Andy Warhol, Covert Papist

I somehow (mistakenly) came under the belief that Slavoj Zizek was Christian a few weeks ago. I tried to wrestle with how this fit with some of the other stuff I’d read by him. But after looking into it a little, it appears that whatever I’d read, I’d gotten completely wrong. Zizek is an avowed atheist. What he’s advocating, however, is a utilitarian approach to religious belief — building on the insights of St. Paul, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and likely the historical Jesus himself — that an authentic understanding of Christianity premised on universal brotherly love would invert everything about existing hierarchical societal orders. This is what prompted Dostoevsky to observe that, “The socialist who is a Christian is more to be dreaded than a socialist who is an atheist.” And so it must have been in the context of those kinds of observations that I came to believe Zizek was Christian. He was just saying that for making the real world a better place, maybe secular liberals shouldn’t be so quick to rule Christianity out.

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