Fairly recently there has been somewhat of a resurgence of appreciation for religion, and Christianity in particular, among public intellectuals. The idea seems to be (and this is one I’ve harped on before) that secularism has failed to give anyone a sense of meaning or purpose – humanism does not fill the “god-shaped hole” that everyone has – and in fact has only engendered political extremism as a poor substitute for that sense of purpose we all seek. As such, the thinking seems to go, we ought to turn back to what worked for thousands of years, to religion, and Christianity in particular. Are these political Christians onto something?
This post was not inspired by the following video, but it just so happened that this video came out on the same day I started writing this post. It does, however, cover the issue in some detail.
Friedrich Nietzsche is often hailed as the man who declared God dead, and is often given some praise for at least taking this seriously (even if people think he was wrong). To truly abandon Christianity – to adopt the Nietzschean idea of the Übermensch – would be to adhere to pre-Christian notions that might makes right and that some people are inherently better than others (and the rest of us ought to accept this and do our best to prop up these superior people) – never mind that Christians throughout history engaged in such practices.
Few people have taken this seriously, since most atheists, so say people like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland, are still Christian because they live in a society that is largely shaped by Christianity, and thus still adhere to Christian teachings. Western liberal democracy, with its ideas about human rights and equality, are the fruits of two millennia of Christian thought and culture. But now we’ve ejected the Bible out from beneath the edifice of liberalism, and this is why it will all come crashing down, leaving us with nothing but the rubble of secular authoritarianism (with the left usually being the alleged authoritarians in question). If we want to maintain these ideals of human rights and equality, as even most atheists do, then we shouldn’t abandon the creed that is the wellspring of these ideas.
Now, I think that God does not exist, but this line of political Christian thinking seems to imply that this is rather unimportant, that we should act like God exists nonetheless, and that by faking it we might eventually come to believe Christian doctrine anyway (we can fake God till we make God). This, as others have pointed out (such as in the video above) is very utilitarian, and why it has come to be termed “political Christianity” (though I’ve also seen “New Theism” used to juxtapose it with the so-called New Atheist movement, and the video above calls it “Cultural Christianity”). This is because the goals of this project are geared toward the ways in which turning back to Christianity can help with pressing issues like the crisis of meaning, with combating political extremism, and with preserving western liberal democracy (although there are those who see this last one as not really all that worthwhile).
This way of thinking makes quite a few assumptions that, as far as I can tell, do not really get discussed that often. Here I want to examine some of these assumptions. While my bringing up these assumptions, and pointing out criticisms, is not a rebutting defeater of this political Christianity project, I do think that some of these undercut it (at least in its current form).
Assumption 1: Christianity, When Practiced, Always Gives People Meaning
This is the unstated assumption that people in the past actually had a strong or more meaningful sense of purpose than modern people. But we don’t actually know what the vast majority of people in the past thought or felt. In particular, we don’t know how the vast majority peasants and serfs felt, how the vast majority of slaves felt, or how the vast majority of women felt, because we have scant few records of their thoughts and feelings about the world and their place in it (if anybody ever bothered to discuss these people, it was usually done by the educated nobles, or somewhat more recently, the educated elite “bourgeois” class, and so we only have their biased view of the majority of past populations). For all we know, some portion, perhaps even most of these people, also suffered crises of meaning. I’m not saying they did, only that we don’t know that they didn’t.
All we can say for sure is that now days we know about the “crisis of meaning” because we know what everyone is thinking and feeling, on account of social media, constant opinion polling, and sociological and economic studies about people’s attitudes toward things. These were not things people had until very recently. Not only that, but in modern times (in at least some countries) people actually enjoy the freedom of speech and freedom of association necessary to even voice their opinions on such things (i.e., in the past, if someone were to complain that their religion failed to give them a sense of purpose, if anyone even bothered to pay attention to this complaint, would probably have resulted in punishment or shunning). Indeed, we don’t know how most people in North Korea actually feel, so should we just assume that all of them have been instilled with a sense of purpose by their totalitarian ideology?
Assumption 2: Loss of Religion is the Primary Culprit in the Crisis of Meaning
This is the assumption that the main thing that is different between now and the past, insofar as where people derived a sense of meaning, is the loss of religion. Clearly there are many other things that are different about our modern world than there was about the past than just that people were more religious back then. For instance, what if the biggest thing that has led to our loss of meaning is that we just have too much time on our hands to worry about such things, as opposed to worrying about how to survive? People who hunted and gathered all day, or who toiled in fields all day, had less time to navel gaze about what it all means. If it is the case that the loss of meaning came about because life has become too easy for us, then why not agitate for some form of anarcho-primitivism as a strategy to regain our sense meaning?
But to not even go that extreme, we also have other confounding factors, such as social media, 24-hour news coverage, downtime, consumerism, capitalism, globalization, greater mobility (i.e., people often do not remain within the community into which they were born), urban living, microplastics, air/water pollution, over-medication, and a host of other things that have arisen in the past 100-200 years (i.e., since the time of the rise of secularism, which is blamed for our crisis of meaning) that could be major contributors to our current state of ennui. This is not to say that one or some of the things listed here definitely are the culprit, only that we don’t actually know that they are not. In other words, the most we can say is that the loss of religious faith and the crisis of meaning are correlated, and that’s if the crisis of meaning is even a thing.
Assumption 3: The Crisis of Meaning is a Thing
This is the assumption that there is a crisis of meaning. This crisis of meaning can be broadly defined as the loss of any feeling of purpose people have, leading to things like loneliness, shallow materialism, endless pleasure seeking (hedonism), depression, anxiety, and (as a poor substitute for meaning) political extremism. I would tend to agree that there is a crisis of meaning in the west, but it does have to be pointed out that this is still one of the assumptions that goes into this political Christianity project. I would say it is a well-supported assumption, but an assumption all the same.
We don’t even know for sure, as discussed in assumption 1, that there is a crisis of meaning, or if we are just now more aware that people have a crisis of meaning – in other words, we don’t know if people feel more of an absence of meaning now than people did in the past. It could also very well be the case that, until more modern times, the language to even talk about a sense of meaning, or its loss, had yet to be invented. And even if we admit that there is a greater sense of a loss of meaning, do we really know the severity of this loss? Or the severity of its consequences?
Again, I am inclined to think that there is a crisis of meaning – this is often something I discuss on this blog – but we do need to keep in mind that this is an assumption, and one that is a cornerstone of the political Christianity project.
Assumption 4: The Golden Era of Religion
If we accept that the loss of Christianity is the primary culprit leading to our crisis of meaning in the west, and that people “in the past” when they were more devout Christians had a greater sense of meaning, and that this meaning can be largely attributed to their Christianity, then at what point in the evolution of Christianity should we attempt to resurrect? The Christianity of the 1950’s? Of the 1850’s? Of the 1550’s? Of the 1250’s? Of the 350’s? At what point along the Christian evolution did it confer the optimal amount of meaning? And presumably it would be even better for our civilization, and for addressing the crisis of meaning, if we all adhered to just one Christian doctrine, so why not all become Catholic again? Maybe it was the Protestant reformation that caused all this crisis of meaning, what with people having to go looking in the Bible themselves for their own sense of meaning.
This brings up a sort of sub-assumption to this one, which is the assumption that it is even a good thing to go back to Christianity as it was at some point in the past. Many people suffered under the theocratic rule of past governments (which is why the enlightenment and its subsequent secularization occurred in the first place), not least of which were women. And even if we make the strong assumption that women back in the day (whenever we decide “the day” was) were happier than women now days (and that this happiness is attributable to their subservient role in society, as is dictated by Christian doctrine), would that be true if we modern people went back to the more patriarchal society stipulated in the Christian Bible? In other words, the genie on women’s rights has been let out of the bottle, and so knowing what they are losing, will women become happier again (assuming women in the past even were happier) if we got back to the old ways of Christianity? (Women here are one example of this, but we could say the same for anyone who has tasted certain types of freedom having to give them up in the hope of regaining a sense of meaning, e.g., gay and transgender people).
Assumption 5: The Noble Lie
This is the assumption that we are better off believing the noble lie (presumably for utilitarian political reasons) that Christianity is true. And even if this is true, why choose Christianity as that noble lie? If we come to the conclusion that we ought to accept some falsehood in the name of solving this crisis of meaning, or for some form of social cohesion, why not buy into Wokeism? Or Islam? Or fascism? Think about it this way, we have Noble Lie 1 and Noble Lie 2, both of which can give people some sense of meaning. Why choose one over the other?
The answer most Christians would give, obviously, is that Christianity is true (which, of course, is another assumption in this political Christianity project), which serves as the symmetry breaker when choosing our noble lie. But even if Christians humored the idea that there is a possible world in which (their version of) Christianity is not true, they might, as a symmetry breaker, appeal to something like the fact that we in the west (and in many ways the rest of the world) are the product of (and still live within) a Christian tradition. But this seems to assume that tradition is its own justification. More, it assumes that traditions ought never evolve, be altered, or even jettisoned, even though traditionally, many traditions have been changed or excised (which brings us back to assumption 3: which form of Christianity ought we adopt? Which modern denomination? A liberal one that accepts some of the tenets of Wokeism (if not, why not)? And what historical iteration of Christianity from the past that contained all this purported meaningfulness?).
One of the issues is that a big reason Christianity has lost favor in the west is not only cultural (though it is likely true that this is probably the primary reason) but also because people have come to realize that there just is no God. And really, though, it should be a source of great pessimism, particularly for political Christians, that the only way humans can find meaning is by believing in falsehoods (which kind of makes that meaning rather meaningless). What does that say about humankind?
Assumption 6: Christianity is the Prophylactic Against the Crisis of Meaning
This is the assumption that the crisis of meaning primarily afflicts those who are not Christian, which is the corollary to the assumption that going back to Christianity can solve the crisis of meaning. Christians (both religious and political) will likely argue that anyone who claims to be Christian but still suffers a crisis of meaning is simply not sufficiently devoted to their Christianity (they are, perhaps, practicing a form of moralistic therapeutic deism), but this is an assumption that is, at best, not settled. Further, to continue to assume it and proceed with the political Christianity project without settling this issue would be a waste of time, if not outright harmful.
Part of this assumption, too, is that it is even possible for us to return to Christianity. Or, at least, to return to the Christianity that presumably offers a sense of meaning, as it putatively did in the past, while maintaining much of the other progress we’ve enjoyed in our modern world (I assume most of the political Christians will not want to give up their comfortable lives to become something akin to Amish in their attempt to regain a robust form of Christianity). How do we know that the political Christianity project will not quickly fizzle out on account of modern comforts and technology? Or even just the awareness that other cultures, with other beliefs that are mutually inconsistent with one’s own, also exist?
Another aspect of this assumption, which I’ve already touched on earlier, is why it must be Christianity that gives people meaning. Why not some other religion or ideology? People felt a sense of meaning before Christianity was invented, and non-Christians have led what they have felt were meaningful lives for the last two millennia, so why Christianity in particular? Again, if solving the crisis of meaning is the primary goal, might it be easier to do by adopting, say, Wokeism? Or is that one not a candidate since it will turn the wrong people into second class citizens and make the wrong people miserable?
We also do not know that a return to Christianity will stop people from adopting extreme political beliefs. The assumption here is summed up in the quote often attributed to G. K. Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.” Yet this ignores the fact that many people who hold extreme beliefs are Christian (just look at Trump supporters and QAnon). Conspiracy theories are rampant within Christian circles, particularly in fundamentalist Christianity (e.g., just think of the conspiracy theory of young earth creationism). It’s cliche for Christians and atheists to try pawning Hitler off on each other, but even if we accept that Hitler was an atheist, or at the very least not engaging in his genocidal project on account of holding Christian beliefs, it is still true that the vast majority of people who bought into Hitler’s conspiracy theories, and performed atrocities in the name of those conspiracy theories, were Christian. The point here being that Christianity is not necessarily a prophylactic against holding extreme beliefs.
Conclusion
While I can feel some sympathy for the ultimate goal of political Christianity – addressing the crisis of meaning – what ends up being the main sticking point for me is assumption 5. I think it is very likely that no God exists, and as near certain as anything can be that the God of the Bible does not exist (guess what allows you to disagree with me on this and still live peacefully alongside me? Secularism). I also think that, if there is a solution to the crisis of meaning (which I am skeptical that there is or will be), it should not be turning back to the falsehoods that people used to believe in the past. It can certainly sound grim to tell people struggling with existential crises that they just need to suck it up and grapple with the fact that there is no meaning to anything, but wishing this were not the case will not make it cease to be the case. It is understandable that people in the past may have once found meaning in their religion, but they had the advantage of merely being wrong. If we try to go back to that, we will no longer just be wrong, but will be intentionally lying to ourselves. If the only way humans can find meaning is by lying to themselves about the existence of God, then humanity truly is a useless passion that is undeserving of any sense of meaning.