Christianity and Christians v/s christianism and christianists

I found a link to this interview of Rémi Brague, who is both a Christian and a Professor of Arabic philosophy at some prestigious school in Europe, over on Vox Nova. I thought it was both wonderful and thought provoking. My favorite part was about the differences between Christians and “christianists”, a term which Brague apparently coined in his book Europe. La voie romaine.

From what I gather, “Christians as those who believe in Christ. “Christianists”, on the other hand, are those who exalt and defend Christianity, the Christian civilization …” You know, those twatwaffles who want to use their interpretation of what their religion says as a means to control everyone, because they are fundamentally correct. They and they alone know what God wants, and therefore any shitty thing they do to any other group is justified because they are instruments of God’s will. They ignore the substance of Christ’s teaching in favor of cherry-picking the verses that will help them solidify their secular and social control.

I am so happy to find a word to distinguish those goat blowers from people like the Nuns on the Bus.

Here’s what Brague said about the term christianist:

BRAGUE: The word “christianist” is not very nice perhaps. But I’m not sorry to have proposed it. First of all because it’s amusing. And then because it pushes people to reflect on what they really want. Those who defend the value of Christianity and its positive role in history I certainly find more likeable than those who deny it. I certainly don’t intend to discourage them. It would even please me if they were more numerous in France. And this is not because they may be “objective allies”. But only because what they say is true. So, thanks to the “christianists” therefore. Only I would like to remind them that Christianity is not interested in itself. It’s interested in Christ. And Christ also is not interested in His own self: He is interested in God, whom He calls in a unique way, «Father». And in man, to whom He proposes a new access to God

I also loved when he argued about the difference between what God wants and secular Christianists want:

“BRAGUE: Let’s not fool ourselves about what the God of Jesus Christ wants. It is not what we, we want. What he wants is not to crush His enemies. But to free them of what makes them His enemies, that is a false image of Him, that of a tyrant to whom one must submit. He, being free, is only interested in our freedom. He tries to heal it. His problem is to set up a device that allows the wounded freedom of men to be seen as healed, so as to freely choose life over all the temptations to death that are carried within. Theologians call this device the “economy of salvation”. The Covenants, the Church, the sacraments, and so on, form part of it. The role of civilizations is indispensable, but it’s not the same. And their means are also different. They have to exert a certain coercion, physical or social. Whereas faith can only exert an attraction on freedom, because of the majesty of its object. Perhaps there could be a return to what the popes used to say to the Western emperors, about the Gregorian reform, in the 11th century: the salvation of souls is not your business, content yourselves with doing your job as well as possible. Make peace reign.”

In the US the term christianism is also entering into the Lexicon, and it also means those asshats who claim to be followers of Christ but really just want want to use Jesus as an excuse to se up a totalitarian theocracy. Of course, I have railing for years that Mammon, not Jesus, is the actual focus of worship by christianists.

For the purposes of this blog, the terms christianists and christianism are defined  as “the goat blowing asshats and douche-nozzles who claim to follow Jesus but actually worship Mammon and want to oppress and control their fellow humans socially, politically, economically, and any other way you can think of.” Everyone got that?

Great!

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