c. 2006 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ Andrew Sullivan has never fit into easy categories: gay, yet conservative; a Brit who is a passionate lover of American politics; a serious writer who has a fond affection for clips from youtube.com.

So it wasn’t surprising to find the Oxford- and Harvard-educated Sullivan, 43, sitting in a Starbuck’s in a T-shirt and jeans, pecking away at his laptop, still bleary-eyed from a concert the night before.

Sullivan put down his widely read “Daily Dish” blog _ with its 7,500 hits per hour _ to talk about his new book, “The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get it Back,” and what he sees as the unholy matrimony between religion and politics.

Q: I wasn’t expecting a book that was so much about religion; I thought it would be more political.

A: You simply cannot account for what has happened to our politics _ especially conservative politics _ without understanding religion anymore. We’re confronting a fundamentalism that I have always believed requires a vigorous understanding of the religious phenomenon.

People who want to duck the religious aspect of al-Qaida or Islamicism are absolutely deluding themselves. There is a core religious center to this movement. The relationship between politics and religion is really the question of our time.

Q: You draw some fairly tight lines between Islamic fundamentalism and Christian fundamentalism. By doing that, you’re not going to gain any friends in Colorado Springs.

A: I’m not sure I agree with your characterization. I am not saying that evangelical Christians can be understood in the same framework, morally, as al-Qaida. They are not engaged in violence, they are using democratic means, they’re largely peaceful and they’re doing what democratic citizens are perfectly within their rights to do.

At the same time, if internalized completely in politics, (fundamentalism) makes a subtle conservative politics impossible.

I know that even speaking of it in the same breath is enough to get you pilloried, but I think the notion that somehow because your faith is true that therefore your fundamentalism isn’t as dangerous is a form of myopic narcissism.

Q: You use this term “Christianist” or “Christianism”: what do you mean by that?

A: I mean the fusion of a religious faith with a political party, the alliance of a religious conviction with a specific set of policy proposals that are championed by a specific apparatus that are used to elect people and keep them in power. There’s no question that’s what’s been going on in the last 10 years or so in the Republican Party.

Evangelical Christians have been used and manipulated. I have every respect for evangelical Christianity … but it took a turn in the ’80s and ’90s from being a faith that was very suspicious of political involvement to one that threw itself into it. That’s a fool’s bargain.

Q: You warn that to rest your political system on a theological one is a recipe for disaster. Do see any of that changing?

A: Once you put God on the table, in arguing about politics, the conversation ends. What you’re really doing is asserting authority, not arguments. That creates a culture war, not a political conversation.

Fundamentalist faith has always been a factor in our lives, but it’s also a dangerous way to live.

Q: Dangerous because?

A: Because it can admit to no compromise, which is what democratic politics is all about.

Q: You write that a Christian “is a Christian primarily because he acts like one. He loves and forgives, he listens and prays, he contemplates and forgives.” That’s all well and nice, but I imagine there are a lot of people who might say I need something more.

A: Jesus’ message was always drawing a distinction between those who claimed to believe certain truths, and those who are actually live their faith.

Maybe they don’t live up to their own faith all of the time, which is what part of being human is. But merely their struggle to try to live a certain way is itself the firmest evidence of their faith rather than their ability to pontificate about it.

Q: You’re a gay man in the Catholic Church. You talk about doubt; I would imagine that faced with some of this, you’re going to be riddled with a lot of doubts. What keeps you going?

A: The best way I can express it is that I don’t feel I have a real choice in the matter. However stricken with doubt I am, I experience something I can’t fully explain, which is God refusing to let go of me. Even though I’ve tried to let go of him a couple of times, even though I’ve had periods of barrenness.

I can’t help myself. That’s how I keep going. It just won’t leave me.

Q: You argue that doubt, when it’s wrapped up in faith, is a sign of strength. A lot of fundamentalists would say it’s a sign of weakness.

A: But if you look at the life of Jesus, he’s certainly someone who had doubts. His humanness was very much bound up in his imperfections. Even on the cross … he’s still alone, he’s afraid, because he’s a human being. Unless you’ve ever doubted something, you’ve never fully believed it.

I see absolutely no reason why questioning it, asking questions, trying to understand it is of any threat. A faith that is scared of reason is a weak faith.

Q: I wanted to ask you about gay marriage. In your book, you say that a true conservative asks “whether his thoughts and prayers are rationalizing his own desires rather than seeking the truth itself.” Do you ever catch yourself and wonder …

A: If I’m not rationalizing my own desires? Yeah. Of course. (My books) are always asking, `Have I got this wrong? Tell me where I’m wrong.’

Even though sex is a part of it, it’s really about love and commitment and fidelity and self-giving into something larger. It’s the I becoming the We.

Practically speaking for gay men and lesbians, what are their options? Are they to be twisted, celibate, unhappy, lonely people who will _ who will as a matter of simple prediction _ act out sexually? Pathology is the only way they can express themselves because they are without love.

Or is it better to channel all of that into a stable loving relationship with one other person? It seems the church should be guiding gay people towardÃÂ?MDULÃÂ? stable relationships, not shame and pathology.

Q: What is it about homosexuality that gets people so riled up?

A: Our very existence, and the testimony of our own lives, disproves a critical element of their theology, so we have to be abolished. It’s a profound threat to their certainty. According to them, we’re just objectively disordered or mentally ill or people who do not and cannot experience the love of God as we are. And yet we do. That’s a very frightening thing to people because it means a necessary reevaluation of their entire understanding of sexuality.

Q: When this pope was elected, you weren’t a big fan.

A: I was terrified.

Q: Have you had a reconsideration of him, given his recent speech about Islam and the reactions to it?

A: His talk about logos and reason and Islam was fascinating, and interesting, and brave. There’s no doubt that as an intellect, this pope is probably unequaled in a very long time. He’s too intellectually interesting a figure to speak nonsense.

He’s got a very difficult balancing act. Here is a pope who has made a very important point about reason and faith, while policing dissent within his own church to stifle (reason) because he feels it’s too dangerous for his own orthodoxy. He’s a complex and contradictory figure.

KRE/JL END RNS

Editors: To obtain a photo of Andrew Sullivan, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject or slug.