Reply #32: Oddly, "Evangelical" is not a synonym for "Fundamentalist"

[DrBB]

I mean, it has certainly become that. But in at least some of its 19th roots, American evangelicism was a movement with a respectable intellectual pedigree, rather than a know-nothing reaction against science and modernity. Google on Phillips Brooks, for instance.

The fundies have largely assimilated that tradition. But it's important to remember these distinctions, lest they utterly succeed in their Borg-like attempt to assimilate all of Christianity to their suffocating, punitive, coercive and retrograde interpretation.

And yes, I do think Kristof is one of the biggest idiots on the left. He's always looking for these little sops, little gestures of reconciliation or something. This is Journalistic Objectivity in its most feckless and jejune form: "I'm looking at Both Sides, just like my journalism teacher told us! I get a gold star!" "Compromise" is a term for which Delay, AshKroft, and other True Believing Crisco-Annointers express only the most withering contempt. Reading Kristof, you can see why.