Christianism

In our course, we define "fundamentalism" as the use of religion as a political ideology.  (There are other ways to define it.)  We therefore speak of Islamists as people who want Islam to be the governing ideology of their country.

Roy Moore is a a Christianist.  He believes that America is a Christian country, under the Christian God's law for Christians.  He rose to prominence, because he was a judge who doesn't seem to understand the Constitution.

Roy Moore is almost certainly going to be the new GOP Senator for Alabama.  Now, we can mock Alabama Republicans for nominating a conspiracy minded nutcase who thinks that Illinois and Indiana are under sharia law, but this is a continuing problem.  First, Moore will win the votes of Republicans, because he's the Republican nominee.  He's manifestly unworthy of being a US Senator, as he was bounced off the bench twice for his extremist views.  But he's a Republican, and Alabama is a Red State.

That's the other problem.  We have become two separate nations - one secular and progressive, the other religious and regressive.  (Yes, there are progressive Christians, but at this point, evangelical Christianity is less a theological position than a cultural and political one.)

Roy Moore is running against a very qualified and even heroic civil rights figure.  He should lose.  But he almost certainly won't. 

And the more Roy Moores we have in our government, the worse we are as a country.  The harder it will be to properly understand the issues we face and come to a wise solution.

Roy Moore - like Donald Trump - is the logical endpoint of the decay of the party of Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt into a rage-fueled tantrum against the 21st century.  And as long as we have the electoral and political system that we have, they will have an outsized voice in our government.