Toxic Christianity, round two
<p>In the October 15th <a href='http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/'>Best of the Web</a>, James<br />
Taranto asks:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So let&#8217;s see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican<br />
Church is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent<br />
people [by Palestinian terrorists] is a sign of &#8220;serious moral goals,&#8221;<br />
while the liberation of millions [of Iraqis] from one of the world&#8217;s<br />
most vicious dictatorships is, as he has put it, &#8220;immoral and<br />
illegal.&#8221;</p>
<p>Is this really what Christianity is all about?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Well, since you asked&#8230;yes, indeed it is.</p>
<p>To understand why, you first have to confront what Dr. Rowan<br />
Williams is actually doing.  He is aligning himself with Islamic<br />
terrorists against individual Christians and against the liberation of<br />
Iraq from an Islamizing dictator by a predominantly Christian<br />
nation.</p>
<p>Now, why would the head of the second most prestigious of all<br />
Christian denominations do that?  What is it in Christianity that<br />
could make him so confident in the morality of this position?  What is<br />
it about the U.S.&#8217;s actions that make it so threatening?</p>
<p>A clue to the problem is that though the U.S. is demographically a<br />
mostly Christian nation, the effect of U.S. cultural hegemony is a<br />
secularizing one.  American popular culture severs the bonds of fear<br />
and ignorance that hold people unquestioningly to their ancestral<br />
relgions.  The American vision of each individual as an autonomous<br />
being who derives his rights from his humanness, from the simple fact<br />
of his capacity to assert them, is deadly antithetical to any<br />
religious tradition that vests moral authority in a transcendant<br />
God.</p>
<p>The Founding Fathers of the U.S. understood this antipathy full<br />
well.  The pro-forma nods towards the distant god of the Deists in the<br />
Declaration of Independence and U.S. Consitution failed to conceal the<br />
fact that the Founding Fathers were freethinkers, agnostics and<br />
atheists almost to a man.  As George Washington and John Adams<br />
explained to the Knights of Malta in 1787 &#8220;The United States is in no<br />
way founded upon the Christian religion&#8221;.  It could not have been so<br />
founded without a fatal conflict with its aspiration to be a nation of<br />
freedom.</p>
<p>The Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be dismissed as a fringe figure<br />
as some are (incorrectly) wont to do of Pat Robertson.  His enmity<br />
towards the U.S.&#8217;s anti-terror strategy, his willingness to line up<br />
with Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden after no more than a pro-forma<br />
disclaimer of terrorist means, proceeds directly from this fundamental<br />
conflict.  It is diagnostic of a deep sickness, an abiding evil in the<br />
heart of Christianity itself &mdash; the exaltation of obedience, the<br />
denial that humans can have any worth other than through the<br />
condescension of God.</p>
<p>Nietzsche called this one correctly.  Christianity, which purports<br />
to be the religion of love, is only sporadically anything of the kind.<br />
It is primarily a religion of slavery and submission.  Christian<br />
individualism, when it exists at all, is legitimized only by obedience<br />
to God.  In a Christian worldview there is always someone to be<br />
obeyed, whether visible cleric or invisible Nobodaddy.  You must<br />
submit; the only argument is about to whom your obedience is owed, and<br />
what humans under what circumstances may transmit the orders of God.<br />
Without that sinew of obedience the entire world-view<br />
disintegrates.</p>
<p>To a Christian cleric, a properly terrified and obedient Muslim is<br />
less of a threat than a person who has rejected the God of the<br />
Abrahamic faiths.  The Muslim is still within the system of<br />
submission. Only a handful of symbols separate him from the Christian;<br />
the basic program is the same.  Therefore, from the point of view of<br />
the operators of the religious obedience machine that is Anglicanism<br />
(or almost any other Christian denomination) Osama bin Laden is a more<br />
natural ally than any freethinker.</p>
<p>Am I accusing Dr. Rowan Williams of being part of a conscious<br />
totalitarian conspiracy? No; he is something far more dangerous<br />
&mdash; a leading figure in an <em>unconscious</em> totalitarian<br />
conspiracy, one which denies its own nature just effectively enough to<br />
fool others as well.  That conspiracy encompasses every tyrant<br />
who has ever told human beings that their path to happiness lay<br />
in the exaltation of some authority, whether God or the State.</p>
<p>It is in this context that Dr. Williams&#8217;s statement makes perfect<br />
and consistent sense.  For him, better a thousand terrorist acts than<br />
even one human being waking up to discover that he need not after all<br />
fear the wrath of God.</p>
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