned him to be a new prophet and apostle, with the calling of restoring Christ's church on earth, with its original authority and regular communication from Christ; (c) Their additional canonical books (the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price) all explicitly and repeatedly affirm that Christ's atonement is the sole means of salvation for all mankind, and that his resurrection and the future resurrection of all mankind was and will be literal; (d) They perform the usual Christian ordinances, such as baptism and communion, in the name of Christ and offer all prayers in the name of Christ; and (e) their official curricular materials and the sermons given by their church leaders constantly affirm the worship of Christ and the need to demonstrate faith in Christ through righteous living, as taught by Paul and James.

That being said, Sullivan has invented a term and so he gets to define it, but conversely no one is obligated to accept the term or use it. To me, it basically is an attempt to turn a word that contains "Christian" into a pejorative, and thus a display of religious prejudice.

Ross said...

I see what you mean about Mormons considering themselves Christians. Most of the 'christianists' Sullivan reviles follow denominations of Christianity that don't accept them as such, so it is unlikely that they would back Romney if they had the theocratic tendencies which he claims.