In Reply to: Re: Tyranny of Evangelical Christianity posted by CB on June 05, 2006 at 20:41:52:
I think it may have been me and the editor that confused Christian Nationalism and Christian Evangelism. I took the title of my post "Tyranny of Evangelical Christianity" from the sub-title of the article. However, in the third paragraph the author makes it very clear that he considers the mass movement he is talking about in the article to be Christian Nationalism. Here's that paragraph:
"The mass movement I've described aims to supplant Enlightenment rationalism with what it calls the "Christian worldview." The phrase is based on the conviction that true Christianity must govern every aspect of public and private life, and that all -- government, science, history and culture -- must be understood according to the dictates of scripture. There are biblically correct positions on every issue, from gay marriage to income tax rates, and only those with the right worldview can discern them. This is Christianity as a total ideology -- I call it Christian nationalism. It's an ideology adhered to by millions of Americans, some of whom are very powerful. It's what drives a great many of the fights over religion, science, sex and pluralism now dividing communities all over the country."
When I posted the link to that article I included a line that stood out to me: "A movement that constitutes its members' entire social world has a grip that's hard to break." Coming out of and still recovering from a totalitarian Christian world-view leaves me interested in articles like this that explore the issue of totalitarian belief systems.
Often I post articles purely because they interest me and I figure others might think so too, not necessarily because I want to provoke or debate. So no, I wasn't trying to backdoor a discussion of partisan politics (though I'd note that everything is political, so a complete ban on everything political isn't feasible). Besides, the American Taliban is so out of control that there's nothing more that needs to be said, other than (as Dan Savage says) ITMFA!