by Andy Nowicki
Many of those of a contemporary “alternative Right” orientation blame Christianity for bequeathing the dogma of egalitarianism to the modern world. Such people claim that the attempted abolition of natural hierarchies and the destructively “leveling” momentum of democracy and campaigns of enforced “equality” derive from the Christian doctrine that all human souls are equal before God, a notion which finds its most famous formulation in the words of St. Paul from his New Testament epistle to the Galatians: “In Christ, there is neither slave nor free, Gentile nor Jew, male nor female.”
I have written elsewhere on this subject; here it will suffice to observe that in the two millennia since Jesus Christ walked the earth, social, gender, and racial hierarchies have, prior to the cultural revolutions of the last few decades, generally remained untouched.
William Shakespeare, Christendom’s greatest playwright, lived at a time of great intellectual ferment and cultural tumult, yet even in his time both Protestant and Catholic alike affirmed the prudence of continued social stratification. If all men were equal before God, this in no sense mandated any presumption of equality of title or status between individuals, cultures, races, or sexes. If the serious Christian of the Reformation era took seriously Paul’s declaration regarding the absence of distinctions between different groups of humanity, he also acknowledged the divine origin of Biblical passages commanding slaves to obey their masters and instructing wives to be subservient to their husbands.
I have written elsewhere on this subject; here it will suffice to observe that in the two millennia since Jesus Christ walked the earth, social, gender, and racial hierarchies have, prior to the cultural revolutions of the last few decades, generally remained untouched.
William Shakespeare, Christendom’s greatest playwright, lived at a time of great intellectual ferment and cultural tumult, yet even in his time both Protestant and Catholic alike affirmed the prudence of continued social stratification. If all men were equal before God, this in no sense mandated any presumption of equality of title or status between individuals, cultures, races, or sexes. If the serious Christian of the Reformation era took seriously Paul’s declaration regarding the absence of distinctions between different groups of humanity, he also acknowledged the divine origin of Biblical passages commanding slaves to obey their masters and instructing wives to be subservient to their husbands.
