Is Christianity Political

My best friend Sam Wang is a complex man known for many things, but if you ask an acquaintance to outline his properties, "argumentative" is definitely going to be one of them. His most famed verbal battles are on two things: Christianity and politics. Debating against Christian apologetics, arguing with conservatism, critiquing all that endorses authority--really the full package. Being an atheist in a Christian school (which I assume to be Baptist or Protestant) certainly provided the soil to hone his debating skills. And his debating skills are well honed indeed, his mouth is revered from Beijing to New York State.

Yet, he has one fatal weakness: whenever someone says "what is wrong with my belief that God exists (along with other tenets of Christianity)? Will me, a simple person, believing in Christ result in the collapse of society, result in fascism?" Indeed, if it is taken that a man masturbating to perverted pornography has no causal link with accelerated moral decay, then it should be accepted that a person's belief in Christianity will not result in situational fascism. We can even take this on a more massive scale: we are no longer in the times of Church and Kings, so Christianity has just as much influence in modern politics as the political parties, and, therefore, is just as innocent from politics as any other religion (as any religion could start their own political party, it is just a matter of support). One could say that Christianity, in itself, is not harmful--it is just what people do with it. Therefore, my friend Sam's brilliantly crafted arguments against Christianity are useless not only on a personal scale, but also a social scale because (since Christianity is harmless by itself) the real debate should be about who is fucking shit up (or even if there is someone fucking shit up) within the Christian entity.

This argument here is an obvious sign of my desperation to think of a counterargument that is easy to rebut, but it holds some value: Christianity in the modern world has been reduced to a belief, it is no longer the oppressive political entity that it was back in the Dark Ages. The fucked-up alt right conservatism (oppression of women, racism, and fascism) elements presented as Christian is the perversion of Christianity by some perverted people.

Well, no, if we take our observations even further and look at the current structures of politics, traces of Christianity and even theology will begin to pop up, showing that, no, Christianity is not as simple as a state of belief given that we ignore those perverted Christians.

Think of human rights. Why do people value this thing so much? To think of it, human rights is not only a spurious concept--that there is no innate mechanism that guarantees it--it is also not widely practiced: from the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay to the combatants in Russo-Ukrainian War, just as Agamben observed, human rights are trampled on by the state, ignored for "necessary" causes. Yet, we treat the concept of human rights with reverence: we treat it as if it is natural, unimpeded, supreme when in reality it is an imposed concept, often impeded, and submissive under the state.

Now observe the similarity between human rights and the Christian concept of divine humanity: both speak of an apparent inherent human dignity. This similarity should prove no connection, but once one considers this almost natural and most definitely misplaced reverence we hold for human rights, things change. This reverence indicates something ideological, something structural is at play here: Christianity had its conception of human sanctity transposed into the new concept that is human rights. The Christian human permeated into the "modern" culture, shaping the connotations of language and the contours of our politics. In this process of permeation, the religious connotation--human life is sanctioned because God created us--is removed, or secularized, into a modern connotation--human life is sanctioned because of its moral importance (for example)--human sanctity becomes human rights. Yet, the theological core of this concept remained: we regardless hold a reverence for human sanctity/rights, a reverence without reflection.

There are so many such concepts in modern politics that are secularized versions of Christianity, other religions, and religion in general (such as our tendency to yearn for an autonomous, omnipotent agency, which for religion, it is the gods and for modern politics, it is the state). For this precise reason, we should not glance over Christianity as merely "the object of personal beliefs."