The profile of a post-Christian down the street might go something like this: A Western secularist who is able to find nothing but good in the enemies of Christianity

The Christian Vestiges of Post-Christianity

by Howard Kainz

It would be a mistake to think that Post-Christianity is a return to paganism, purely and simply. Certainly its environs include numerous strains of paganism—New Ageism, eco-feminism, “new cosmology” mysticism, etc.; and one’s post-Christianity may be amalgamated with such strains.

But the post-Christian denizen is marching to a different drummer. He may be unaware of the great distinctive teachings of Christianity, which have become embedded over the centuries in Western cultures. But, as a late product of Christian culture, he applies these teachings in ways neither envisioned by earlier generations of Christians nor Christ Himself. Thus the post-Christian has embraced a false yet fashionable version of Christianity compatible with the enlightened opinion of our cultural elites.

“Love your enemies,” says Jesus. “Do good to them that hate you: and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you” (Mt. 5:44). But a post-Christian who may not do good and pray for his enemies, may breathlessly extoll them and praise them. I discussed this strange phenomenon with regard to Islamophilia in a previous article. Christianity stands as the main competitor to Islam in numbers and influence at present, and Islamists in the Middle East and elsewhere are sparing no efforts in eradicating that influence; but Christian pundits and “spokespersons” for traditionally Christian civilizations find it difficult to moderate their immoderate praises for Islam.

“Judge not, and you shall not be judged” (Lk. 6:37). The Lord admonishes us not to judge the state of soul of any individual, since we do not know the circumstances and temptations and difficulties encountered by this or that person who has fallen short of Christian moral teaching. But the post-Christian transforms this reticence about judging persons souls into a taboo about judging actions, the prohibition of being “judgmental.” Thus our encounters with sinful and even criminal behavior on the part of neighbors, co-workers, or even family, are often chalked up to “lifestyle” choices, or put into the “personal and private” category. They are left uncriticized or, if criminal, unreported.

“Why do you see the mote that is in your brother’s eye; and see not the beam that is in your own eye? First remove the beam in your own eye, and then you will see to cast the mote out of your brother’s eye” (Mt. 7:3). The standard post-Christian response to this recommendation is to focus one’s criticism apologetically on the history of Catholicism—the patriarchy and hierarchy, subordination of women and antisemitism of individuals who misunderstood the spirit of the Gospels (and let’s not forget the Inquisition and Crusades and the Galileo debacle). But with all this endless self-criticism among post-Christian Catholics, little energy remains for warranted, but politically incorrect, criticism of (for example) Protestantism.

“Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mk. 12:17). The distinction of loyalties to God and the state that Jesus preaches becomes, in the eyes of the post-Christian, the absolute “wall” that they say Thomas Jefferson promoted in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists—a complete separation that was never actually envisioned in the “establishment of religion” clause in the U.S. Constitution. As a result, God and faith become something completely private, not permitting the least clue of religious belief to raise its ugly head in the public square, while state power grows beyond the boundaries envisioned by the nation’s founders.

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