4 February 2012. A Point to Ponder: Stephen Prothero on Ayn Rand and Jesus Christ: “You Can’t Reconcile Ayn Rand and Jesus”

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The new darling of the Republican Party is pro-choice and anti-religion. She once wrote that, since “an embryo has no rights”, abortion “should be left to the sole discretion of the woman involved”. When asked by Playboy magazine whether religion “ever offered anything of constructive value to human life”, she answered, “No”, adding, “Faith, as such, is extremely detrimental to human life”. Her name’s Ayn Rand, and although she died in 1982, this novelist, philosopher, and anti-communist crusader is the hot new thing in the GOP. The American public may have met the April opening of Atlas Shrugged, a film based on her novel of the same name, with a collective shrug, but Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh tout her books, and her genius. Moreover, the opening line of Atlas Shrugged (“Who is John Galt?”) pops up regularly on handmade signs at Tea Party rallies.

Among Rand’s adoring acolytes on Capitol Hill is Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI), who, at a Library of Congress symposium held in 2005 on the centenary of the Rand’s birth, called her “The reason I got involved in public service”. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), who announced his third presidential run recently, invoked Rand in the House on matters as disparate as NASA and the Post Office. His son, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), used her novel Anthem in Senate hearings in April to argue against government regulations to phase out the incandescent light bulb. When asked to name his favourite political philosopher, George W Bush named Jesus Christ. However, Ayn Rand’s the GOP’s new saviour, and no one seems to be taking notice of just how opposed their two philosophies are.

Individualism vs Collectivism

In Rand’s Manichaean world, it isn’t God vs Satan, but individualism vs collectivism. Whilst Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor”, she sings Hosannas to the rich. The heroes of Atlas Shrugged (which, alas, is only slightly shorter than the Bible) are captains of industry such as John Galt. The villains are the “looters” and “moochers”… people who by hook (guilt), or by crook (government coercion), steal from the hard-won earnings of others. Turning the tables on traditional Christian morality, Rand argues that altruism is immoral and selfishness is good. Moreover, there isn’t a problem in the world that Laissez-faire Capitalism can’t solve if left alone to perform its miracles.

I first read Atlas Shrugged and her other popular novel, The Fountainhead, whilst festival-hopping in Spain after graduating from college, so, I can attest to the appeal of this philosophy to late adolescents of a certain gender. As an adult, however, Rand’s work reads to me like a vulgar rationalisation for greed situated on top of a perverse myth of the right relationship between individual and community. Therefore, when Ryan said, “Ayn Rand, more than anyone else, did a fantastic job of explaining the morality of capitalism, the morality of individualism”, I have to question his use of the word “explaining”. “Duping” seems like the more appropriate verb. As someone who’s written extensively on the religious illiteracy of the American public, I’m not surprised that few Republicans today seem to understand that marrying Ayn Rand to Jesus Christ is like trying to interest Lady Gaga in Donny Osmond. Nevertheless, there’s nothing Christian about Rand’s Objectivism. In fact, it’s farther from Christianity than the Marxism that Rand so abhorred. Despite the attempt of the advertising executive Bruce Barton to turn Jesus into a CEO in his novel The Man Nobody Knows (1925), Jesus was a first-class, grade-A “moocher”.

However, I’m somewhat surprised at how few GOP thinkers seem to see how hostile her philosophy is to conservatism itself. First and foremost, REAL conservatism is about conserving a society’s traditions, including its religious and political traditions. However, Rand’s Objectivism rejects, in the name of reason, appeals to either revelation or tradition. The individual’s her hero, and God and the dead be damned. Real conservatism is also about sacrifice, as is authentic Christianity. President Kennedy was liberal in many ways, but “Ask not what your country can do for you… ask what you can do for your country” was classic conservatism. Rand, however, will brook no such sacrifice. Serve yourself, she tells us, and save yourself as well. There’s no higher good than individual self-satisfaction. One of the reasons we’re in our current economic quagmire is that none of our leaders is willing to ask us to sacrifice. Democrats call for more spending and more taxes; Republicans call for lower taxes and less spending, so, what we get is the most fiscally ruinous half of each… lower taxes and more spending.

A Budget of “Too Little Jesus”

Over the last few weeks, various Christian groups have criticised Republican leaders for proposing a 2012 budget that, in their view, is both un-Christian and anti-life. First, dozens of professors, priests, and nuns at various Catholic universities criticised House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) for a legislative record on the poor that was, in their estimation, “amongst the worst in Congress. Mr Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings. From the Apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor”. Then, a consortium of evangelical and Catholic groups aired an ad scolding Ryan, who spearheaded that GOP budget, for his own “anti-life” stands. In this ad, Fr Thomas Kelley, a self-described “pro-life” priest from Elkhorn WI, insisted, “God calls us to protect life at all stages”, not just in the womb. In short, these Christians are telling the GOP that there is too much Rand in their budget, and too little Jesus.

I don’t see either Atlas Shrugged or the Bible as Holy Writ. I think the Bible is more wise, better written, and, ironically, less likely to come across as “holier-than-thou”, but I haven’t come either to bury Ayn Rand or to lament her recent resurrection. My aim is to force a choice. If you’re going to propose a Robin Hood budget, you have to decide whether you’re robbing from the poor to give to the rich, or robbing from the rich to give to the poor, because you can’t do both. You can’t worship both the God of Jesus and the Mammon of Rand. I don’t agree very often with the Watergate criminal and evangelical leader Chuck Colson, but he has it right when he refers to Rand’s “idolatry of self and selfishness” as “the antithesis of Christianity”, Rand’s trinity is “I… me… mine”. Christianity’s is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. So, take your pick… or, say no to both. It’s a free country. Just don’t tell me you’re both a card-carrying Objectivist and a Bible-believing Christian. Even Rand knew that just wasn’t possible.

5 June 2011

Stephen Prothero

Professor of Religion

Boston University

USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2011-06-05-Ayn-Rand-and-Jesus-dont-mix_n.htm

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The Worship of Mammon

Evelyn de Morgan

1909

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“During Cheesefare Week, the Russian Embassy lets us use their hall and we hold a high-end event attended by wealthy people”… isn’t that SO special… so, let’s all suck up to the moneybags today!

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A Note for Orthodox in the American Diaspora:

For American Orthodox, it’s sad to relate that two prominent clergymen in DC support the Radical Rightwing pro-Ayn Rand assault on all working people everywhere. One is Jonas Paffhausen, the so-called “Metropolitan of all America and Canada” (his anaemic group has about 10 percent of all US Orthodox in it). Paffhausen’s father was a “real estate developer”… yes, that noisome brood that brought us “planned communities”, exurban sprawl, and anonymous suburban estates. JP himself worked as a salesman for his father… never forget that… he picked up “closing” skills that enable him to gull the unwary doing that. Just as Slobberin’ Ronnie was an actor who fooled the American public with his PR shtick (Val Zorin of VOR said, “I never forgot that he was an actor”), Fathausen’s a salesman with a line of bullshit a mile long, married with a knack of telling people exactly what they want to hear (which means that he says one thing to this one and quite another to that one).

On the other hand, Potapov sucks up to the wealthy:

During Cheesefare Week, the Russian Embassy lets us use their hall and we hold a high-end event attended by wealthy people.

That was a very poor choice of words. However, Potapov’s an extreme rightwinger who’s indifferentist to the Moonie kooks who own the Washington Times, and he introduced Paffhausen to all his rightwing pals “inside the Beltway” (like the warmongering neocons at the American Enterprise Institute). Potapov is or was a high-level Pooh-Bah at VOA/RFE (the holder of a “red” official US passport), which means that he’s got Langley connections. Don’t forget, Potapov attacked His Holiness Patriarch Aleksei Rediger when the latter was in Georgetown in the ‘90s to receive an honorary degree (he called him a known KGB agent). Ergo, his worship of the rich shouldn’t surprise one. His choice of secular profession indicates a violent attachment to vacuous rightwing fairy tales, and, bear in mind, the rightwing worships money and the rich who possess it. He should have said:

During Cheesefare Week, the Russian Embassy lets us use their hall and we hold an event celebrating Maslenitsa.

That’s unobjectionable; the other’s sucking up to the powers-that-be. The first illustrates the obsequious attitude towards the rich amongst so many clergy that led to the Great Persecution of 1918-41; the second is mere reportage.

Let’s not be coy. Our recent history tells us that we’ll pay a dear price if we suck up to the insatiable rich and to their greedy political enablers. The Black Hundreds (and those of like ilk) made the massacre of the Butovo Polygon inevitable… never forget that. If we don’t demand that some of our clergy sever their attachment to the Radical Rightwing and its self-centred money-grubbing lunacies, God will spew us out (as He promised in the Book of the Apocalypse), for the Lord told us that the Church shall endure all the tumults of Hell, but He never promised that it would persist everywhere. If we wish to follow Ayn Rand, to embrace her objectively-blasphemous ideology (as is done in the contemporary GOP)… He’ll let us. WE HAVE FREE WILL. If we will to spit in God’s face through the advocacy of godless amoral human constructs like Neoliberal Laissez-faire Capitalism, He’ll let us. However… need I continue?

We can follow Patriarch Kirill, Archbishop Ieronymos, Fr Vsevolod, and Abba Ephrem… or, we can follow Potapov and Paffhausen. It’s quite that simple. We can follow Christ and His True Church, like the Sons and Daughters of God that the Almighty intended us to be, or, we can bow down low before the ideology of Ayn Rand, in cringing worship of Almighty Mammon and the Powers-that-Be in service of the Prince of This World (you KNOW who I mean)… you can be the one or you can choose the other. You can’t “square the circle”, and that’s that.

BMD