Christianists Are NOT Christians

by tristero

There is a huge differene between Christians, the followers of a large number of separate, often mutually antagonistic, religions, and christianists, political radicals who use the symbols of Christianity in order to gain secular power. Christianists deliberately confuse the two.

In these excerpts from a letter by Tony Perkins, the technique is quite clear. They highlight the importance for liberals of distinguishing religious discrimination – which is wrong – from the political marginialization of intolerant right wing hate groups and provocateurs – an essential action in a working democracy. In addition to confusing far right wing fanaticism with Christianity, note the gross distortions of reality and paranoid sense of victimization so typical of christianism:

The stakes are enormous. We face a national menace to religious liberty:

In Boston, a Christian adoption agency was shut down for refusing to place orphans with homosexual couples.

The implication is that The Gay State proactively shut down the agency, who said,”Thanks, but no thanks,” to gay couples. Not true. I looked it up. Christianist Catholic Bishops chose to shut down Catholic Charities’ adoption services. – despite the unanimous support for same sex adoptions by CC’s board:

Eight members of Catholic Charities’ board stepped down in protest of the bishops’ stance. The 42-member board had voted unanimously in December to continue considering gay households for adoptions.

And it clearly was a political decision by Catholic christianists, because Catholic Charities had, in fact, placed “orphans” with gay couples in the past:

Social Services to provide special needs adoption services to children with severe emotional and physical needs since 1977. The contract expires June 30.

In the past two decades, Catholic Charities has placed 720 children in adoptive homes, including 13 with same-sex couples. The bulk of adoptive children in Massachusetts are placed by DSS, rather than outside agencies such as Catholic Charities, the agency said.

Next:

In New Mexico, a Christian-owned studio was fined more than $6,000 for refusing to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony.

Not quite true.It was a christianist-owned studio. Furthermore, it was an anti-discrimination case. You can refuse to do any job you don’t want to do, of course, but not on the basis of race, creed, gender or sexual preference. If someone refused to photograph a Christian evangelical marriage because they were Christian evangelicals, the same laws would apply. You cannot discriminate. That is the law and it is a good law. It protects Christians as well as lesbians and it is sheer bizarroworld nonsense to flip this around and claim the law discriminates.

Finally:

In San Francisco, the city council officially condemned Christian opposition to homosexual adoption as hateful and discriminatory rhetoric.

That’s absolutely not true. The San Francisco city council condemned a specific, intolerant christianist organization that was organizing what was clearly a cultural/political hatefest that certainly is fair game for criticism or denunciation (as is any other group, including political parties and religions).

Christianists are NOT Christians. More precisely, christianists may be Christians in their private life – or not, as the Jewish nut David Klinghoffer illustrates – just as many christianists may have brown eyes. Their actual religious beliefs are an irrelevant identity to the political activity that uniquely characterizes christianism and makes it a non-religious group that uses the symbols of Christianity.