I think most of us can agree that political violence is evil, that Charlie Kirk didn’t deserve to be murdered, and that his killer is a real fucked-up person who should be brought to justice.
What we CAN’T seem to agree on is just how hateful and destructive Kirk’s rhetoric actually was during his life.
I’m sorry the man was killed, but I’m not shedding any tears for him, and his forward to Lucas Miles’ recently published The Pagan Threat is a textbook example as to why.
I won’t dissect the entire thing, and there are numerous problems with Lucas’ entire book that will require a much more in-depth analysis. The trouble is that there are so many falsehoods crammed into each and every sentence, it might require an entire encyclopedia collection just to address them all. For now, I will just address this one cute little hum-dinger from Kirk right here:
“In the Pagan world, the individual human life was of no importance. Therefore abortion, infanticide, human sacrifice, and more were just a part of life. Under Paganism, there is no notion that humans had equal innate worth, so one tribe enslaved another, or rulers enslaved their subjects, all with impunity.”
The idea that only Christianity introduced the concept of human dignity, or that human dignity was utterly unknown in ancient polytheism, is provably false.
Ancient Egypt alone possessed a complex legal system, with extensive writings on Ma’at. People valued hospitality and kindness, and they mourned both people and animals who died, very much like we do today.
The entire concept of Ma’at involves living a good, balanced life and being a responsible member of society who treats others with dignity. The way we treat others has a direct effect on one’s afterlife as well: for people who uphold Ma’at will have a good afterlife, while those who violate Ma’at will not.
And this is just from ancient Egypt; other polytheist civilizations had their own complex legal and ethical systems as well. Virtually all of them had space for things like (1) grieving for the dead, (2) seeking lawful action against crime, and (3) believing they might somehow be judged in the afterlife for their actions here on Earth. Each of these ideas is built upon the assumption of human dignity; you don’t have things like funerals or laws against theft of personal property when you think the individual human life is of “no importance.”
I find it extremely problematic whenever Christians raise alarms about “human sacrifice.” For one thing, “human sacrifice” often served as capital punishment in many societies, with the sacrifices being criminals or prisoners of war. While there was often a ritualized element to appease certain deities or restore cosmic order, the functionality was really no different from sending someone to the gas chamber today (and having a minister “pray over” them before they go).
In other cases, the “human sacrifices” were not killed but left to die, either because they were fatally ill or there weren’t enough resources to be spared. This might sound callous, but we can be sure that it wasn’t easy for the families involved. Imagine having to leave a baby behind because you can’t feed it, and there are no hospitals or orphanages. Not a very easy decision to make, and I daresay that even Christians would find themselves making such hard decisions under the right circumstances. Thankfully, such practices tend to die out as civilizations (including polytheist ones) develop more and more infrastructure over time.
In still other cases, the “human sacrifices” were not killed to glorify any deities at all, but to accompany a king or a loved one in the afterlife (these are called “retainer sacrifices”). There is evidence to suggest that these were voluntary suicides, rather than ritualized murders. Either way, the practice was eventually phased out, EVEN DURING POLYTHEIST TIMES. The Egyptians in particular developed ushabti figures as a replacement, which could be used to accompany people in Duat *without* anyone being killed. And again, none of these “sacrifices” had anything to do with appeasing any deities; they had more to do with afterlife beliefs than with any theological claims about the Gods.
It is also a little bizarre to see Christians froth at the mouth against “human sacrifice,” when all of their religious symbolism and literature emphasizes the torturing and painful death of a man who was executed for an alleged crime, and who is himself presented to be their own version of a “human sacrifice.” Something about (1) the glorification of this horrific imagery combined with (2) the appetite many American Christians seem to have for watching other people suffer or be punished has always made my skin crawl. So much for Matthew 7:3-5, I guess.
Plenty of people in history have been slaughtered either for (1) not believing in Christ or for (2) not believing in Christ “correctly,” according to whichever authorities happened to be in power at the time. From the Crusades to the Inquisition to the witch hysterias, history is full of murders and violence being committed in the name of Christ. These heinous acts qualify as “human sacrifices” as well, and NOWADAYS, most religious violence and terror is being perpetuated by either Christians, Muslims or Jews. You’re more likely to be murdered by someone just for talking shit about Christ or Allah or Israel or Palestine than you are to find yourself in any real-life re-enactments of “The Wicker Man” or “Rosemary’s Baby.”
As for abortion; the concept of “fetal personhood” literally didn’t exist ANYWHERE – not even IN CHRISTIANITY – until the 1960s CE, *after* Roe v. Wade. This belief is NOT EVEN A CENTURY OLD, and Christians can’t even apply it to their very own predecessors. It’s about as “biblical” and “historical” as the Rapture.
Now for the bit about slavery. Dear GODS, Charlie; SLAVERY? Where do I even start?
Slavery has existed in virtually EVERY human society at some point – INCLUDING those shaped by Christianity, long after its arrival. Our own American history is full of horrific examples. American slaveholders often used selectively quoted scripture to argue for the divine sanction of slavery. They even popularized the so-called “Curse of Ham” as justification for this unfounded belief. Additionally, here are some specific examples of American Christian involvement in promoting slavery:
- The Jesuits sold 272 enslaved people in 1838 to save Georgetown University from financial ruin; the Society of Jesus had previously relied on slave labor for decades.
- The Church of England (Anglican) made direct investments in the transatlantic slave trade, operating profitable sugar plantations in Barbados. Profits from these plantations funded the church, and the slaves there faced brutal conditions.
- The Southern Baptist Convention specifically broke away from their northern counterparts in 1845 to defend the “right” of their missionaries to own slaves; the entire denomination is founded on a pro-slavery ideology.
- The Presbyterian Church had ministers who were slaveholders, including its earliest American leader, Reverend Francis Makemie, and it invested profits from selling slaves to generate income.
Frankly, I don’t want to hear ANOTHER FUCKING WORD about Christianity supposedly being morally “superior” to other religions in terms of its historical stance on slavery, EVER AGAIN. This is categorically, and quite despicably, FALSE.
To equate Paganism with wanton violence, and Christianity alone with compassion, is to erase the genuine spiritual, ethical, and legal advancements made by various non-Christian cultures throughout history. It also ignores the history of violence and oppression that has historically occurred under Christian rule, including slavery, persecution, and marginalization of outsiders.
This is NOT to say that “nothing good” ever comes from Christianity, or that everything ancient polytheists ever did was “okay.” Reality is seldom ever so cut-and-dry, no matter how much we might want it to be. No one is bad or evil just for being Christian, any more than they are just for being Pagan or anything else. I would like to live in a world where we don’t even need to have these discussions anymore, and everyone just understands that there are good people and crazy people in every possible religious category you might care to mention, and that no one is “evil” just because they fall into one category or another.
The point here is that Kirk and his fellows are blaming Pagans (in addition to transgender people, atheists, leftists, feminists, Democrats, etc.) for “stealing” people away from Christianity, when the thing that’s really driving most people away from their religion is CHRISTIAN HYPOCRISY. This is a problem that can only be addressed by Christians, and for which Christians can only hold themselves responsible.
But of course, such distortions of reality are the entire point, aren’t they? In writing this and other such extreme statements, people like Kirk show us they have zero interest in any facts or the truth. They don’t care about fairness, good faith, or actual dialogue. This is not the kind of verbiage people use when they truly believe in “peaceful coexistence.” If you truly “love your neighbor,” you don’t talk about them like they’re systematically organized and funded to “infiltrate” society, “brainwash” your kids, “overthrow the government,” etc.
No, this kind of language is specifically designed by and for people who want to see whatever demographic(s) they’re talking about removed from public life entirely. Dehumanize the target as much as possible so as to discourage any further helpful dialogue between our communities whatsoever. Make the reader feel “persecuted,” when really THEY are the ones most well-positioned to do the persecuting. Increase the likelihood of persecution—and religious violence—against the target by instilling as much misinformation and fear in the audience as possible. People are always more likely to obey and not ask questions when they’re scared.
In contrast, you won’t find nearly so many Pagan authors who call for Christians to be completely removed from society. Most of us just want to co-exist and be left alone. Some of us might say things that are extremely critical about Christianity, but this is no different from any other religion critiquing its peers. Besides, if Charlie Kirk can accuse people like me of being an “evil conspiracy” that threatens the very fabric of society, it seems only justified that I should be able to have my say too. And I say that all the right-wing politicians and media people who are actively capitalizing on Kirk’s death right now—like, say, Lucas Miles, for instance—are the REAL evil conspiracy, and one that we should ALL be worried about (Christians, Pagans, atheists alike).
How ironic it is that Kirk should claim Paganism denies the significance of individual human life, when the significance of his OWN life appears to have been denied to him by a fellow Christian, and when the entire narrative of his life has now been hijacked by OTHER fellow Christians, who are now using his “martyrdom” to fill their pockets, demonize innocent Americans, and dismantle our entire republic.