Hugh Hewitt notes that Andrew Sullivan wants to lump the conservative Christians in with Taliban and al-Qaeda.

What does the term "Christianist" mean and why is Time peddling it?

Time columnist Andrew Sullivan uses the term to describe evangelicals with whom he disagrees. He says his goal is to "take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist."

He explains further, "Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike."

Most pundits have rejected "Christianist" because it obviously tries to link Islamists and those evangelicals Mr. Sullivan loathes. He is attempting to dress up hate speech as simple precision, but given the vast spectrum of political opinions among believers on the center-right, "Christianist" is a howler. Still, no one should be laughing when a once-respected newsweekly defines a huge portion of the American mainstream as the equivalent of the Islamists who attacked the country on 9/11. Be prepared as others pick up Time's term.

Such crap coming from Sullivan and Time couldn't be a sign of the continuing War on Christianity, which teh Left steadfastly assures us is a figment of our our own imaginations and our desire to illegitiamtely manipulate the debate on cultural and political issues.

But two can play that game. Let's just engage in a little bit of substitution with Sullivan's own words.

"Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Homosexualist is in no way designed to label people in the homosexual rights movement as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Homosexualist the view that homosexuality is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that sexual orientation dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, homosexual and non-homosexual alike."

The description probably fits the so-called "gay rights" movement better than it fits the religious right. And we can certainly see plenty of developments over the last several years in which the undeniable rights of hristians (and other religious believers) to live their lives according to their faith have been trampled by the questionable claims of the homosexualists.

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