Christianity is definitely not a Right-Wing political movement. In a previous post, I joined the fray on a topic that people like to discuss in this Very Online corner of the Internet: Is Christianity based or cucked? I took the basic stance that, while Christians have gotten more cucked in recent generations, there is reason to believe that they will become more based again within our lifetimes. So why am I now sitting here saying that Christianity isn’t a rightwing movement after all?
That’s because I want to zoom out from the entire frame of that discussion and provide some metacommentary on it. My view that Christianity is not a Right-Wing political movement or a political movement at all might seem obvious to some, but this has to be said because I have seen people who complain that Christians are “too cucked” cite that as a reason why they themselves do not wish to be Christian, and choose instead to be neo pagans or whatever else.
Indeed, if your primary concern is politics, then you probably won’t find what you are looking for in Christianity. When you are baptized, the priest doesn’t pray that you will go forth and own the libtards. The Nicene Creed does not mention abortion, gay rights, or immigration. Your salvation does not depend on how racist and anti-Semitic you are. When you become a Christian, you are signing up to something that is much bigger than just online cultural slap fights.
This does not mean that Christianity does not have political implications, of course. From the very beginning, the implications of Christianity were deeply political, and the political authorities of Jesus’s time persecuted him because of those implications. His followers have suffered such persecutions throughout history and still suffer them to some degree today. There are clear and unequivocal Christian teachings on many matters that today have become highly controversial:
That practices of sexual immorality, including pornography, fornication, homosexuality, etc.,
are sinful and not to be accepted.That abortion of the unborn child is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.
That the duty of childbearing is inseparable from God’s design of marriage as the union of
man and woman.
And so forth and so on. The important distinction to recognize with all of these teachings is that they originate outside of a political context. While they’ve become extremely conservative today, these things were simply taken for granted for much of the religion’s history and were not particular points of controversy. Instead, at its inception one could easily say Christianity was the “leftism” of the time, representing a more egalitarian worldview with its message of universal salvation for all, Jew and Gentile alike. During the first few centuries of Christianity’s spread through the Roman Empire it took on the role of the radical new belief system which competed against the older, more “conservative” pagan religious traditions.
While the political context that surrounds Christianity has changed wildly over the past 2000 years, the core teachings of the religion itself have not. They remain the same regardless of whether the world chooses to assign them the label of “left,” “right” or anything else.
Another important distinction of Christian teachings is that they are not limited only or even mostly to the political. There are so many Christian texts and records in fact that you probably could not read them all in your entire lifespan. The vast majority of them have little relevance to the modern political landscape, and many concern issues that are positively archaic; for example, the controversy of iconoclasm, a debate that roiled Eastern Roman society over a thousand years ago, but which has no real importance to elections in 21st -century America.
This well of knowledge runs far deeper than a mere political ideology. It is nothing less than a holistic game plan for your entire existence as a human being. Christians have devoted immeasurable volumes of text to matters of abstract theology; this material that may be of great interest to a Christian who wishes to better understand his own spiritual tradition, but it is essentially irrelevant to those who live outside the Christian faith. Moving down from those lofty heights, you can find guidance from one corner of the Christian tradition or another for absolutely any matter that might concern you in life—from the big hot-button political issues all the way down to the mundane day-to-day interactions that make up the vast majority of your experiences here on Earth.
The church itself is arranged in such a fashion as to provide you with an extended spiritual family for this express purpose. You experience life in fellowship with your congregation, with your priest as the head of household from whom you can seek wisdom and counsel when it is needed. The point of saying all of this is that the political positions Christians take are a consequence of their faith, not the other way around. The point Christianity is not to promote “based” political stances for Right-Wing; Christians that end up promoting “based” politics are doing so incidentally. If the world were dominated by hyper-racists who wished to exterminate certain skin colors, and Christians were labeled as weak-kneed, bleeding-heart liberals for opposing this, that perception would have zero bearing on what Christians are called on to say and do in their lives.
When we get into an argument over whether modern Christians are “based” or not, it’s easy to see why some people might get this twisted, and why others may start to worry that people are misunderstanding what Christianity really is. On my previous article, I received one comment on Liberty Magazine’s Substack which I believe expressed this concern rather aptly:
“I am not doubting your own experience. However, you did title your piece “Based Jesus.” Also, I am very familiar with the manifestation of the online Orthobro movement. And so I believe it prudent to point out that conversions motivated not by penance, thanksgiving and a wish for salvation, but by a desire to signal how “based” you are, are insincere and practically blasphemous.”
This commenter pointed to an “online Orthobro movement” as an example of people essentially wearing the trappings of Christianity as a skinsuit in order to virtue-signal about politics. I’m not sure if I can claim to be familiar with the phenomenon myself, but since I did identify myself as a convert to Russian Orthodoxy in that piece, I suppose I can understand why he might suspect me of committing “Orthobro” ism and using Christianity as a Right-Wing tool. And I can imagine the sort of person that this commenter likely had in mind — someone who uses Orthodox imagery and terminology in their profile picture and screenname, who makes a show out of their dedication to the Orthodox tradition and emphasizes its superiority to other spiritual or moral traditions. I am sure that there are such people online if you look for them. I hesitate to judge them all with a broad brush, but just going by the law of averages, I am sure that at least some of them are committing the sin that this commenter speaks of.
I myself do not do this because it seems like it could easily fall into the sin of pride. The Pharisees were the original virtue-signalers and Jesus rightly rebuked them for their pointed, public displays of piety. Christians are called on to be humble and not to lord their faith over others. This is not to say that there is no room for Christians to reference their faith in public spaces. I’m sitting here writing a whole article about the intersection of Christianity and modern politics, after all. It’s simply a matter of discernment and good judgment. Just as people are wrong to attack Christianity for “not being based enough,” Christians themselves must be careful not to put political virtue-signaling ahead of actual devotion to God, because Christianity is not a Right-Wing political movement. We all recognize this immediately when we see liberal churches sporting rainbow Pride flags and BLM posters.
I think this gets at the key difference between Christianity, properly understood, and a mere political ideology. A political ideology will typically seek a single arbitrarily chosen principle, or perhaps several, and aim to maximize it—libertarians wish to maximize individual freedom, feminists wish to maximize the fortunes of women, and what have you. What do Christians seek to maximize? Devotion to God. Well, what does that mean? It’s a calling that encompasses all of the political and everything beyond as well you must avoid sin and orient yourself towards right action, not just in your abstract political opinions, but also in your workplace, in your relationships, even in your innermost thoughts. It’s far more ambitious and comprehensive than a narrowly focused political ideology and is thus far more suited to guide you through the complexities of the world.
People will at times point to wokeism as a modern religion supplanting more traditional ones like Christianity. While it is certainly true that wokeism is the result of people attempting to shove politics into a God-shaped hole, the result is predictably shallow and stupid by comparison to a true faith. Ultimately, we don’t spend very much of our lives concerning ourselves with heated political battles, or at least most of us don’t (if you do, maybe spend less time doomscrolling!). When your lack of meaning drives you to try and make your entire life about politics anyways, you end up with people like the ones exposed in Matt Walsh’s Am I Racist? movie.
This limitation applies not only to leftist ideologies, but to politics-brain in general. Even if it’s true that liberalism or libertarianism are great ways to rule a society at the top level, they have little if anything to say about how you should live your life at the personal level. How should you handle your daily interactions with friends, family and co-workers? How should you think about vice and virtue in your life? What sort of associations should you seek to cultivate, and where do you want your life to go in one year, or ten years? Which activities are worthy of your energies and which are not?
Christianity will teach you how to live in every one of those respects and more. Christianity teaches basic virtues that will guide you in every facet of your personal life—humility, temperance, forgiveness, patience, etc. These small personal matters are far removed from sweeping debates about race and gender, but how you approach them will make a far greater difference in your life than what you think about Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
Indeed, you can go your whole life as a Christian completely ignoring politics and you will not have transgressed your faith. Some would likely say that ignoring petty political squabbles is outright beneficial if one seeks to lead a higher spiritual life; while some Christian saints were kings and emperors, a great deal many others were monks and hermits who lived in quiet contemplation, never concerning themselves with the strife and intrigue of politics. To see Christianity only in terms of its relationship to contemporary political drama is to zoom in on a single tree and miss the entire forest for it. And that’s why Christianity is not a Right-Wing political movement.
“Ultimately, we don’t spend very much of our lives concerning ourselves with heated political battles”
One problem is that while this is true for Christians with a Biblically based worldview, it’s not at all true for the progressive Christians who spend tremendous amounts of time on political battles which might be why they are winning. I think Christians and the church ignoring the political is one reason we are in the situation we are in as a nation. For example if the American church had dedicated ourselves to the abolition of abortion would the practice have continued for as long as it has? I live in a very conservative state where 65% of people claim to be Christian but I can almost guarantee we are going to pass a law enshrining abortion in our state constitution because the camp for the amendment is campaigning hard and the church has been more or less silent on the issue. There has been no real campaign against the amendment by the abolition or pro life crowd. If Christian parents had fought to keep God’s influence in our schools what would public schools look like? Why did so many accept or even embrace government control of churches during Covid? How many Christians died or were maimed because their employer forced the jab upon them because of government mandates or worse they took the jab because some religious leader told them that was their “Christian duty” as it was the only way to “love thy neighbor”?
We do not concern ourselves too much with fighting political battles but because of the tremendous overreach of our government our lives are controlled by the outcome of those battles. Praying outside an abortion clinic can now result in getting thrown in jail for years. Teaching your kid that boys and girls are different and one can’t become the other means the state can take your kids. Refusing to call some dude in a dress she or ma’am can get you fired or sued. Our hard earned money that could be used to support our families or our churches and God’s kingdom is stolen through taxation and then spent on abomination after abomination many of which then go on to require more funding throughout the years. I mean your tax dollars are going to help Ukraine who is actively persecuting the Ukrainian Russian Orthodox believers as we speak. Your tax dollars are being spent to buy bullets and bombs to be used against your Orthodox brothers. There’s every reason to believe that it’s just a matter of time before they conscript you to kill your Russian Orthodox brothers in the name of “freedom” and “democracy”. We can step back from political battles but we cannot escape the consequences of their outcomes.
Christ did not step back from the breech, and was killed for it…sadly not much has changed 🥲