Historical Challenges to the Social Currency of Western Christianity

zippy2006

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In recent years social and moral critiques of Christianity have become quite common. Although this form of opposition to Christianity is diffuse and does not come from any single party, it surely exists. Some of it opposes Christian teaching on subjects such as marriage, freedom, and sexual morality. Some of it highlights Christian failings in events like the Holocaust, the sexual abuse scandals, or recent political controversies. These two forms of opposition often become mixed. We can see society becoming unmoored from Christian morality in things as disparate as high court decisions, UN resolutions, and popular culture and media.

I am wondering if this has ever happened before, and if so, where? In the past when Christianity possessed societal power the controversies usually revolved around political power and material goods rather than social and moral clout. Thus when Christianity was co-opted in the past it was usually with respect to political power or material gain. Yet today we see Christianity opposed and co-opted on the basis of social and moral influence. This is a more serious threat, second only to a direct religious challenge. Further, when Christianity is envied for its social and moral influence, infiltration can go far beyond material corruption.

Here are some possibilities to get us started. I will focus on Western Christianity since I am more familiar with it:
  • The Early Church: Christianity quickly became a social threat to the Roman hegemony, and beginning with Constantine vied with paganism for social dominance. Nevertheless, the Empire fell before this could be resolved in any real way.
  • The Reformation: This shifted the balance of power between Church and State and between Catholics and Protestants, but I don't think it was a challenge to the social and moral aspects of Christianity. It seems to me that Protestants were challenging the Catholic Church rather than Christianity.
  • The French Revolution: Although material and political gain were also significant motives, this is perhaps the strongest example of a widespread social and moral creed which began to differ from Christianity and opposed itself to Christianity.
  • Philosophical Opposition: On the heels of the revolution came atheistic figures like Comte, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, all of whom directly challenged Christianity on social and moral issues. The accumulation of many such figures may explain the ambivalence towards or even distrust of Christianity that we see today.

In general I am curious to see how Christian societies of past ages handled direct opposition to their social and moral authority. In order to do that there needs to be a coherent antagonist. The French Revolution seems like the best candidate. Can you think of others?
 

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Christianity has always had some social opposition from society. I think this is true in every age, to some extent. Jesus said after all, he came to bring division between father and son, daughter and mother.

I would think of people like Francis of Assisi, who had a public spat with his father when he decided to eschew secular life. Or his attempts to go and mediate with Egypt in the Crusade. The early Franciscan movement met significant opposition initially, too.

Or the Waldensians and Lollards come to mind. I don't think you can differentiate critiques of wealth from moral ones, as fundamentally these groups opposed the worldliness and greed of the Church on moral grounds. That they fed into the Peasant Revolt and ideas of equality, shows this: "When Adam farmed and Eve span, who was then the Gentleman?" The Church never resolved it, and it fed into the Protestant Reformation as a result, but much of its sting was taken out by becoming state Churches which weakened their moral clout. Although, the presence of Moravian brethen or such, continued the tradition. Even then, we see the Anabaptists establish shortlived communal communes, that may or may not have engaged in non-traditional forms of marriage.

Or another good mediaeval option are the Cathars. They claimed to be Perfecti, and their high moral standards was why it was so hard to oppose them. Dominican preaching was insufficient to contain its spread, but the violent reaction of Crusade is probably not a good way to resolve it. This was a moral critique of the Church, but also a Social one in that the Perfecti established a parallel social system within the mediaeval top down model. But their morality was of a different flavour, as all matter was eschewed - fasting, asceticism and celibacy carried to a degree the Church would not countenance.

The Puritans too, were a social critique of the Established English Church. The Crown knew that 'No Bishop, No King' was a clear governing principle of an unitary state under God. A Puritan parliament beheaded a Christian king, in spite of NT commands to respect authority. Various ways to try and resolve the fact of a Christian kingdom not of this world, with an ostensibly Christian Kingdom, is one of the oldest incongruencies. Doestoyevsky did a great covering of this in Brothers Karamazov where he had the Atheist Ivan write a piece on where the Church had to absorb the State, which some of the priests found laudable. It is the original temptation of Christ when shown the kingdoms of the world.

Looking at these examples, I think Christian society has adapted either by co-opting or violent opposition. Perhaps this is an example of Hegellian thesis/antithesis/synthesis. The Protestants eventually became the worldly State Church; but when hunting things we often become the things we hunted. I think a lot of these critiques are justified to some extent, hence their power. I think it makes the Church wobble around a moral point, maybe going too far this way or that before being brought back. The Augustinian God as the Good which we try to reach, but all our attempts degrade in our human imperfection until a new challenge helps to walk us back.
 
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Our modern Western world is still beholden to a strange mix of ideas inherited from the Mediaeval period. It is hard to notice your own mistakes when pervasive in society. Our times are far too much concerned with sexual ethics, while ignoring other moral failings. Much of our moral discourse has historically been focussed on this, while if you look at the Bible, this was much less of a concern. I have a feeling that investigating non-Western churches, I think the percentage of moral discourse focussing on such sins would likely be less.

I think there is a continuous social opposition to Christianity: The Apostolic age opposing Second Temple Judaism; the Early Church known for "atheism" and disloyalty to Roman eyes; the attempted synthesis of Christianity into the State Cult post Constantine up till Theodosius; the Fall of Rome and the failure of the City of man, as opposed to the City of God; the inappropriate contentokratia and the first worldliness; the Cluniac reforms; the high mediaeval attempt at resolving Aristotle and Scripture; the hierarchy challenges of Lollards, Hussites and Waldensians; the Protestant Reformation; Las Casas and the ilk and the expansion of slavery; the Enlightenment; the Abolition movement; the White man's burden; the philosophical opposition up and including Communism; the ennui of the interwar years and the Confessing vs National churches; decolonisation and Liberation Theology; and now finally coming to head in a heady mix of these last couple of points in an inchoate opposition - which probably means the last 200 or so years are actually one 'era' of opposition to Christianity, which we just subdivide because it was most recent. It is pwrhaps the Reformation's distrust of tradition coming home to roost, coupled with a sort-of Natural Law based not on a presumed Eternal one, but a simple red-in-tooth-and-claw Will to Power with a mix of Noble Savage. Why else this emphasis on the Natural, as if that automatically validates something? There is a constant attempt to "get behind the thing", as if the truth is hidden by the surface presentation - as if a table is less real than the atoms of which it is composed. Christianity is distrusted because we are taught how it bolstered the State or so, so it must merely be a tool of something deeper rather than a end of itself. With this hatred of Fundamentalists or Evangelicals in the US, often people think the end goal is merely putting Republicans in power in support of moneyed interest - or essentially a moneyed Class is responsible, for instanxe. If people don't see the thing the Church is trying to approach, it will look for something beneath it that they assume is the "real goal". In Pilgrim's Regress, CS Lewis has the Spirit of the Age make people merely see their own bowels, rendering 'visible' what is really unseen, and thus fundamentally not seeing the real thing.
 
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In recent years social and moral critiques of Christianity have become quite common. Although this form of opposition to Christianity is diffuse and does not come from any single party, it surely exists. Some of it opposes Christian teaching on subjects such as marriage, freedom, and sexual morality. Some of it highlights Christian failings in events like the Holocaust, the sexual abuse scandals, or recent political controversies. These two forms of opposition often become mixed. We can see society becoming unmoored from Christian morality in things as disparate as high court decisions, UN resolutions, and popular culture and media.

I am wondering if this has ever happened before, and if so, where? In the past when Christianity possessed societal power the controversies usually revolved around political power and material goods rather than social and moral clout. Thus when Christianity was co-opted in the past it was usually with respect to political power or material gain. Yet today we see Christianity opposed and co-opted on the basis of social and moral influence. This is a more serious threat, second only to a direct religious challenge. Further, when Christianity is envied for its social and moral influence, infiltration can go far beyond material corruption.

Here are some possibilities to get us started. I will focus on Western Christianity since I am more familiar with it:
  • The Early Church: Christianity quickly became a social threat to the Roman hegemony, and beginning with Constantine vied with paganism for social dominance. Nevertheless, the Empire fell before this could be resolved in any real way.
  • The Reformation: This shifted the balance of power between Church and State and between Catholics and Protestants, but I don't think it was a challenge to the social and moral aspects of Christianity. It seems to me that Protestants were challenging the Catholic Church rather than Christianity.
  • The French Revolution: Although material and political gain were also significant motives, this is perhaps the strongest example of a widespread social and moral creed which began to differ from Christianity and opposed itself to Christianity.
  • Philosophical Opposition: On the heels of the revolution came atheistic figures like Comte, Feuerbach, Marx, and Nietzsche, all of whom directly challenged Christianity on social and moral issues. The accumulation of many such figures may explain the ambivalence towards or even distrust of Christianity that we see today.

In general I am curious to see how Christian societies of past ages handled direct opposition to their social and moral authority. In order to do that there needs to be a coherent antagonist. The French Revolution seems like the best candidate. Can you think of others?
The first social and moral influence problem would have to be with Judaism, we see people converting to a religion that is rejected by their families and closest friends. To be a Jew was not just to be born a Jew it also involved practicing the Jewish religion. The religion was part of the identity of each person. The early Christians were ostracizing themselves from their society.
 
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zippy2006

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Thanks so much for your thoughtful and thorough posts, Quid! I suppose I see the Waldensians, the Puritans, and even the Cathari as more or less internecine Christian struggles. We can come back to those, but to begin I am wondering about challenges from non-Christian groups.

and now finally coming to head in a heady mix of these last couple of points in an inchoate opposition - which probably means the last 200 or so years are actually one 'era' of opposition to Christianity, which we just subdivide because it was most recent.

Do you see this era as constituting a challenge from a non-Christian mentality? I realize it is hard to altogether separate Western movements from Christianity, but at least the philosophers I identified in the OP could be seen as having a fundamental non-Christian orientation.

There is a constant attempt to "get behind the thing", as if the truth is hidden by the surface presentation - as if a table is less real than the atoms of which it is composed. Christianity is distrusted because we are taught how it bolstered the State or so, so it must merely be a tool of something deeper rather than a end of itself. With this hatred of Fundamentalists or Evangelicals in the US, often people think the end goal is merely putting Republicans in power in support of moneyed interest - or essentially a moneyed Class is responsible, for instance. If people don't see the thing the Church is trying to approach, it will look for something beneath it that they assume is the "real goal". In Pilgrim's Regress, CS Lewis has the Spirit of the Age make people merely see their own bowels, rendering 'visible' what is really unseen, and thus fundamentally not seeing the real thing.

This is an interesting point: distrust of Christianity based on the belief that it is just a front for some deeper agenda. In that case the power that it does hold with respect to society or morality is arbitrary due to the fact that Christianity itself is inauthentic. Therefore displacing the societal power that Christianity possesses becomes possible in a way that would not have been possible if Christianity were seen as an authentic source of its societal influence.

This can be re-tooled in a more positive sense when Christianity is reduced to more fundamental atoms, such as love, kindness, justice, etc. In that case if a society which is loving, just, and kind can be erected independently of Christianity, why is Christianity needed at all? It is a vessel that contained the essential goods but can be discarded upon delivery.
 
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This is an interesting point: distrust of Christianity based on the belief that it is just a front for some deeper agenda. In that case the power that it does hold with respect to society or morality is arbitrary due to the fact that Christianity itself is inauthentic. Therefore displacing the societal power that Christianity possesses becomes possible in a way that would not have been possible if Christianity were seen as an authentic source of its societal influence.

This can be re-tooled in a more positive sense when Christianity is reduced to more fundamental atoms, such as love, kindness, justice, etc. In that case if a society which is loving, just, and kind can be erected independently of Christianity, why is Christianity needed at all? It is a vessel that contained the essential goods but can be discarded upon delivery.
This is broadly the Communist idea of religion as the Opiate of the Masses. Marx called it the soul of a soulless world, invented to try and justify suffering - and those pushing religion being those with capital, numbing the workers to their lot. The good elements of it, like Charity, are merely the natural extension into the dialectic leading to Communism and the end of private ownership. So the Communists think religion will disappear once suffering is taken care of in the communist support structure, but needed to be actively fought as it discouraged action in the now. Marx said "abolishing the illusory happiness of religion is a demand for real happiness" and would bring about a condition with no more illusions - which would of course be his dialectic of materialistic socialism.

We see a very similar idea espoused nowadays in some of the anti-racist organisations, who are obviously influenced by Marx, where Religion is seen as securing the privileges of the upper classes and distracting the lower as bread and circuses. They however see the goal as cementing some racial narrative of power structure. The good elements are dismissed as lip-service, even something like universal brotherhood that one would have assumed they'd support. Or Nietzsche that thought a Superman created his own morality, a Lawgiver, which then spoke to the people to create their herd morality to cement his own and his position - and thus a superior man would rend the vale thus created.

So yes, it is seen as an inauthentic social force made for some hidden agenda. They don't really support the idea of Christianity as a vessel, but a fraud - plastered outside with positive things to hide the rotten inside, not as a vehicle to gain them. The idea of Christianity being necessary to gain the goods but can be discarded once obtained, seems to me to be an older stratum of this thinking - it reminds me of Voltaire, actually. It is still around, but is a weaker strain of thought found in some of these historians writing on the superiority of the West, while trying to excuse its religious nature. I don't think the popular atheist holds this view, as generally they focus more on what they see as shortcomings and assume the advantages of charity or so, as Natural extensions of the human condition to a materialist. In Doestoyevsky's Devils, the older intellectual Verhhovensky leads to nihilism in his son and his pupils, which was the trend I think Doestoyevsky was seeing - Voltaire-style to proper Marx. I find it odd, as usually they are the first to say we humans are just Selfish and out for ourselves, but then erect these supposed dialectical mechanisms to utopia. Basically Self-worship.

Do you see this era as constituting a challenge from a non-Christian mentality? I realize it is hard to altogether separate Western movements from Christianity, but at least the philosophers I identified in the OP could be seen as having a fundamental non-Christian orientation.
These are fundamentally un-Christian. Christianity is predicated on the world being Good, just fallen - and man being at heart, in the image of God. Even the Total Depravity of Protestantism maintains this, so that God gives us grace as His image, and in the Augustinian sense any Good is thus mirroring God.

These other positions say at heart that man is selfish and self-serving, with no mechanism of redemption. The only reason to embrace altruism and work together, is for your own advantage in the long run in Marx, or to cheat the system or create one more in your taste in Nietszche.

I suppose I see the Waldensians, the Puritans, and even the Cathari as more or less internecine Christian struggles. We can come back to those, but to begin I am wondering about challenges from non-Christian groups.
I was thinking back on what I wrote, and I noticed my Protestantism was showing badly. Throughout the implied idea is a 'hidden' True Church being impacted upon by the various institutionalised variants and movements. You are very much right though, that most of those are fundamentally Christian and share most of the worldview - more its pragmatic implementation is at stake. Although, I would disagree about the Cathars - the Creator and broadly His Creation being Good, I think, is an essential part of Christianity.
 
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Thinking about this, I think Chesterton's Five Deaths of the Faith in the Everlasting Man is very applicable here:

G.K. CHESTERTON: THE EVERLASTING MAN

Our modern 'death' is the same. It is pessimism of humanity, surrender to the idea that we are merely brutes and all that is good merely a sham. Christianity is after all, the Good News. They say that even Calvin and the original Calvinists were fairly jolly, before eventually becoming characterised as a dour lot. Our western society is still reeling from the tragedies of the 20th century, so it is no wonder we are beholden to such dark fantasies.
 
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zippy2006

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This is broadly the Communist idea of religion as the Opiate of the Masses. Marx called it the soul of a soulless world, invented to try and justify suffering - and those pushing religion being those with capital, numbing the workers to their lot. The good elements of it, like Charity, are merely the natural extension into the dialectic leading to Communism and the end of private ownership. So the Communists think religion will disappear once suffering is taken care of in the communist support structure, but needed to be actively fought as it discouraged action in the now. Marx said "abolishing the illusory happiness of religion is a demand for real happiness" and would bring about a condition with no more illusions - which would of course be his dialectic of materialistic socialism.

We see a very similar idea espoused nowadays in some of the anti-racist organisations, who are obviously influenced by Marx, where Religion is seen as securing the privileges of the upper classes and distracting the lower as bread and circuses. They however see the goal as cementing some racial narrative of power structure. The good elements are dismissed as lip-service, even something like universal brotherhood that one would have assumed they'd support. Or Nietzsche that thought a Superman created his own morality, a Lawgiver, which then spoke to the people to create their herd morality to cement his own and his position - and thus a superior man would rend the vale thus created.

Interesting points! I think the Marxist influences you note are great examples of contemporary challenges to the Christian worldview.

So yes, it is seen as an inauthentic social force made for some hidden agenda. They don't really support the idea of Christianity as a vessel, but a fraud - plastered outside with positive things to hide the rotten inside, not as a vehicle to gain them. The idea of Christianity being necessary to gain the goods but can be discarded once obtained, seems to me to be an older stratum of this thinking - it reminds me of Voltaire, actually. It is still around, but is a weaker strain of thought found in some of these historians writing on the superiority of the West, while trying to excuse its religious nature. I don't think the popular atheist holds this view, as generally they focus more on what they see as shortcomings and assume the advantages of charity or so, as Natural extensions of the human condition to a materialist. In Doestoyevsky's Devils, the older intellectual Verhhovensky leads to nihilism in his son and his pupils, which was the trend I think Doestoyevsky was seeing - Voltaire-style to proper Marx. I find it odd, as usually they are the first to say we humans are just Selfish and out for ourselves, but then erect these supposed dialectical mechanisms to utopia. Basically Self-worship.

I do see the move from Voltaire to Marx, but then the move from Marx to our current anti-racism movements seems like quite a dilution. Both Voltaire and Marx seem to have much deeper roots than the popular movements we see today, which read discontent through a Marxist lens and use Marxist techniques to address it, but have a much shallower philosophical basis based largely on race and recompense. Thoughts?

These are fundamentally un-Christian. Christianity is predicated on the world being Good, just fallen - and man being at heart, in the image of God. Even the Total Depravity of Protestantism maintains this, so that God gives us grace as His image, and in the Augustinian sense any Good is thus mirroring God.

These other positions say at heart that man is selfish and self-serving, with no mechanism of redemption. The only reason to embrace altruism and work together, is for your own advantage in the long run in Marx, or to cheat the system or create one more in your taste in Nietszche.

So the fundamental hope that Christianity offers even deeply depraved individuals and societies is no longer present in these other systems with such a different anthropology. That is a good observation. These sorts of insights are very much what I was looking for.

I was thinking back on what I wrote, and I noticed my Protestantism was showing badly. Throughout the implied idea is a 'hidden' True Church being impacted upon by the various institutionalised variants and movements. You are very much right though, that most of those are fundamentally Christian and share most of the worldview - more its pragmatic implementation is at stake.

True. Although like I said, the internecine struggles are still relevant and we could come back to them. Nevertheless, the broad ethos of the Waldensians or the Puritans was Christian.

Although, I would disagree about the Cathars - the Creator and broadly His Creation being Good, I think, is an essential part of Christianity.

Good, I think you're probably right. I was hedging my bets with the Cathari. They are interesting because although there is a fundamentally different understanding of the Creator-creation relation, the ethical consequence--at least for those groups of Cathari that flourished--was above and beyond the Catholicism of the time. To the commoners the Cathari may have represented a more observant, authentic Christianity, a kind of "Catholicism 2.0." Dominic tried to emphasize holiness of life and asceticism among his followers in order to combat the moral aura of the Cathari. But like you said, that didn't work and so the Church decided to use regular cannons rather than Canons Regular. :D In that case there was a rather effective social and moral challenge to the Catholicism of the time and Christianity ultimately resorted to force to quell the movement.

I have heard it claimed by those who favor the Franciscans that Francis would have had better luck converting the Cathari than Dominic, and that he did have better luck in the few geographical areas where there was some overlap. There may be something to this.
 
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I do see the move from Voltaire to Marx, but then the move from Marx to our current anti-racism movements seems like quite a dilution. Both Voltaire and Marx seem to have much deeper roots than the popular movements we see today, which read discontent through a Marxist lens and use Marxist techniques to address it, but have a much shallower philosophical basis based largely on race and recompense. Thoughts?
Well, I wonder if it is less Marx than Mao. They seem to ascribe to a Maoist style of continuous revolution, with some tendency to disregard all the culture before it. There is also an element of Deconstruction and post-positivism that traditional Marxism lacks. Communism generally is decidedly an economics-based way of looking at the world, which at heart can be broken down into numbers and concretely measurable things like GDP or the like.

What is meant by Race, though? Is it measurable in any real sense? It is broadly assumed, but cannot be defined, as when they tack on that institutional power is required for something to be racist. Race is not something we can easily see in DNA, nor with ideas like 'whiteness' being in other groups, nor is it self-ascribed as in that Rachel Dolezal story. It is in flux constantly, and allows that revolution must be continuous, as the enemy seems amorphous. There is not something concrete that can be taken to represent a completion or even improvement toward the goal, a fruit of their labour beyond purely symbolic, like toppling statues. It is less clearly defined than older Communist thinking. Communism is at least a natural child of the West, born out of empiric reasoning; while this is a hybrid born out of repudiating a lot of the thinking of the West - right into ideas that the opinions of the subject determines value regardless of intent of the action or actor. I dare say it is Subjectivism as extreme as Rand's Objectivism. The issue though is that class/race is treated as an immutable characteristic, with no clear definition to know which class one belongs to, but it is broadly assumed on historic or social grounds. The class-struggle language is then co-opted, that even if someone achieves the highest level, they would remain an underclass in this thinking. If we don't know when someone's class is no longer depreciated, how can we determine what compensation if any, is owed? I agree the roots are shallower, as it just sprang up the last couple of years, but it is also not Western, in my opinion. I am sure they would be delighted in that characterisation. Marx had a universal brotherhood, of comrades; as Christianity has everyone in the image of God - this however teaches us that we are divided by forces beyond us, that we unconsciously or consciously reinforce. It is almost fatalistic, in that your status or achievements are predicated on these unseen forces behind the scenes; and ideas, character or achievements are merely products of Nurture. It reminds me of NICE in That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man from CS Lewis, as they think they can simply break a human down into the factors that created him, which they can't even clearly define or measure, and thus conclude who or what he fundamentally is. In a very real sense, it abolishes Man into merely processes, and opposes some of the most fundamental characteristics of being human - like a close family, as reinforcing the hated Privilege. God as Father and Son are of the most fundamental Christian metaphors, so this cuts directly against it. Christianity does have the sins of the fathers, but at heart, each stands responsible for their own actions to God. These movements seem to suggest we are not, just passive products of our circumstances for the most part.

Good, I think you're probably right. I was hedging my bets with the Cathari. They are interesting because although there is a fundamentally different understanding of the Creator-creation relation, the ethical consequence--at least for those groups of Cathari that flourished--was above and beyond the Catholicism of the time. To the commoners the Cathari may have represented a more observant, authentic Christianity, a kind of "Catholicism 2.0." Dominic tried to emphasize holiness of life and asceticism among his followers in order to combat the moral aura of the Cathari. But like you said, that didn't work and so the Church decided to use regular cannons rather than Canons Regular. :D In that case there was a rather effective social and moral challenge to the Catholicism of the time and Christianity ultimately resorted to force to quell the movement.

I have heard it claimed by those who favor the Franciscans that Francis would have had better luck converting the Cathari than Dominic, and that he did have better luck in the few geographical areas where there was some overlap. There may be something to this.
The Cathars and Franciscans both seem to be responses to the failure of Christianity to attain the high levels of moral rectitude it preaches. The Dominicans I think, are more reactionary to the general feeling of failure of rectitude, a circling of the wagons. I am probably being unfair, though.
 
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