We need to stop indulging the Fundamentalist Christianist conceit that their “religion” is a branch of Christianity. They are a denomination of Fundamentalism, which is not even a religion but a philosophical autoimmune disease.

As a religious person, I am very tired of seeing Fundamentalism mistaken for a religion. Religion is about transcendence. Fundamentalism is about preventing transcendence at all costs, including murder if necessary. As long as we cooperate with the confusion that Fundamentalism is religion “gone too far” rather than religion aborted, we will help spread the infection.

It is pure geographical accident that American Fundamentalists use symbols stolen from Christianity. If their mothers had extruded them onto a different patch of dirt they’d have seized different symbols but they would have handed those symbols over to that same master all Fundamentalists of all denominations* worship.

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• Yes. Islamists, Christianists, Bolsheviks and Nazis all belong to the same worldwide anti-religion, Fundamentalism. They are denominations of one and the same spasmodically violent worship of graven mental images. For these ideo-idolators, religion is belief, faith is beliefs, and killing and dying for opinions makes blessed.