{"id":2800,"date":"2020-12-03T06:10:55","date_gmt":"2020-12-03T06:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/12\/03\/identity-politics-as-a-deformation-of-christianity\/"},"modified":"2020-12-03T06:10:55","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T06:10:55","slug":"identity-politics-as-a-deformation-of-christianity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2020\/12\/03\/identity-politics-as-a-deformation-of-christianity\/","title":{"rendered":"Identity Politics as a Deformation of Christianity"},"content":{"rendered":"

This<\/a> First Things<\/em> article by Joshua Mitchell is well worth reading. Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Marxism could never take hold in America because Americans believed in private property. Because property is the cornerstone of our republic, and cannot be removed, Marxism failed. Postmodernism could never really take hold in America because Americans believe that history has a meaning\u2014and even that America has a special place in history. The reason identity politics has taken hold is because Americans suffer deep and abiding guilt, from two main sources: Christianity itself, and the legacy of slavery in this country. What the left could not do through Marxism or postmodernism, it now is doing through identity politics\u2014namely, undermining every institution and every venerable historical memory in America.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump was someone who, literally, could not exist in the world identity politics constructs. That is why the left needed \u201cRussian collusion\u201d to explain his election in 2016. Russian collusion was the deus ex machina<\/em> that made it possible for Trump to infiltrate their world. The left had to destroy Trump if identity politics was to continue its reign of perverted righteousness. Many of us saw that clearly. That is why we voted for him. We wanted to contribute to the end of its reign.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Identity politics is a profound deformation of Christianity, a ghastly and crippled derivative that seeks the redemption of the world through the scapegoating of one group by another. For the moment, it has in its sights heterosexual white males. It will not stop there. White women will be next; followed, I suggest, by \u201cheteronormative\u201d black men. Like all revolutionary movements, it will eventually come for its early proponents, in a final reign of terror.<\/span><\/p>\n

How does the current terror end? The identity politics reign of righteousness will end when we return to the orthodox Christian understanding that only the divine scapegoat, Christ, can take away the sins of the world. That insight once transformed the world. It can do so again.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There is a competing view of how we got into the present identity-political mess, and what the solution is. On this alternative Right view, to which I do not subscribe, it is not a deformation of Christianity that lead us to the present pass, but Christianity itself. I now hand off to Matthew Rose<\/a>:
<\/span><\/p>\n

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There is no better introduction to alt-right theory than his [Alain de Benoist's] 1981 work On Being a Pagan<\/a><\/em>. Its tone is serene, but its message is militant. Benoist argues that the West must choose between two warring visions of human life: biblical monotheism and paganism. Benoist is a modern-day Celsus. Like his second-century predecessor, he writes to reawaken Europeans to their ancient faith. Paganism\u2019s central claim is simple: that the world is holy and eternal. \u201cFar from desacralizing the world,\u201d Benoist tells us, paganism \u201csacralizes it in the literal sense of the word, since it regards the world as sacred.\u201d Paganism is also a humanism. It recognizes man, the highest expression of nature, as the sole measure of the divine. God does not therefore create men; men make gods, which \u201cexist\u201d as ideal models that their creators strive to equal. \u201cMan shares in the divine every time he surpasses himself,\u201d Benoist writes, \u201cevery time he attains the boundaries of his best and strongest aspects.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Benoist\u2019s case against Christianity is that it forbids the expression of this \u201cFaustian\u201d vitality. It does so by placing the ultimate source of truth outside of humanity, in an otherworldly realm to which we must be subservient. In his Church Dogmatics<\/em>, Karl Barth notoriously described Christian revelation as the \u201cabolition\u201d of natural religion. Benoist is a Barthian, if selectively. He accuses Christianity of crippling our most noble impulses. Christianity makes us strangers in our own skin, conning us into distrusting our strongest intuitions. We naturally respect beauty, health, and power, Benoist observes, but Christianity teaches us to revere the deformed, sick, and weak instead. \u201cPaganism does not reproach Christianity for defending the weak,\u201d he explains. \u201cIt reproaches [Christianity] for exalting them in their weakness and viewing it as a sign of their election and their title to glory.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Benoist\u2019s theology is in the service of a political warning, and it is this, more than his Nietzschean posturing, that attracts the alt-right. Christianity is unable to protect European peoples and their cultures. Under Christianity, the West lives under a kind of double imprisonment. It exists under the power of a foreign religion and an alien deity. Christianity is not our<\/em> religion. It thereby foments \u201cnihilism.\u201d The allegation is explosive. Benoist means that Christianity renders Western culture morally lethargic and culturally defenseless. Most perniciously, its universalism poisons our attachments to particular loyalties and ties. \u201cIf all men are brothers,\u201d Benoist claims, \u201cthen no one can truly be a brother.\u201d Politics depends on the recognition of both outsiders and enemies, yet the Christian Church sees all people as potential members, indeed potential saints.<\/span><\/p>\n

And here we reach Benoist\u2019s remarkable conclusion. The decadent West has never been more Christian.<\/em> Christianity imparted to our culture an ethics that has mutated into what the alt-right calls \u201cpathological altruism.\u201d Its self-distrust, concern for victims, and fear of excluding outsiders\u2014such values swindle Western peoples out of a preferential love for their own. Benoist\u2019s ideas have reached the margins of American conservatism, perhaps no more noticeably than in the writings of the late Sam Francis. A former contributor to leading conservative publications, his thinking took a late turn toward what we would now call the alt-right. \u201cChristianity today is the enemy of the West and the race that created it,\u201d he announced in an influential 2001 article<\/a>. Francis\u2019s essay was a lament as much as a protest (he was received into the Church on his deathbed), but his work is receiving a new hearing.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This First Things article by Joshua Mitchell is well worth reading. Excerpts: Marxism could never take hold in America because Americans believed in private property. Because property is the cornerstone of our republic, and cannot be removed, Marxism failed. Postmodernism could never really take hold in America because Americans believe that history has a meaning\u2014and … Continue reading “Identity Politics as a Deformation of Christianity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,520],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-doctrine","category-identity-politics-and-tribalism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2800\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}