Fundamentalism as a cancer

I would not care that much about the current abortion debate. Frankly, it depresses me a bit. There are good, legitimate reasons to be against abortion. I am pro-choice, but I do have some serious reservations when abortion is taken as if it was a common contraceptive. This is not an entry about abortion, but it has been triggered by the current UK debate on abortion. Two days ago, I watched a documentary about the growing influence of fundamentalist Christians in the UK. As you know from my previous entry in French, this documentary made me angry, angry enough to compare Christianism (or to be fair), this particular, narrow-minded view of Christianism, as a cancer. Like a cancer, it devours the body it inhabits.

The last straw for me was not the incendiary comments of the believers themselves (all nations have their fair share of fanatics, and even in secular Québec we have a handful of Jesus freaks), but the influences some of them have. We saw Nadine Dorries, a tory MP, having her policies on abortion dictated by Andrea Williams, a proheminent Christian fundie. I insist, not merely influenced, dictated. Williams is not elected, mind you, she is just a lobbyist of a particular ideology. Not the most honourable one, but never mind. Why the Hell was an MP taking her cues from a lobbyist, especially that type? The next day, Mrs. Dorries denied she was a fundamentalist on her blog. Well, either she is one, either she is the puppet of fundies, which, in the end is the same. Either way, she is a coward.

Now, let me get this straight. Nadine Dorries has the right to believe in God. She has the right to pray. She has the right to be a strong, staunch Anglican. She has the right, even, to defend a particular view of Christianism, as rigid as she wishes. But as an elected member of Parliament, she has a duty to keep her Christian faith away when it is time to take political decisions. Because she was not elected as a Christian, because the decisions she takes, the policies she defends do not affect Heavens, but the cititzens of the UK, she has to do what she thinks is best for them, all of them, at the best of her knowledge. We don't know if God exists, we know even less of his intentions, therefore one cannot be dictated by a particular vision of God to act and speak as an elected body in a democracy. God was not elected an MP for mid-Bedfordshire neither was Mrs Williams! Nadine Dorries should leave her God, her faith at the door of the Parliament. She obviously didn't do this, she didn't even seem to care. She decided to betray her duty, she parroted her fundie friends in Parliament (of all places!) and then jumped and covered when things got too heated, hiding (again!) behind her faith. There's two reasons to be angry, right there. Thank God (bad pun I know), the blogosphere seems to have taken on her and are reacting to what is, in effect, a hijacking of democracy.

Anyway, that was my two cents on this...