What Christianity Isn't
Looking at Erika Kirk and the Department of War recruitment video.
I don’t tend to write that frequently here about Christianity. I think it’s because, the more ideological our age has become, the more I have found myself wanting to emphasize ideas that don’t fit — picking at how intractably untidy existence is. I’ve grown obsessed with pressing into contradictions rather than writing about answers. Writing about longing, and difficulty, and pain, and ambiguity in the world. And in digging obsessively into the places of contradiction and unresolvability in myself.
But faith has always been weightier than anything else in my life. I can’t remember a time before it. It was there in my happiest childhood memories, and it was there amidst the more abusive years of my upbringing as well. It’s there in my intellectual life, in what I think the world might be. It is also there in my philosophical drive — I am not sure I would be asking these questions so insistently without some covert hope for coherence. And it’s there in my habits — in my impulse always to confront pain directly which I’m sure I learned from the Psalms first. And it’s there in key assumptions I have about the possibilities for politics. I think perhaps I dislike writing explicitly about faith in part because it feels too important to me — too heavy for news cycle arguments.
Religion has of course always had a notably loud voice in America. But we seem to be flirting with a line in which it is not just trying to speak to the state. Religious rhetoric — strike that — Christian rhetoric is increasingly becoming language of the State.
On Charlie Kirk’s podcast last week, the Vice President quoted both the Nicene Creed and the 133rd Psalm in his discussion of the new policies the White House will be developing in response to Kirk’s death. Similarly the 90,000 person Kirk funeral in which the Secretary of State, White House Chief of Staff, Vice President, and President all spoke began with a full lineup of evangelical style praise and worship music. And this week, Pete Hegseth tweeted a promotional video for the newly named “Department of War” in which the Lord’s prayer is interlaced with images of stealth bombers and aircraft carriers.
In the Rawlsian age, the idea was that religious language should be valued, but contained. Public discourse was a realm that had to sit aloof from particular metaphysical commitments. Perhaps there is a final truth to the world, but claims at this level had to restrain themselves. They could play out their full arguments in niche “communities of faith” (to use the liberal euphemism), but when it came to entering into public they had to translate and temper this language so as to deliberate with people from wildly different backgrounds and commitments. That era appears thoroughly over, at least for now.
It is not merely that we are finding religious claims being made more openly as arguments about how the country should be structured, but also being used as explicit justifications for policy decisions.
This phenomenon — collapsing court and cult — is one of the least unique things in the history of politics. Until our incredibly idiosyncratic era, in fact, the idea of claiming divine mandate for state action was almost the norm. In one of our earliest records of a strong state, the Mesopotamian king Naram-Sin set himself up as the divine protector of Akkad which happened to coincide with rapid expansion of imperial territory. We see similar patterns in Assyria, Persia, Greece. To take two more familiar names — Alexander the Great claimed lineage from Zeus, and Julius Caesar from Venus. The cult-court collapse was not just a political tool — demanding full subservience — but a far simpler way of seeing the world. There is one hierarchy instantiated in heaven and earth and it requires submission.
Nor has Christianity refrained from getting in on the game. If pre-Constantine Rome prohibited Christians from becoming soldiers, post-Constantine Rome had Christian armies. If early Christianity had a rule to “render unto Caesar,” Renaissance popes came to look rather uncannily like the Persian “God-Kings” in their bids for authority.
But if the task is ratifying authority by divine mandate, Christianity always ends up being the most duplicitous ally. Perhaps the most consistent theme in the gospels is the full unrelenting inversion of hierarchy. “Woe to you who are rich for you have received your consolation”; “whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave”; “blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.”
These are also not trivial aspects of the religion, but tie directly to the structural logic of the faith — “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.” If the God that made the world decides not to slaughter but die for his enemies, what does that do to good old human blood feuds? “If you love those who love you, what credit is that?”; “I say to you — love your enemies; do good to those who hate you.”
And alongside the Borgias and crusades this idea of power inversion also developed centuries of culture around it. In emperors who literally bowed at higher authority. In charities and hospitals for the poor otherwise completely unknown in antiquity. In monastic movements explicitly antagonistic to class hierarchy and socialist Catholic Worker houses.
As many commentators have pointed out, the contrast between Erika Kirk’s speech at Charlie’s funeral and the other more political figures was jarring. After recollecting key memories of Charlie, she concluded her speech with an emphatic statement of forgiveness: “That man. That young man. I forgive him. I forgive him because it was what Christ did. What Charlie would do. The answer to hate is not hate. The answer we know from the gospel is love and always love.”
Like many millennials, I feel visceral revulsion at the pallid, emaciated versions of politics that we inherited. Bland talk about economic prosperity, or even-handed equality never gets anywhere near the blood.
In part for that reason, I’ve always found something wildly strange — intoxicating — about any of the philosophical and religious views that really do involve power inversion. One sees it at times in Buddhism, and in Platonism. One can glimpse it in the pagan tragedies and the Jewish prophets. And it’s clearly the one thing without which Christianity wouldn’t be anything at all. And I want this. I still have my breath drawn short whenever I encounter a politics that genuinely seems able to invert the rule that “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”
But all of this makes the rise of state-bound muscular Christianity all the more stomach-turning to me. We have already had a liberal establishment that tried something like this pick-and-choose approach. Liberals I think genuinely do believe in power inversion — caring for the poor and the weak. And on most plausible histories — that too is a centuries old inheritance of Christianity. But one of the main stories of the late 20th century is that liberals found themselves less and less able to find larger philosophical or religious resources that could motivate that vision of care in a sustainable way. And so they resorted to repeating the parts they liked ever more loudly, never quite noticing how much the whole vision was dying in their hands.
For this reason, it is all the more disturbing to see political figures in our new right playing at similar games. In their case they seem perfectly happy to keep the eccentric language of divine sacrifice, to keep the praise and worship music, to keep the idea of protecting a Christian culture, even as they seem far too thrilled at the idea of a society that believes first of all in human muscle.
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Well put Sam. I almost vomited when I saw Hegseth's video, that's the first time I had seen it. It's repugnant.
Loved this summary of the left: "...one of the main stories of the late 20th century is that liberals found themselves less and less able to find larger philosophical or religious resources that could motivate that vision of care in a sustainable way. And so they resorted to repeating the parts they liked ever more loudly, never quite noticing how much the whole vision was dying in their hands."
I appreciate your explanation (and reasoning) for leaving your faith out of this. I've criticized you for that in the past, and it seems that perhaps now more than every we need your voice of reason, and your reason for hope.
Hesgeth and his master, the other Wilson... will not have the last word.
This resonates so deeply--thank you for taking the time to articulate this moment in our history so clearly. We need to hear more of this kind of thinking!