More on Christianists; or, I Say It's Spinach

Looks like the "Christianist" flap we recently discussed is taking on a life of its own, even though it appears to have been around for awhile. Ann Althouse traces its lineage, quoting some particularly interesting research on the word by William Safire, who tracked it back to an Andrew Sullivan snit, after first encountering it in a typical Hendrik Hertzberg screed:

Two weeks after writing about the fervor of the late Terri Schiavo's ''Christianist 'supporters,''' Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker last month described Representative Tom Delay as a ''hard-right Christianist crusader.'' A few months before, soon after President Bush was re-elected, the conservative Weekly Standard reported that an Ohio cartoonist had sent out a communication deploring ''militant Christianist Republicans.''

Obviously there is a difference in meaning between the adjectives Christian and Christianist. Thanks to Jon Goldman, an editor at Webster's New World Dictionaries, I have the modern coinage of the latter with its pejorative connotation. ''I have a new term for those on the fringes of the religious right,'' wrote the blogging Andrew Sullivan on June 1, 2003, ''who have used the Gospels to perpetuate their own aspirations for power, control and oppression: Christianists. They are as anathema to true Christians as the Islamists are to true Islam.''

The key here is "pejorative connotation" which is clearly intended. Once again, as per our posts on lefty Episcopal Bishop Kate Schori (here and here), our Marx-infatuated friends are proving quite adept at twisting the language around, creating evergreen opportunities to dump chamberpots on their opponents rather than respecting their legitimate arguments and debating them.

"Christianist" is clearly an attempt by Hertzberg and Sullivan to paint believers in Jesus Christ as foaming-at-the-mouth right-wing lunatics. Equating them with "Islamists"—whom we at HazZzMat prefer to more accurately characterize as "Islamofascists"—accomplishes this quite nicely, although such a comparison with mass-murderers is hardly apt. This never matters with the left, however, which infinitely prefers to demonize its opponents rather than debate them.

In the modern society they have created, largely by subverting our educational system and controlling the MSM, the hard left is fully aware that a puffer-pigeon show of emotional outrage combined with the use of choice, carefully selected "fighting words," will enable them to "win" an argument nearly every time without the inconvenience of having their shallow responses smithereened by a conservative's generally superior logic.

It is frustrating to see this emotional and superficially entertaining debating tactic, based on logical fallacy as it is, emerge victorious time after time. But conservatives were and are asleep at the switch when it comes to the phenomena of cultural and educational subversion (they've finally figured out judicial subversion), and they still show no signs of coming to grasp with this. Ergo, the left's favorite method of winning an easy "intellectual" victory still remains quite viable for them. (Note: When a conservative employs pejoratives or "fighting words," it's called "hate speech.")

Ah, but we've left Safire behind. Rick and Andy, it seems, didn't invent the term "Christianist" after all:

In 1883, W.H. Wynn wrote a homily that said ''Christianism -- if I may invent that term -- is but making a sun-picture of the love of God.'' He didn't invent the term, either. In the early 1800's, the painter Henry Fuseli wrote scornfully that ''Christianism was inimical to the progress of arts.'' And John Milton used it in 1649.

But then he gets precisely to our point. (Or, if you think about it, he got to that point first, since he wrote this stuff in May, 2005):

Adding ist or ism to a word usually colors it negatively, as can be seen in secularist....

Regardless of the etymology of "Christianist," that's precisely why facile hacks like Sullivan (who claims to be a Catholic) and Hertzberg use it with abandon. After all, name-calling is easier than coming up with an argument. (Particularly when you're on deadline and you're short a couple of column inches.) And also, alarmingly, this particular iteration of name-calling implies that "Christianism" is a greater evil than "Islamism," aka "Islamofascism." This is moral equivalence run amok. (But who cares? It's Bush's fault.)

At least some conservatives are learning to play the slime-game if that's how it must be played:

As Christianist, with its evocation of Islamist, gains wider usage as an attack word on what used to be called the religious right, another suffix is being used in counterattack to derogate those who denounce church influence in politics. ''The Catholic scholar George Weigel calls this phenomenon 'Christophobia,''' the columnist Anne Applebaum wrote in The Washington Post. She noted that he borrowed the word from the American legal scholar, J.H.H. Weiler. The word was used by Weigel ''after being struck by the European Union's fierce resistance to any mention of the continent's Christian origins in the draft versions of the new, and still unratified, European constitution.''

Perhaps conservatives are belatedly waking up to the true impact of the culture wars.

Meanwhile, we will continue to regard term "Christianist" as bogus, reductive, left wing hate speech. As a prim little girl in a New Yorker cartoon once famously told her parents as they gently urged her to eat her broccoli, "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it!"

(Side note, apropos of nothing: The legendary punchline just cited initially appeared to have been adapted from a long-forgotten Irving Berlin song penned in 1932. However, further digging uncovered several sources (including this one) agreeing that this Carl Rose/E.B. White cartoon first appeared in the New Yorker on December 8, 1928. This would imply that Berlin actually got the idea for his song from the cartoon. Funny what you discover when you research stuff on the Web. Thought we'd share it with you.)