There is a lot of controversy and debate around Andrew Sullivan’s latest column where he launches the concept of ‘Christianists’. It brought back some memories about the issue.

Maybe some of you recall that Sullivan linked to my piece about a radical Muslim who was arrested for trying to bomb Amsterdam’s red light district? The idea of the post was to contrast jihadism with tolerance, but I couldn’t resist slipping in the comment “I guess Christian fundamentalists would equally cheer such an attack”. Well, the traffic deluge from Daily Dish readers yielded a lot of e-mail in particular about this one sentence. And they weren’t all that complimentary. They fell apart in roughly two groups: one chastising me for having the temerity to soil my otherwise good post with such a controversial comment, and the other educating me on all the good work churches and religious groups do in actually helping and rehabilitating (rather than bombing) sex industry workers. The latter group is absolutely right, the former I am not to sure as I do think that many Christian fundamentalists - and in The Netherlands there continues to be a particularly strong and highly intolerant Calvinist strain – would, in silence, approve of the beginning of the end of the sexual tolerance and loose morals that have become an integral part of free societies.

It doesn’t mean that Sullivan’s theory about ‘Christianists’ is sufficiently clear to delineate groups, ideologies and political platforms. For instance, I am highly supportive of legalizing prostitution and decriminalizing drugs, while at the same time I defended Terri Schiavo’s right to remain on life support and yes, I continue to be fearful of any attempts to legalize euthanasia as both private and public healthcare facilities may end up with a tool to further streamline and economize their business.

So anyway, socially liberal positions do not necessarily exclude accepting positions that Sullivan considers ‘Christianist’. The boundaries that separate these opinions and ideas are often unclear and remain blurred, thankfully. I guess that is what sets our free and open society apart from those that are actually governed by religious fundamentalists. We can combine, we can debate, we can find some common ground in order to define and shape moral dilemmas.

NOTE: An interesting example is The Netherlands, one of the few countries in the west that actually has a number of political parties whose platform is based on biblical values, most notably the Christian-Democrat Appel, which is the largest party and has routinely lead coalition governments for most of the past 150 years. Are they Christianist? No, but neither are they on the left. The have successfully captured the center while always ensuring that their religious base remained comfortable. Therefore, same-sex marriages as well as euthanasia legislation were all enacted during the brief interlude (1994-02) when they were out of power and now that they’re back they would not have a hope of nullifying any of these laws. But that is also the result of coalition-style government, prompted by proportional representation.