Best thing I've read in weeks. Long but packed with food for thought.
You don't really need a long essay to debunk a bogus claim that Christianity has anything whatever to do with liberalism. Like any testable theory, all you need is a counter example. We have one. It's called Russia. Russia had nothing like property rights or rule of law, generally, for centuries after the rest of Europe. In fact, I would argue that Christianity is antagonistic toward liberalism, historically speaking. The groundwork of modern liberalism was laid in the Magna Carta, which was forced on the king by nobles who threatened him with execution precisely because the king claimed he had divine right to levy taxes willy nilly. Ruling by decree from God and rule of law (the cornerstone of liberalism) are diametrically opposed to one another. Liberalism wasn't birthed by Christianity; it had to defeat it.
One thing I do think is interesting is that some strains of liberal values have been found in many Christian Anarchist movements, though under the banner of a particular religious practice in opposition to a state-sponsored variation of Christian political organizations, which is what I believe you are citing. Anabaptists and Quakers have often been defined by their adherence to a separation of the church from the state, the freedom of religious practice, an opposition to war and strict non-violence by refuting individual mandates by the state (this totally does not include individual property rights, but the rejection of individual property was in response to the the same conditions liberal values rebelled against). This didn't end well for the Anabaptists at the time, but movements subverting the church as a political entity and placing value on the individual's will have also come from within it's own ranks. None of these movements are direct forbears to liberalism, but categorically implying that the only political manifestation of Christianity is a strict theocratic monarchy isn't always the case. Also, Tolstoy directly references pacifist Quaker movements in opposition to conscription by the Russian govt. in The Kingdom of God is Within You, which was what Ghandi cited as a central influence on his nonviolent resistance campaign, who then influenced MLK. That's a pretty badass lineage.
I hypothesize that you indeed did not read the review, and neither did those who shared your comment. The arguments for or against are quite complex. In any case, if your goal is to learn, examine unusual ideas, think about things, etc -- coming up with one counterexample and resting on your laurels won't help.
I made no assumption -- merely a testable hypothesis, made because you seemed largely to be reacting to the title. A hypothesis which, incidentally, was a bit more valid than presenting a single counterexample to falsify a generalized theory about history. History is not physics or biology ... patterns are rarely so clear cut. And Russian Christianity is slightly different to begin with. In any case, I can wax on that the groundwork for modern liberalism was quite possibly laid out in the Bible, well before the Magna Carta, and that at the very least it's an idea worth thinking about. But that's beside my main point, which was that even if you disagree with the book author, as the critic largely does, it's not a good idea to blanket ignore anything the premise of which you find incorrect. There was far more to this long essay than a "debunking." I would replace your cornerstone of liberalism (nothing says the rule of law has to be good law) with my own: political equality. Christianity's original tenet could then be moral equality (after all, rule by decree from god came later) -- the meek shall inherit. Phrased that way, the ideas are, while not superimposed, certainly not diametrically different. At that point a book about the subject seems not unreasonable.
I don't think so. Christianity is a conservative movement. Religion asserts that it has a right to control the rate of change in the moral livelihood to humans. That conservation and controlling the rate of change is at the heart of the conservative movement.
I always read the #goodlongreads, actually, but I sometimes feel that there's so much to discuss that I don't have a good enough grasp on.
I just read it. I probably wouldn't have, but I'm making an effort to actually read the articles people post and educate myself, and your comment tipped the scales. Certainly interesting, if not almost completely over my head. Maybe that's why it wasn't shared much? It's a somewhat difficult read if you have no foregrounding in the subject.
Thanks for reading! hubski shares skew toward shorter posts, and LCD headlines that encourage you to already have made up your mind before you read. This is an observation, not a condemnation; it's just how link aggregators tend to work. hubski's better than most. A fun thing is to pick an article at random every day and read it, regardless of headline. I sent a long pm to mk which he never answered cough about this a few months ago -- the idea being that the users most valuable to follow are not those who share the most but those who share the most posts that no one else shares. If you attached some coefficient to "how likely was I to see this awesome post without x's share" -- some would be super high (for instance I find myself sharing a lot of things tons of other people also share) and some would be miniscule (some people tend to share hidden gems I would've otherwise missed). Anyway I uh yeah. Lecture's boring today. I could recommend books to read to familiarize yourself with the evolution of liberalism, of legal morality from religious morality, etc, but it's a lot to start from scratch.