Christianity: a pagan heresy

Ross Douthat has a provocatively titled book out, Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics, so he’s making the media rounds. In general I find Douthat to be an interesting thinker, but there is one domain where I feel that he lacks a proper sense of balance, and that is in the domain of religion. By this, I don’t mean that I disagree with his belief in Roman Catholic Christianity. I do, but that’s a rather conventional disagreement. Rather, Douthat seems to perceive religious history and the relationship of religion to societies through the eyes of a nerd. It seems in his world that the particular theology of a religion is of greater import. Not simply because he happens to believe that the theology of his own religion, Christianity, is true, but because he believes that that theology has material consequences on the world around us.

Consider his most recent post in Slate. Let’s look at two passages:

But when I look at your secular liberalism, I see a system of thought that looks rather like a Christian heresy, and not necessarily a particularly coherent one at that. In Bad Religion, I describe heresy as a form of belief that tends to emphasize certain elements of the Christian synthesis while downgrading or dismissing other aspects of that whole. And it isn’t surprising that liberalism, which after all developed in a Christian civilization, does exactly that, drawing implicitly on the Christian intellectual inheritance to ground its liberty-equality-fraternity ideals.

On the face of it Christianity and liberalism are a set of ideas. But I think it’s naive for anyone to presuppose that either should have any coherency. Nerds demand coherency and systematic order. In contrast, Left-liberals of the populist variety espouse the sterilization of the colored races in 1910 because that’s the “progressive” position at that time, while today they accept the extinction of the white race because that’s the “progressive” stance in 2010. Today Christian conservatives believe that the American republic was foreordained by God. In the 17th century King James asserted that monarchy was only possible through cooperation with a hierarchical church. Deep into the 20th century the Roman Catholic church rejected the very legitimacy of the liberal democratic order.

Second, do a “search and replace” of “Christian” with “pagan” in some sections. For example: But when I look at your Christianity, I see a system of thought that looks rather like a pagan heresy, and not necessarily a particularly coherent one at that…I describe heresy as a form of belief that tends to emphasize certain elements of the pagan synthesis while downgrading or dismissing other aspects of that whole. And it isn’t surprising that Christianity, which after all developed in a pagan civilization, does exactly that, drawing implicitly on the pagan intellectual inheritance to ground its liberty-equality-fraternity ideals. This is not to say that I believe that it is useful to reduce Christianity to a particular form of Roman religion, which just happens to have vanquished all others. But similarly, I do wonder at the utility of deriving all modern movements back their root, which must at some point be Christianity in the West because of that religion’s monopoly, is useful at all.

And terms here matter. There is Christian civilization, and then there are the civilizations which have espoused Christianity. Ethiopia and Armenia have histories of being Christian societies centuries longer than Britain. What Douthat really means is the civilization of the Western church. And more honestly, probably of the Western church centered around the Low Countries, with Iberia and Italy somewhat liminal.

I’ll end on an ironic note:

Indeed, it’s completely obvious that absent the Christian faith, there would be no liberalism at all. No ideal of universal human rights without Jesus’ radical upending of social hierarchies (including his death alongside common criminals on the cross). No separation of church and state without the gospels’ “render unto Caesar” and St. Augustine’s two cities. No liberal confidence about the march of historical progress without the Judeo-Christian interpretation of history as an unfolding story rather than an endlessly repeating wheel.

Actually, it is not completely obvious. Liberalism came to fruition in a Western Christian civilization, but we can’t “run the experiment” to tease apart causal factors, or modify the variables (e.g., was Christianity coincidental to a process which was actually driven by economic factors grounded in the scientific revolution?). And Douthat just asserts stridently to gloss over complexities. Did Jesus actually upend social hierarchies? This would certainly surprise many modern conservatives, who might offer that Christ leveled ethical hierarchies, while leaving the social order predominantly intact. And the Chinese would be surprised by the idea that religious institutions might be separate from the political powers that be only due to the insights of the Gospels. Though the modern idea of church-state separation is very distinctive, the state-religion duopoly characteristic of Christian and Muslim societies generally did not exist in East Asia.

The main problem I have with Douthat’s technique is that he sweeps from the intellectual to the populist so rapidly that it’s almost impossible to keep track of him. Should we grant him the license of a provocateur? Or should we take him seriously as a measured thinker? There are many who provoke more coarsely and with more panache than Douthat, so I think it is the cerebral route he should go. If that then, his arguments need to be more genuinely broadminded and rich, instead of glib truisms refashioned in more polite and academic language.