The Rise of Nietzschean Christianity
In my formative years pursuing Christian education, Friedrich Nietzsche was a common villain. Philosophy classes told the story of the German philosopher applying the brute logic of Darwinian competition to all of life. Nietzsche, however, went further than Darwin by championing not merely survival but the will to power. The goal of life, according to the intense mustachioed intellectual, consists in rising above the mediocrity of the common herd of humanity and achieving the status of the “Ubermensch,” or Superman. This figure throws off the restraints of otherworldly Christian morality in favor of this-worldly power and pleasure.
For Nietzsche, the “death of God” in secular culture opened the door to a new approach to life. No longer would human beings pursue the Christian ideals of sacrificial love and humility in hopes of one day inheriting an eternal kingdom. The Superman would overcome all obstacles through frenzied and unabashed pursuit of this-worldly dominance. My Christian professors usually made it a priority to note that Nietzsche died in an insane asylum. It seemed an appropriate end for the originator of such anti-Christian madness.
Nietzsche never impressed me as an original thinker. He merely supplied a provocative philosophical argument to the hedonistic life that so many in every age have pursued. Given the choice between unrestrained power and pleasure or God’s eternal kingdom, droves of our kind have and will continue to choose the former. It’s the way of Judas Iscariot and the Rich Young Ruler; Adolf Hitler, Andrew Tate, and countless others. It may manifest itself in various ways, but the New Testament’s label captures it best—the “love of this world,” or “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” (1 John 2:16). Whatever it’s called, one thing is clear—such a life represents the antithesis of the way of Christ.
Thus, it may surprise you to learn that many today seem bent on combining the two approaches into a single life philosophy. Professing Christians—mainly online—are presenting a twisted version of Christianity that champions Nietzschean values in the name of Christ. Every week, I encounter online personalities using the name of Jesus in pursuit of Nietzschean ideals and goals.
Joel Webbon, for example, is the pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Austin, Texas, and the president and founder of Right Response Media, which has over 120,000 subscribers on YouTube. Webbon has built a vast online following primarily among young men by championing reprehensible ideologies under the banner of Christianity. Most recently, Webbon has started promoting eugenic racism, arguing that some ethnic groups possess “genetic deficiencies” that cannot be overcome in a single generation. In other words, Webbon believes that if your parents come from a primitive, unenlightened culture, you and your progeny are destined to be ethnically inferior as a result.
Webbon has also recently argued that Andrew Tate—online influencer who is facing sexual misconduct charges in Britain and who became rich and famous through pornographic enterprises and sex trafficking—was “sinning in the right direction.” Here’s Samuel James’s interpretation of Webbon’s claim: “By ‘right direction,’ Webbon meant that Tate was behaving in traditionally masculine ways and selling his audience heterosexual smut, rather than the homosexual kind. Tate, according to Webbon, deserves some kind of acknowledgement that he is at least willing to offend feminists and transgender activists. Tate might have the wrong answers, but, for Webbon, he’s asking the right questions.”
Joel Webbon may seem like just one isolated example, but I name him here as representative of a growing and troubling online trend. Social media provides an easy platform for any enterprising personality to make a name for himself, and power-hungry opportunists like Webbon have discovered a successful formula by filling the meaning void of modern secular life with dreams of Nietzschean dominance under the guise of Christianity.
Others speak boldly of the “sin of empathy” as if trying to understand how another human being feels for the purpose of compassion and love is some kind of sinful compromise with progressive feminism. While empathy can certainly be disordered, the rhetorical appeal of labeling it “sin” serves the Nietzschean goal of granting no quarter to effeminate softies in the name of Christ.
Nietzschean Christianity must not empathize with cultural enemies when there is a zero-sum Culture War to win. Who has time to love your enemies when world dominance is the goal? Jesus said he came not to be served but to serve, but we’re in the age of building Christendom now. Those who stand in our way must be humiliated and harassed into submission. The “winsome approach” to culture died in 2023 with Tim Keller; in its place many are eager to follow Webbon’s example of “sinning in the right direction.” Luther’s theology of the cross has been discarded by some in favor of a theology of Nietzschean glory.
Every age poses unique challenges to the cause of Christ. Every culture presents godless ideologies bent on muddying the pure waters of Christ’s glorious gospel. How will the church prevail in such perilous times? The same way it always has: Stay close to Christ, ground yourself in his word, follow the way of the cross, and remember that the gates of hell will never prevail against his church.
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Interesting. Hadn't heard of Webbon. Sounds like he doesn't understand Nietzsche or Christ. I've been wrestling with a reconciliation of the two as well. I do not see Nietzsche's embrace of life as an embrace of hedonic pleasure as many of his champions and his critics agree.
Rather, I see Nietzsche's embrace of life as call to "overcoming" a human nature that is so weak it is easier to submit to the values and moral constraints of our contemporaries; the herd. This is much like Christ's call to reduce all of God's commandments to "love God and love your neighbor" as a call to overcome the tribalistic straight-jacket of his contemporaries; to rise above the moral constraints to which our nature finds it much easier to submit.
But what does it mean to "love one's neighbors"? During Christ's lifetime, it meant the immediate family, the tribe, the "nation". His was a time when radical compassion, mercy, and individual dignity was anathema to most. In other words, Christ was doing the "transvaluation of all values". The secularized, modern, liberal, democratic state is a bastardization of those teachings; an elevation of the very "slave morality" that Nietzsche identifies and describes. It has been so flattened and become so thoroughly infantilized and effeminate that the "transvaluation of all values" can only be a masculine, adult, stoic and responsible self doing the work of overcoming a self constructed by squishy libs over the last 200 years. If our world is emotivist and soft, we must be composed, prudent, and strong. We moderns have all learned to be "The Last Man" or, as Lewis put it, a "man without a chest". Empty, passionless, and incapable of standing for "The Good". Most importantly, incapable of responsibility
Nietzsche does not teach us to embrace unlimited cummies and copious bong hits. No. Rather, he teaches us to embrace life; to obey one's self in order to command others; to have the courage to "go down" in order to "go over". In an amoral, if not immoral world, restriction, control, and the loving act of enforcing consequences and maintaining accountability is compassion. This is the "transvaluation of all values".
Neither Christ or Nietzsche want us to invade Greenland or build resorts in Gaza or Caracas. But neither do they wish for us to roll with the herd. I find it interesting that both use the illusion.
But I'm still working . . .