Andrew Sullivan writes:
The absolute demands of fundamentalist faith make the West's tradition of civil compromise impossible; and they constantly push the boundaries of what is acceptable to God, as religious purists outdo each other in proving their righteousness - whether it be keeping comatose patients alive for decades or defining a zygote as a full human person. Hence our politics has degenerated into a "culture war." Wars are what happens when politics become impossible. And that is the corrosive effect of Christianism; and why it must be resisted - for the sake of American discourse and for the sake of a vibrant, humble apolitical Christianity.
In other words you can believe whatever you want but just don't base your politics on it. I wonder if Andrew would call Martin Luther King a Christianist, or William Wilberforce. I wonder if he'd castigate Jim Wallis at Sojourners for preaching that one's inner faith needs to bear outward fruit in the politics we adopt. I wonder if he condemns Jesse Jackson for basing his politics on his Christian convictions. Probably not. These Christians all support(ed) causes with which Sullivan agrees so he never really gets around to criticizing them.
It's the Christians who endorse policies with which he doesn't agree that win his opprobrium and merit the epithet Christianist. He recognizes that it is politically concerned Christians who are the greatest impediment to the homosexual agenda, of which he is a prominent advocate, and therefore the easiest way to get that agenda enacted is to delegitimize the most formidable opposition by burdening it with a silly and awkward pejorative.
Anyway, Andrew should check his history. The culture war has come about not because Christians have tried to impose laws and standards that never before existed but because secularists have tried to strip society of the laws and standards which had governed our social life for decades, or even centuries, and in the case of marriage, millenia.
The culture war exists because people like Sullivan seek to exclude anyone whose political opinions are based upon their religious beliefs from the public square. It is that attempt to win the public debate by discrediting the basis for one's opponents' opinions that generates the social and political ill-will that Sullivan laments.
UPDATE: Joe Carter reprises Sullivan's argument in Time magazine (which was titled My Problem With Christianism) with this piece titled My Problem With Sullivanism. It's great fun.
