In his book American Awakening Joshua Mitchell makes the point that today's Identity Politics (IP) is actually a distortion of Christianity, or perhaps more accurately, it's an anti-Christian religion. Here's why I say that (I borrow some of what follows from Mitchell):
As with Christianity, IP has a doctrine of original sin (racism), but unlike Christianity the original sin doesn't stain everyone. Some groups are innocent of this sin, and do not inherit the stain. Other groups, most notably in our time White, Heterosexual Males (WHM), are deeply infected. If these "Transgressors" are also Christian and/or conservative their guilt is compounded.
The stain is indelible. Nothing WHM can do can cleanse them of it. As in some Christian traditions, those who are infected with original sin are totally depraved and beyond human redemption. Their sin corrupts everything they touch.
As in Christianity the original sin is inherited so it makes no sense for the Transgressor to plead innocence, to insist that he's not racist. He's guilty by virtue of the fact of his race. Moreover, since there's no human redemption and since IP is thoroughly secular and has no room for a Divine redeemer, redemption is impossible.
Christianity, of course, provides a Divine redeemer, a scapegoat upon whose shoulders the sins of mankind are heaped, but there's no Divine scapegoat in IP. The sins of the WHM are borne on his own shoulders. He bears the guilt of all WHM past, present and future.
Derek Chauvin is perhaps an example. It wasn't just Chauvin who was on trial last week. Whether he as an individual deserved the jury's verdict or not, Chauvin was a scapegoat, a sacrificial lamb, deemed by the practitioners of IP to be responsible for all the transgressions, real and imagined, of all members of his race (and profession) everywhere. Whatever the facts of the case were, he was guilty in the same way and for much the same reason that O.J. Simpson was innocent.
As in some versions of Christianity there's also a repentance ritual in IP, and, as in Christianity, the ritual involves the penitent Transgressor publicly confessing his sin and often abasing himself in rhetorical sackcloth and ashes, emotionally flagellating himself and begging absolution for the shame and guilt of being a wretched sinner.
He himself may have done nothing to offend, but he's not innocent. He has inherited guilt and deserves whatever punishment the Innocents deem appropriate. If he's suitably obsequious, if he grovels before self-appointed representatives of the Innocents, he may be granted a temporary reprieve, but unlike Christianity, there is in this new religion no permanent forgiveness, no grace, no love, no redemption, no atonement, no reconciliation, no tradition and no God.
There are only hate, rage, judgmentalism, vengeance, professional "cancellation" and demands for a vague and undefined "justice."
Although Christianity doesn't celebrate the Jewish Passover ritual, it understands the significance of the observance. Like the Jews in Egypt who splashed blood on their doors so that the angel of death would pass by their household, guilt-ridden WHM often seek to avoid the IP "angel of death" by festooning their office doors, Facebook pages, lawns and/or cars with rainbow flags, BLM stickers and Hate Has No Home Here lawn signs.
When the IP enforcers see these attempts to certify one's innocence they may be inclined to (temporarily) give the individual a pass, not because they regard them as innocent but because they regard them as useful in reinforcing and spreading the assumption of guilt.
And just as the Catholic Church of the 15th century sold indulgences by which sinners could pay to have their sins, or the sins of loved ones, forgiven, so, too, does the ersatz religion of Identity Politics offer temporary absolution in return for transfer payments, reparations, and benefits coerced from CEOs and politicians. Those who willingly shower these benefits upon the representatives of the Innocents are seeking to buy forgiveness, a forgiveness that's at best transitory and never permanent.
Like the humanistic religions of August Comte in the 19th century and the communists of the 20th century, both of which loathed Christianity but nevertheless plagiarized their morality and many other features from the Church, IP is a religion without God, without salvation and without hope.
It's profoundly divisive and acts as a corrosive acid on our social fabric. Let's hope that it's a fad that soon passes.
