{"id":10,"date":"2003-10-15T18:31:53","date_gmt":"2003-10-15T23:31:53","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=10"},"modified":"2003-10-15T18:31:53","modified_gmt":"2003-10-15T23:31:53","slug":"toxic-christianity-round-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=10","title":{"rendered":"Toxic Christianity, round two"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the October 15th <a href='http:\/\/www.opinionjournal.com\/best\/'>Best of the Web<\/a>, James<br \/>\nTaranto asks:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>So let&#8217;s see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican<br \/>\nChurch is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent<br \/>\npeople [by Palestinian terrorists] is a sign of &#8220;serious moral goals,&#8221;<br \/>\nwhile the liberation of millions [of Iraqis] from one of the world&#8217;s<br \/>\nmost vicious dictatorships is, as he has put it, &#8220;immoral and<br \/>\nillegal.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Is this really what Christianity is all about?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Well, since you asked&#8230;yes, indeed it is.<\/p>\n<p>To understand why, you first have to confront what Dr. Rowan<br \/>\nWilliams is actually doing.  He is aligning himself with Islamic<br \/>\nterrorists against individual Christians and against the liberation of<br \/>\nIraq from an Islamizing dictator by a predominantly Christian<br \/>\nnation.<\/p>\n<p>Now, why would the head of the second most prestigious of all<br \/>\nChristian denominations do that?  What is it in Christianity that<br \/>\ncould make him so confident in the morality of this position?  What is<br \/>\nit about the U.S.&#8217;s actions that make it so threatening?<\/p>\n<p>A clue to the problem is that though the U.S. is demographically a<br \/>\nmostly Christian nation, the effect of U.S. cultural hegemony is a<br \/>\nsecularizing one.  American popular culture severs the bonds of fear<br \/>\nand ignorance that hold people unquestioningly to their ancestral<br \/>\nrelgions.  The American vision of each individual as an autonomous<br \/>\nbeing who derives his rights from his humanness, from the simple fact<br \/>\nof his capacity to assert them, is deadly antithetical to any<br \/>\nreligious tradition that vests moral authority in a transcendant<br \/>\nGod.<\/p>\n<p>The Founding Fathers of the U.S. understood this antipathy full<br \/>\nwell.  The pro-forma nods towards the distant god of the Deists in the<br \/>\nDeclaration of Independence and U.S. Consitution failed to conceal the<br \/>\nfact that the Founding Fathers were freethinkers, agnostics and<br \/>\natheists almost to a man.  As George Washington and John Adams<br \/>\nexplained to the Knights of Malta in 1787 &#8220;The United States is in no<br \/>\nway founded upon the Christian religion&#8221;.  It could not have been so<br \/>\nfounded without a fatal conflict with its aspiration to be a nation of<br \/>\nfreedom.<\/p>\n<p>The Archbishop of Canterbury cannot be dismissed as a fringe figure<br \/>\nas some are (incorrectly) wont to do of Pat Robertson.  His enmity<br \/>\ntowards the U.S.&#8217;s anti-terror strategy, his willingness to line up<br \/>\nwith Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden after no more than a pro-forma<br \/>\ndisclaimer of terrorist means, proceeds directly from this fundamental<br \/>\nconflict.  It is diagnostic of a deep sickness, an abiding evil in the<br \/>\nheart of Christianity itself &mdash; the exaltation of obedience, the<br \/>\ndenial that humans can have any worth other than through the<br \/>\ncondescension of God.<\/p>\n<p>Nietzsche called this one correctly.  Christianity, which purports<br \/>\nto be the religion of love, is only sporadically anything of the kind.<br \/>\nIt is primarily a religion of slavery and submission.  Christian<br \/>\nindividualism, when it exists at all, is legitimized only by obedience<br \/>\nto God.  In a Christian worldview there is always someone to be<br \/>\nobeyed, whether visible cleric or invisible Nobodaddy.  You must<br \/>\nsubmit; the only argument is about to whom your obedience is owed, and<br \/>\nwhat humans under what circumstances may transmit the orders of God.<br \/>\nWithout that sinew of obedience the entire world-view<br \/>\ndisintegrates.<\/p>\n<p>To a Christian cleric, a properly terrified and obedient Muslim is<br \/>\nless of a threat than a person who has rejected the God of the<br \/>\nAbrahamic faiths.  The Muslim is still within the system of<br \/>\nsubmission. Only a handful of symbols separate him from the Christian;<br \/>\nthe basic program is the same.  Therefore, from the point of view of<br \/>\nthe operators of the religious obedience machine that is Anglicanism<br \/>\n(or almost any other Christian denomination) Osama bin Laden is a more<br \/>\nnatural ally than any freethinker.<\/p>\n<p>Am I accusing Dr. Rowan Williams of being part of a conscious<br \/>\ntotalitarian conspiracy? No; he is something far more dangerous<br \/>\n&mdash; a leading figure in an <em>unconscious<\/em> totalitarian<br \/>\nconspiracy, one which denies its own nature just effectively enough to<br \/>\nfool others as well.  That conspiracy encompasses every tyrant<br \/>\nwho has ever told human beings that their path to happiness lay<br \/>\nin the exaltation of some authority, whether God or the State.<\/p>\n<p>It is in this context that Dr. Williams&#8217;s statement makes perfect<br \/>\nand consistent sense.  For him, better a thousand terrorist acts than<br \/>\neven one human being waking up to discover that he need not after all<br \/>\nfear the wrath of God.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/enetation.co.uk\/comments.php?user=esr&#038;commentid=106625086280895587\">Blogspot Comments<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the October 15th Best of the Web, James Taranto asks: So let&#8217;s see if we have this straight: The head of the Anglican Church is telling us that the wanton murder of thousands of innocent people [by Palestinian terrorists] is a sign of &#8220;serious moral goals,&#8221; while the liberation of millions [of Iraqis] from&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=10\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Toxic Christianity, round two<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}