I have been to weary to even begin to think through Andrew Sullivan’s explaination of his neoligism "Christianist." Ramesh Ponnuru is doing the heavy lifting for the rest of us, though, over at The Corner, which is all meshing together with his ongoing battle with Sullivan over Sullivan’s many comments over Ramesh’s new book – which he hasn’t read.

Just start at the top and keep scrolling down. One sample:

His latest post exhibits most of the bad rhetorical habits I mentioned earlier today. Sullivan continues to treat positions he once took himself as beyond the pale—note that dismissive reference to "microscopic zygotes"—without even acknowledging that he once held them. Second, having piously claimed that the label "Christianist" is not intended to associate religious conservatives with violence and terrorism, he insinuates exactly such an association in his latest post. I cannot be too offended when Sullivan misrepresents my views, given his evident difficulty in keeping track of his own.

Sullivan concludes by positing himself as a spokesman for "mainstream Christians." It’s a poisonous claim—as bad as the worst rhetoric that sometimes comes from religious conservatives. It’s also absurd. Same-sex marriage may or may not be a good idea, but the notion that it represents mainstream Christianity is pretty far-fetched.

The post to which Ramesh is responding:

In all of this, the Christianists do not represent most Christians, although they have made great strides in the Vatican and in the fundamentalist leadership. I should stress: these people have every right to their views. They certainly have developed an arsenal of arguments and a body of thought to back them up. But this agenda, whatever else it is, cannot be described as mainstream Christianity. Its extremism, its enmeshment with partisan political power, its contempt for individual liberty, its certainty and arrogance and intolerance, demand that some other name be given to it. They have gotten away with too much for too long. It’s time for mainstream Christians, in both parties, to fight back. And we are.

Ponnuru’s original response to the "Christianist" essay

(forgive me for working backwards. It’s late)

But the terms aren’t at all parallel. If "Christianist" is truly to be the equivalent of "Islamist," then it has to refer only to a tiny number of people who call themselves “Christian reconstructionists” or “theonomists”—people, that is, who think that American governments should impose Biblical law. If, on the other hand, "Christianist" is to refer to people who think abortion should be outlawed, same-sex marriage should not be accorded legal recognition, public schools should include prayer, and so forth, which is how Sullivan actually uses the term, then the parallel isn’t to “Islamists.” It’s to the vast majority of Muslims.

In one of his most recent posts, Sullivan tries to maintain that the problem isn’t the positions of the "Christianists," but the explicitly religious arguments they make for them. The same problem obtains, since, again, the vast majority of Muslims support various policies on explicitly religious grounds. But it’s obviously not true that Sullivan objects only to social conservatives’ rhetoric. Making non-religious arguments against early-term abortion has, for example, led him to label me a "religious fundamentalist." Here, again, we have a case of the spurious tiny distinction on which everything hangs. It’s okay for Sullivan’s opposition to the death penalty to be informed by his religious views. But the minute you take a religiously informed view that he does not share, you’re a theocrat. 

I would really, really like to see Sullivan and Ponnuru debate/discuss this. I’d pay.