In the early
20th century and beyond dark and atrocious tales were told about a people
who intentionally controlled the world through various avenues such as banking
and business. All evil was attributed to the Jews and their history was fictionalized.
This led to genocide, the killing of 6 million people. But this posting is not
about the Jews but about Christians. Paul Kivel, a workshop speaker, who
continues to lecturer at the White
Privilege Conferences, offers the same kind of scenario for Christians. He
believes Christians are the cause of most existing evil. Kivel calls it
‘Christian Hegemony.’
Kivel in
fact has a project called, “Challenging
Christian Hegemony.” On his site there
are various articles and videos explaining his views. He writes about his
definition of Christian hegemony, stating:
“I define
Christian hegemony as the everyday, pervasive, and systematic set of Christian
values and beliefs, individuals and institutions that dominate all aspects of
our society through the social, political, economic, and cultural power they
wield. Nothing is unaffected by Christian hegemony (whether we are Christian or
not) including our personal beliefs and values, our relationships to other
people and to the natural environment, and our economic, political, education,
health care, criminal/legal, housing, and other social systems.
Christian
hegemony as a system of domination is complex, shifting, and operates through
the agency of individuals, families, church communities, denominations,
parachurch organizations, civil institutions, and through decisions made by
members of the ruling class and power elite.
Christian
hegemony benefits all Christians, all those raised Christian, and those passing
as Christian. However the concentration of power, wealth, and privilege under
Christian hegemony accumulates to the ruling class and the predominantly white
male Christian power elite that serve its interests. All people who are not
Christian, as well as most people who are, experience social, political, and
economic exploitation, violence, cultural appropriation, marginalization,
alienation and constant vulnerability from the dominance of Christian power and
values in our society.”
Kivel also
explains his concepts in a video:
These videos
of Kivel lecturing at the Pacific School of Religion are on his project site.
In them he attempts to say that he is not attacking Christianity nor is his
concern about Christian beliefs. And yet he attacks some of the most important
biblical teachings of the Church. For instance, in one video he attacks the
biblical view of humanity’s sinfulness and need for a savior. He adds to this
his disdain for the Christian view that Jesus is the only way to salvation.
In several
other videos he gives a history of Christianity touching on all the events he
finds evil. Kivel points to some truly evil times in Christianity, such as the
inquisition, but most of his “facts” are false. Kivel’s lecture on Christian
history is filled with misunderstandings, misstatements and falsehoods.
One
misunderstanding is that Christianity is related to Manicheism and holds to the
same types of cosmic battle between good and evil. But no, the biblical God is
sovereign and has already, through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, won
the battle. Biblically there is no concern about losing to an evil force; that
idea belongs strictly to Manicheism.
Kivel speaks
about the Crusades highlighting only the evil that various smaller groups caused.
He fails to comprehend the whole history of the Crusades. They were, at first,
a defense against a militant Islam which ruled much of the Middle East by means
of war. A good comprehensive history of the Crusades has been written by Thomas F. Madden for Christianity Today. Madden is associate
professor and chair of the Department of History at Saint Louis University. He
has written The New Concise History of the Crusades.
In his 2005 article, “The RealHistory of the Crusades,” Madden explains the reason for the first crusade. He
writes:
“With enormous energy, the
warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed's
death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt—once the
most heavily Christian areas in the world—quickly succumbed. By the eighth
century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain.
In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey),
which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire,
known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more
than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the
Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in
the East.
That is what gave birth to the
Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious
knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which
Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some
point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be
subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.”
Madden goes on to write about
the terrible killing of the Jews by some crusaders and how both Pope, Bishop
and preachers condemned it, in particular focusing on St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
He writes of the tragic events that led to the misguided and horrific ruin of Constantinople
by some crusaders which hardened the rift between the Christians of the East
and the West. Unlike Kivel, Madden explains history from the biblical
understanding that humanity is broken on everyone’s side.
Kivel suggests that the Holocaust
was caused by Christianity, when in reality it occurred within the combined
forces of German cultural paganism, extreme nationalism and a progressive
Christianity that accommodated the culture of the time. In another place,
Kivel, using a picture insert and one paragraph, attempts to use Dietrich Bonhoeffer
and Karl Barth as good examples of those who stood against Christian hegemony
during the Nazi era.
What Kivel seems ignorant of is
that Bonhoeffer, Barth and the Confessing Church stood against the secularism of
the schools and the use of sports and other youth activities to draw young
people away from church. They decried the various kinds of public pagan rituals
that the Nazi government used to replace the rituals of the church. Kivel,
undoubtedly, has not read the Theological Declaration of Barmen, with these
words:
“We reject the false doctrine,
as though there were areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus
Christ, but o other lords—areas in which we would not need justification and
sanctification through him. (8.15)
Kivel gives a list of some of
the parachurch groups that he believes are fueling Christian hegemony. And he
doesn’t seem to make a distinction between a denomination and a parachurch
organization. For instance, he lists World Vision and the Episcopalian
Church, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Christians United for
Israel, the Southern Baptist Convention and Christian Hospitals. As the reader
can see he condemns anything that is Christian!
How does Kivel believe that Christian hegemony should be challenged? For
Christian allies some of his suggestions are:
“* Examine how you may have internalized judgments about yourself based
on Christian teachings. Have you cut yourself off from your body, from natural
expressions of your sexuality or spirituality or from connections to the
natural world?”
“* Work for religious pluralism, and support the separation of church and
state.”
“* Avoid assuming other people you meet are Christian - or should be, and
challenge missionary programs.”
The most I can find in writing or video about challenging Christian hegemony
from the position of a non-Christ is this video:
Some of these ideas assume what is not true. Importantly, ideas about not
bringing the good news to those of other faiths are anti-Christian. This is
truly the great challenge that Christianity faces—evangelizing the lost peoples
of this world. In the face of all opposition it most continue.
Of course the other challenge is learning how to live faithfully in the
midst of a nation that is now rushing toward the scenario that Kivel and others
are preparing. The promise is “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height,
nor depth, nor any created thing will be able to separate us from the love of
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8: 38-39)
