I view Christianity as morally and socially subversive in that I think if one looks at the things Jesus says, or even the things Paul and the other writers of the New Testament said one sees a kind of moral, political and social inversive.
Morality, typically, is a top-down social system, what is fundamentally good in a moral system in society is that which perpetuates the system. To rock the moral fabric is to shake the society at its foundation. When Christians were arrested and sent before the court, the charges were always about how Christians were moral and social subversives. Seen as being a threat to Rome's social mores and traditional values. Christians were charged with atheism, with being enemies of the human race, with attacking traditional family values, and generally upsetting the basic social order of the Empire.
Even in Christian dominant societies, Christianity has still--when it is the voice of the least and the lesser--spoken truth to power. The language of Dr. Martin Luther King was the language of the New Testament, the language of Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church again was the language of the Gospel (especially the Sermon on the Mount). When kings and emperors oppressed, it was usually the voice of the religious who spoke to them against their tyranny. The tradition of the role of the
Holy Fool in Russia and the rest of the Orthodox world, for example. The examples of lone Christians standing firm against emperors (again, even Christian emperors) such as when St. Ambrose rebuked Theodosius and refused him entry to the church and ordered the emperor to repent in ash and sackcloth in imitation of King David after the emperor massacred thousands in Thessaloniki.
Christianity has certainly been appropriated by the powerful, as all religion has been at one time or another; but it has also given voice to the powerless, and speaking out and subverting the very foundations of the social order.
As such, I don't very much see Christianity as particularly useful for morality or society--not if taken seriously. If taken seriously Christianity should be a threat to our standards of morality and the status quo of society.
