A good post here by The Jaded JD on the distinction between principle and pragmatism.
There’s nothing wrong with having principles, and there’s nothing wrong with sticking to them (an absolutist stance I would argue). Where it goes terribly wrong is when belief extends into that most dangerous of all ideas: fanaticism.
Thomas Merton, a Trappist whom was introduced to me by none other than a Southern Methodist minister, had a great two paragraphs in his essay Christianity and Totaltarianism which I always remind myself when it comes to those who are principled or pragmatic to a fault:
Fanaticism is never really spiritual because it is not free. It is not free because it is not enlightened. It cannot judge between good and evil, truth and falsity, because it is blinded by prejudice. Faith and prejudice have a common need to rely on authority and in this they can cometimes be confused by one who does not understand their true nature. But faith rests on the authority of love while prejudice rests on the pseudo-authority of hatred. Everyone who has read the Gospel realizes that in order to be a Christian one must give up being a fanatic, because Christianity is love. Love and fanaticism are incompatible. Fanaticism thrives on aggression. It is destructive, revengeful, and sterile. Fanaticism is all the more virulent in proportion as it springs from inability to love, from incapacity to reciprocate human understanding.
Fanaticism refuses to look at another man as a person. It regards him only as a thing. He is either a “member” or he is not a member. He is either partof one’s own mob, or he is outside of the mob. Woe to him, above all, if he stands outside the mob with the mute protest of his individual personality! That was what happened at the Crucifixion of Christ. Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, came as a Person, seeking the understanding, the acceptance and the love of free persons. He found Himself face to face with a compact fanatical group, that wanted nothing of His person. They feared His disturbing uniqueness. It was necessary, as Caiaphas said, that this “one man should die for the nation” — be sacrificed to the collectivity. From its very birth, Christianity has been categorically opposed to everything that savors of the mass-movement.
Merton criticizes both the pragmatist and the principled, because both are cold, operative beliefs. Individualism and respect for personhood was the Christian message, and when it comes to living my faith in the Public Square, my own as well — and my lack of patience with those who hurl the “flat earth” and “free lunch” pejoratives, as below.