Amerika V: Beware the Christianists

Mind you, I've got nothing against religion, but the determination of Christianists to conflate religion and politics has had dreadful results.

Christianists is the name that Andrew Sullivan has given the people, who among other things, have hijacked the right wing of the Republican Party. Sullivan, himself a gay Roman Catholic Republican (now there's trouble!), is the rare mainstream blogger who writes frequently about spiritual matters.

He addresses the Christianist phenomenon in a Time magazine essay:

What to do about it? The worst response, I think, would be to construct something called the religious left. Many of us who are Christians and not supportive of the religious right are not on the left either. In fact, we are opposed to any politicization of the Gospels by any party, Democratic or Republican, by partisan black churches or partisan white ones. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand?

Amen.

Meanwhile, Ramesh Ponuru has responded to Sullivan over at National Review Online. He parses mightily but does't lay a glove on him.

And Naomi Schaefer Riley, approaching the subject from a different perspective, notes correctly that both the left and right are prone to spiritual tone-deafness in a Wall Street Journal column.