Another email:
Hewitt, Ponnuru, and now Goldberg? Something tells me you’ve touched a nerve. I can tell you that what you’re saying about Christianists isn’t new to any Christian that isn’t part of the southern Baptist conference, and I didn’t think much of it at first, but by devoting your Time column to it, you’re putting some real weight on the issue. Hewitt’s piece is easily the most vile attack on you that I’ve seen, and he is clearly afraid of what you’ve said. Not afraid that what you say is true – these guys have known that all along. No, they’re afraid that someone might listen to you. They’re afraid that you’ve created a buzzword.
Plenty of Christians know that their beliefs don’t jibe with those of the Christianists, but without a way to differentiate themselves, they’ve been all too willing to allow the Christianists to define their faith in public forum. The Republicans have used that to their advantage, playing up any criticism of Christianist politics as an attack on Christianity as a whole. But as Orwell demonstrated so well, a single word can be powerful. If you give the vast majority of Christians a word to differentiate themselves from the extremists, they realize how easy it is to break away from the Christianist political line. And that’s what Hewitt, Ponnuru, and Goldberg are all afraid of, because if it were to catch on, it would be a major blow to the Republican power base.
Well, my point is not to attack a Republican power base, but to resist the cooptation of a faith by a political machine. It seems as if the machine has detected the danger. Good. Now to reclaim the good word "conservative".
The Dish 