Apparently, Andrew Sullivan feels that the Christian right, or religious right do not represent him and are offensive enough as a concept to be compared with Islamists. What he may be surprised to find out is that a few years ago, tagging "Christian" to a movement was intended to smear and discredit it. A concentrated media effort to destroy the conservative cause focused around this during the Clinton administration. Ralph Reed and the Christian Coalition were bombarded every day in talking points shows and in the MSM. But I digress. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them. With all the ballyhoo surrounding how Islam is a "Religion of Peace(TM)" hijacked by fundamentalists and extremists, he subtly hints here at where the article is ultimately going. The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many. As is the number of Christians misrepresented by the liberal media. There are evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power. Yes... there are many Christians and non Christians alike who feel this way Andrew. In your mind, are Christians who are involved in politics and government inherently corrupt by the nature of their office? Maybe some of them are trying to help clean things up? There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society. What exactly is the insinuation here? The Church respects life at all stages, including the contraceptive stage. Have we changed our target from Christians in politics to Catholicism as a theology? Regarding gay rights... please explain to me where the Church has made a statement advising homosexuals should not be allowed rights in society. This comment comes straight out of left field. The same goes for women's equality and a multi-faith society. I can find nowhere on the right that opposes such concepts. Sullivan is merely attempting to deride the right as sexist, bigoted homophobes who fear pleasure and whose conception of sexuality is simply to breed. They have no problem living next to an atheist or a gay couple or a single mother or people whose views on the meaning of life are utterly alien to them--and respecting their neighbors' choices. I am a devout Catholic who is also conservative. My two best friends are atheists. I have gay friends, and have worked with and for gay people. I also have more than one friend who happens to be a single mom. I respect everyone's choices, as long as they respect my own. Where does this leave me, Andy? That doubt (ed. - apparently doubting your faith is "interwoven" into good Christian thought) means having great humility in the face of God and an enormous reluctance to impose one's beliefs, through civil law, on anyone else. Read: If something falls under the category of Christian belief, it cannot make for good law. Of course, using this logic, murder, rape, and thievery would be legal. Yet the term "people of faith" has been co-opted almost entirely in our discourse by those who see Christianity as compatible with only one political party, the Republicans, and believe that their religious doctrines should determine public policy for everyone. Coopted by the media as a derogatory term in an attempt to intimidate voters into thinking the Rpublicans will impliment a totalitarian fundamentalist Christian government. Huh, kind of like you're doing right now, Andy boy! Rush Limbaugh recently called the Democrats the "party of death" because of many Democrats' view that some moral decisions, like the choice to have a first-trimester abortion, should be left to the individual, not the cops. Sullivan either shows a fundamental lack of understanding regarding the pro-life view here, or intentionally ignores it. Let me spell it out for you Andy... pro-lifers believe that a human life has begun at the moment a human egg has been fertilized. What they are attempting to stop is what they (and I) believe to be murder, not "individual decision making" by women. Oh hey, thou shalt not kill is a Judeo/Christian belief... so I guess I don't have any ground to stand on. So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Badabing! We have the main point of the article. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. Yet... earlier in this article, the people he is labeling as "Christianists" are a majority of our government! God help us all! He then attempts to redefine Islamist to fit his own needs... Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. A tiny few? No my friend, whatever the carefully chosen definition may say, Islamist is generally synonymous with terrorist. In effect, your subtle article is comparing the government of the United States of America with the Taliban, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Hamas, and other terrorist run regimes. "Oh, I'll insinuate they're all terrorist fundamentalists, then redefine terrorist" isn't going to cut it with me. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. My thoughts are, if you believe in something, you should work as hard as you can to support it. What is the point of saying you believe in anything if you're not willing to work to popularize your opinion? What's the difference if a large group supports a certain position, and a political party happens to have that position in their plank? The Democrats have Planned Parenthood, NARAL, unions, and a many others in their corner because their party platform is favorable to those groups. Should they not be allowed to participate because they fit one of the formal definitions of "religion," or is it just Christianity that bothers you?