The Alien Threat of Christianity

The good news is a dire threat to those who want to be god.

Alain de Benoist is a French political philosopher and journalist and one of the most influential far-right thinkers on the planet.

I recently came across the life and work of Benoist in Matthew Rose’s 2021 book A World After Liberalism: Five Thinkers Who Inspired the Radical Right. The book explores a variety of philosophers and other ideological influencers who have shaped a world that seems increasingly hostile to free thought, unity among difference, and other such values.

In his chapter on Benoist, called “The Pagan,” Rose explains how Benoist’s pagan beliefs led him—and the many who count him as an influence—to see Christianity as a particular threat to the kind of world Benoist and others want to see come to pass, one built maintaining homogeneity and tribal separation.

Benoist is one who sees the “melting pot” of America as a failed experiment and, generally, thinks people should stay in their own countries and associate only with people like themselves.

Interaction across cultural, racial, or ideological lines is a primary source of conflict in the world and should be avoided at all costs, according to Benoist. Rose writes, summarizing Benoist’s thought:

Human beings flourish best when they live where their ancestors lived, speak the language their ancestors spoke, and transmit the values and customs their ancestors practiced.

This idea is on clear display among far-right movements today in xenophobic discourse and conduct. Many fear anyone or anything that feels foreign and different. Likewise, we see this sort of idea play out in the out-group animosity that plagues much social media interaction today. Our basest, most animalistic feelings orient us to think like Benoist—we want to be tribal, only associate with others like us, and war with other tribes who are unlike us. Benoist would say, “Yes, and because this feels natural, we must do it.”

The Christian would say otherwise—that we should reject our sinful default settings—and it threatens Benoist’s and his disciples’ far-right view of how the world should work.

Christianity: An Alien Threat

In A World After Liberalism Rose explains why Benoist (and others in far-right movements) see Christianity as a lethal threat to their philosophies and movements:

Politics depends on the recognition of outsiders, yet the Christian church sees all people as potential members, indeed potential saints.

On Being a Pagan sounded a political warning: Christianity, and the secular ideologies it birthed, cannot protect European peoples and cultures. Under its influence, Europe lives under a double occupation, existing under the power of a foreign religion and an alien deity.

What a word for us today.

In America, and throughout the West, it certainly feels like we have come to define people by their political views. Much has been written about our “polarized” or “divided” culture and country in the last decade, so I don’t need to belabor that idea here. Suffice to say: neighborhoods, churches, towns, and more have been sharply divided over matters of public policy in ways the last decade in ways we simply haven’t been in at least in the last hundred years of American history.

As we Christians consider the concerns of Alain de Benoist we should recognize that, to the most radical political philosophers of our age (on the right or the left), Christianity is seen as a grave threat to their radical political ideologies.

Why?

Christianity is a threat because Christians welcome all regardless of race or background or political views, and Christians serve an “alien deity” as their highest form of authority, rather than any worldly force.

As my friend Trevin wrote about this same topic back in 2022:

The critics are right to fear the Christian faith cannot be tamed, no matter how many politicians on both the right and left and everywhere in between seek to harness the power of the church and instrumentalize the gospel for ideological purposes.

Even radical right political philosophers like Benoist recognize that sincere Christian faith and radical political beliefs are incompatible. One is built on serving the God of the universe and welcoming all into the family of faith; the other is built on serving political leaders whose platforms are built upon exclusion and preserving “cultural purity.”

Praise God that the purity with which he is most concerned was purchased by the blood of his Son so that those who may be considered “outsiders” can be called children of God.

In America, we are exiting an intense election season and heading into a change of government leadership and political philosophy. This shift may be be a source of sorrow or celebration for you as a Christian, depending upon how you view our present political environment.

But what is especially wonderful is that, regardless of who wins any election in the present or future, Christianity will always be a glorious threat to any worldview that attempts to build itself on pitting insiders against outsiders in the service of an earthly authority over-and-above an eternal one.

Our “alien deity” looms over any authority who attempts to demand our ultimate allegiance. After all, we are ambassadors from a foreign land and not native to this one.

What makes Christianity so threatening to world orders is also what makes it so hopeful for us.

From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

- 2 Corinthians 5:16–21

The good news is a dire threat to those who want to be god.