Introduction
You might be wondering whence the title of my podcast comes. I confess that, in a way, I’m borrowing it from Friedrich Nietzsche. Even relatively few Nietzsche scholars realize that one of Nietzsche’s most famous book titles has an alternative translation. The title is usually translated as The-Antichrist. But an equally correct, and I think better translation in terms of expressing what Nietzsche is trying to do, is The Anti-Christian. In German, Christ can refer to Christ/Jesus or to a person who follows Christ. Of course, Nietzsche loves word play and I’m sure that the ambiguity greatly appealed to him. Yet the basic lines of the critique in the text are primarily about Christianity, which means that Nietzsche is not so much ‘anti-Christ’ as ‘anti-Christian’. Nietzsche is overall positive about Jesus, but his criticism of Christianity is scathing. Nietzsche thinks that Christians have effectively obscured and distorted what Jesus taught. I have to come to think that he is largely correct.
Growing up in a very conservative Evangelical home (‘very conservative’ may be an unnecessary qualifier), Nietzsche wasn’t on my radar. Instead, I was being trained in righteousness, though looking back it seems like a good deal of it was ‘self-righteousness’. I was taught that we Evangelicals had the corner on the theological truth. What a hubristic thing to think! More recently, it would seem that most Evangelicals now think they have the corner on all truth, that they alone should govern, and that only ‘Christian’ perspectives have a place (though they get to define ‘Christian’, which is another reason to get beyond Christianity). But, of course, the definition of ‘Christian’ being used often seems at odds with what Jesus actually taught. I was speaking to an Episcopal priest and mentioned the title of this Substack. He didn’t know anything about Nietzsche, but he had an immediate response: ‘You mean the fact that institutional Christianity and Jesus seem to have nothing to do with one another?’ ‘Yeah, in a nutshell, that’s what I mean’, I replied. My point here is that you don’t really need to read Nietzsche to understand that what Christianity has become is something far removed from Jesus and his teachings. But Nietzsche is really helpful in working out the problem.
I taught at Wheaton College for over two decades. My specialty was/is 19th and 20th century European philosophy, which meant I gave courses and seminars on controversial figures like Nietzsche and Derrida. Finding that I wasn’t freaked out by such philosophers, it wasn’t surprising that many students made their way to my office with questions. I spent a lot of time talking through theological issues (which is to say ‘questions’ and potential doubts). In my early years of counselling such students, I would ask if they had doubts about particular doctrines (things like the virgin birth and inerrancy). But it soon became clear that, while they might also have very specific questions/doubts, the problem was more along these lines: how was the whole thing supposed to fit together? Put another way, Evangelicals have quite a number of ‘just so’ stories that are taught to you over time. They become so ingrained in your mind that you no longer even ‘see’ them. Since they are about God and morality and all that is sacred, questioning them seems almost evil. You must simply believe and obey.
I wouldn’t at all characterize myself as having a rebellious youth. To be sure, I argued with my grandmother beginning around age six, usually about theological matters. The response was often (from both grandmother and parents): Don’t talk back! I can’t think of any expression that better characterizes what it felt like—or at least for me—than that. But I couldn’t help myself. If we Evangelicals cared so much about truth, so I reasoned, shouldn’t we be asking questions and trying to figure things out? Over time, I came to see that Evangelicals have not been very much interested in truth, even though they talk about it a lot. They’re more interested in power and money, as well as doctrines designed to keep people in their place. Nietzsche is often misunderstood about his notion of ‘will to power’. Many interpreters (including those who should know better) think this idea simply means ‘to overpower’ and control. While this is a misinterpretation, such a conception of the will to power (in this bad sense) would seem to apply to Evangelicals, who claim they want religious freedom. As always, of course, in Evangelicalism, the word ‘freedom’ means something like “you will do what we tell you to do—that is freedom.” Without going into detail here, I have come to see that Evangelicalism is, not always but often, abusive. Which means that many of us have trauma from our upbringing. That will be a focus of ‘The Anti-Christian’.
Let me say a few words about my educational and professional background. I received my doctorate from the University of Leuven in Belgium and I have sent over thirty students there to study philosophy. During my studies, I received a Fulbright grant, which allowed me to spend time with Hans-Georg Gadamer, who was then the leading German philosopher. I’ll definitely have more to say about Gadamer, but for now let me say that his work helped me understand my own history and, more important, how to relate to that history. After finishing my doctorate, I ended up teaching at Wheaton. A number of years later, I was able to teach at Union Theological Seminary and take two seminars with Jacques Derrida when I was a visiting scholar at the New School, as well as teach at Union Theological Seminary (both in New York City). Some of you may know that it was Derrida who took the unremarkable French term ‘deconstruction’ and made it philosophically significant. Derrida is another person who has greatly influenced my thought. Contrary to what many people (again, including those who should know better) say, Derrida is not a relativist. In fact, I consider him one of the most diligent searchers for truth.
I’ve mentioned Derrida because, at least in the Evangelical world, ‘deconstruction’ has become the default term for questioning or leaving one’s religious faith. Whether that’s good or bad is hard to say, but the popular conception of this notion of deconstruction is not quite what Derrida had in mind. For one reason, deconstruction is not negative for Derrida. In deconstruction, we take the various features of an idea or a book or a philosophical system and examine them. That could lead to positive or negative or simply mixed result. In my case, I’ll be using deconstruction to disconnect Jesus from Christianity. You might ask “how can you separate Jesus from Christianity?” and my quick response would be “easier than you might expect.” But the real task is that of interpretation: to try to read without the lens of Christianity. In one sense, this is difficult, since we read so much of what Jesus says in light of Christian theology. In other words, we normally take doctrines that were developed many centuries after Jesus and then read those doctrines back into what Jesus says. In contrast, I’m suggesting that we need to take ‘Christianity’ and disconnect it from Jesus. You might know that the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer spoke of a ‘religionless Christianity’, by which he meant one that is not focused on doctrine and ritual. I’m not exactly proposing that, though I have found Bonhoeffer helpful in thinking about how to reimagine religion. I’m not going for ‘religionless’; instead, I’m trying to think about religion differently. You might be surprised, but I’m completely cool with religion and ritual. In fact, I think both are absolutely essential to our lives. Of course, not all religious ideas or rituals are conducive to a healthy life, so we need to think deeply about these ideas and rituals.
Nietzsche once proclaimed himself to be ‘dynamite’. Perhaps you’d like to join me for the destruction of Christianity. Shall we light the fuse together?