Islamism and Christianism

There's a fascinating and subtle emerging debate among the higher-wattage blogs right now about how to assess the rising power of evangelical Christians in American politics: see Mark Schmitt, Kieran Healy, Russell Arben Fox,
Tim Burke, Jim Henley, Jeanne D'Arc(who points back to this old post by Tristero), and Matt Yglesias are good places to start. For what it's worth, I think that there could be a lot of mileage in conceptualizing this new Christian politics as "Christianism" - just as we distinguish between Islam and Islamism.

Christianism suggests a social movement aimed at reconfiguring both political and personal identity around religion, which works at both the social level (proselytizing, fighting the culture wars, building churches and religious communities) and the political level (elections, lobbying, organizing) to shape society in their image. Hassan al Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Christianists would agree on the basic principle of social and political action: change the country, and change the world, "one soul at a time."

So much of the post-9/11 debate has focused on the specific pathologies and problems of the Middle East and the Islamic world, while ignoring the parallel rise of Christianist identity and activism in America. But, as an earlier generation of scholarship on religious fundamentalism pointed out, most world religions experienced a dramatic transformation and upsurge in the 1970s and 1980s. While Christianism has not produced a bin Laden, much of its development parallels the experience of Islamism. A re-emphasis on faith, conservative social values, and populist politics; the institutional development of a parallel religious sector; the formation of political movements aimed at realizing the goals of increasing religion's role in legislation and politics.... these describe America just as well as Egypt.

With only some exaggeration, you could argue that Americans today face the same dilemma as do democratizers in the Middle East: how do you feel about democracy when elections might well produce victories for Christianists/Islamists?

I'm not saying this to demonize Christian activists. Quite the opposite. I have often argued here about the need for a more sophisticated appreciation of the impact of Islamism in the Middle East and the possibilities for constructive dialogue with Islamist moderates. I would argue that the same opportunities and problems present themselves for liberals facing Christianists as when facing Islamists: how to negotiate mutual co-existence between secular and religious worldviews; how to conceive of political institutions which can guarantee such co-existence; how to grapple with the reality of an increasingly religious society in which democratic procedures might well produce a religious-inflected outcome.

If I could have one New Year's wish, it would be that these public discussions of Christianist activism and identity in the United States could begin to intersect in constructive ways with public discussions about Islamism and Islam in the Middle East. I'd like this to lead us not only to a new understanding of American politics, one in which religious activists (Christianists) are neither demonized nor underestimated nor misunderstood, but also to a new understanding of how to wage the "war on terror."

Conservatives - whose electoral base rests ever more on this Christianist movement - should ask how this sits with their rather undifferentiated condemnation of Islamist politics. And liberals - who are often more open to dialogue with Islamist moderates - should ask how this sits with their visceral distaste for Christianists in the United States.

In both cases, we might submit any of the various proposed "remedies" for Islamism to a comparative test: how do we think it would play out in terms of "combatting" Christianism? Would economic development, for example - modernization, better schools, opening to the international economy - likely shrink the appeal of Christianism? If not, why would it affect Islamism? Will democracy reduce the appeal of Islamism? Not judging by the performance of Christianists in the US - why would it be different in the Arab or Muslim world? What about a "reformation" or an "Islamic enlightenment" led by intellectual elites? Hmph.

Again, to be clear, none of these is offered as an answer. They are posed as questions, around which a fruitful theoretical and political dialogue might be framed. Is such a dialogue possible in today's America, or in today's world?

Comments

[Chris]

Conservatives - whose electoral base rests ever more on this Christianist movement - should ask how this sits with their rather undifferentiated condemnation of Islamist politics. And liberals - who are often more open to dialogue with Islamist moderates - should ask how this sits with their visceral distaste for Christianists in the United States.

Well, one difference is that Islamist moderates abroad aren't really attempting to impose their values on Americans, whereas American Christianists really are. So perhaps that helps to explain why American liberals find latter less threatening: accomodation with the one looks much different than accomodation with the other. Whether it explains all of the difference in liberal responses to the two different groups is another question.

[Philip]

An interesting idea to "conceptualise" Christian religious/political activism as 'Christianism', on the analogy with 'Islamism'. Being based in Paris I am not sure that it is the right term however; while for 'Islamism' the French have 'Islamisme', 'Christianisme' already exists and simply means 'Christianity'. 'Chrétienté', which is the cognate of 'Christianity', means 'Christendom'. It would be good to find a term that would have currency outside of English. A further problem might be that at least some Islamists actually refer to themselves as such, whereas no-one as far as I am aware refers to themselves as a 'Christianist'. It is something of a shame that the term 'fundamentalist' has acquired a wider and vaguer meaning, because this term after all did originally refer specifically to Christian activists in the US and was inspired by 'The Fundamentals', twelve volumes published between 1910-1915 to which contributed various Protestant 'fundamentalist' theologians opposed to numerous aspects of modern life on the grounds that they were at variance with Scripture.

[the aardvark]

Philip - true, nobody uses the word Christianist now... but nobody really used "Islamist" until relatively recently either, and "Islamism" itself emerged as an alternative to the widely disliked term "Islamic fundamentalism". From the French perspective, you could also see Integrisme (did I spell that right?), which was often used to describe Islamic activism but derived from an analogy with Catholic history. There were a lot of problems with the old "comparative fundamentalism" literature, but at least it had the merit of seeing Islamism as part of a more general category of a global religious transformation - not identical with what was happening in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, etc., but part of the same family.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

By Christianism, do you mean the Orange Order Cromwell Cowboys? They won't even dialog with Catholics. Has anyone every asked them what they think of Islam (shudder to ponder). Goat-kissing, idol worshiping, well, it ain't pretty. I'm old enough to remember the days of respect for the Three Great Religions, before the Reaganite commissars began deploying the term, Judeo-Christian. I'd also like to mention the Maronite, Assyrian, Chaldean and Copt Christians who have lived in Muslim lands---for century upon century. Oh, and anyone recall George Habash?

Christianism has not produced a bin Laden? Well it doesn't have in its history half naked, camel-riding Wahhabi warriors descending on the Hejaz in the 18th century. But it's produced Bob Joneses, Jim Joneses, Ian Paisleys, Branch Davidians.... I have an Italian monograph on the Valdese persecutions. The author suggests that the great persecutions and genocide conducted by Louis XVI indelibly imprinted 'Armageddon' in the minds of the quietist and evangelical Protestants--down to this day.

[Michael]

> What about a "reformation" or an "Islamic
> enlightenment" led by intellectual elites?

This last one made my day. But I suspect the mileage to be gotten out of "Christianism" is rather specialized. Neutral use of the term "Islamist" is largely an attempt to recover some content from its dominant meaning of "naughty Muslim" (very naughty and very Muslim, to be more precise.) The word itself is so prevalent that everyone has to deal with it in one way or another, and it's more constructive to co-opt it than criticize it. But even co-opted it still remains a vague and loaded word. "Christianism" comes in with the nice trick of projecting the abstract and unfamiliar onto home turf (affectation of occidentalism as an antidote to orientalism, as it were.) In a wider context, I think its usefulness is far more limited, tending rather towards the kind of semi-articulated vent for bad feeling that "liberal" has become. In fact, I very much agree with Gary Langer, who warns against a potentially dangerous misapprehension along related conceptual fault lines:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/opinion/06langer.html?pagewanted=print&position=

P.S. Why doesn't typepad allow hypertext tags in the comments?

[praktike]

How about "political Christianity?"

[Nur al-Cubicle]

... a fruitful theoretical and political dialogue might be framed...

re: War on Terror.
French Ex-Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine called for a program of exchanges and meetings of the minds between politicians and clerics representing 'Western Christianity and moderate Islam' in November 2001. Dismissed of course.

re: Christianists and Liberals. It depends who your partner in dialog is...if it's the high US Protestant churches or even US Catholics, which may have a relaxed, tolerant, well-educated and sophisticated membership, a dialog is possible. But I can't imagine it with some of the rigid "home-grown", charismatic, evangelical US sects. I see some class divisions there, too, frankly.

re: Better schools, etc. would not shrink the appeal. It is my impression that beginning in the 1980s, modest frame churches on the end of town were suddenly transformed to sprawling campuses complete with school, athletic center, and amphitheatre. Today, nearly every evangelical sect in town runs a grade school. The appeal is expanding but there is an element of racism. We have a black mayor and a large disadvantaged black community who send their children to the public schools.

[Philip]

"Political Christianity" has the vote of the "Islamist" Muqtedar Khan - see
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_7-11-2004_pg3_7

As these kind of terms owe their popularity largely to the convenience factor that they allow the description of a phenomenon without having to go into detail concerning the sub-currents and conflicts within it, I would suggest "Christianism" may carry the day simply because it is slightly less of a mouthful than "political Christianity". All such terms should be used with great caution, however. The differences between various "Islamists", "Christianists" etc. are often greater than the features they have in common. In practical terms, this sort of reification may lead us to close off all possibility of dialogue, communication or joint action with certain strands of "Islamists"/"Christianists" precisely because we are unable to see beyond the "Islamist/Christianist" label, à la Daniel Pipes. Perhaps we should therefore be less hasty to invent such terms, for all their convenience.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

I'm not heartened by this. Dialog in jeopardy as mosques in Rotterdam, Breda and Huizen are firebombed and an Amsterdam welcome center for Morroccan workers is defaced. War on terror, clash of civilizations or whatever is breaking down into a race war.

[Nur al-Cubicle]

and the schools...Islamic school in Eindhoven firebombed.