The Word in Focus with Dr Larry Taylor

ARE CHRISTIANS ELITIST?
Lawrence R. Taylor, M.Div., Ph.D.
Independent Scholar

ABSTRACT

Christianity’s historic claim that Jesus Christ is uniquely the incarnate Son of God has often been perceived as inherently elitist in a religiously plural world. This article argues that exclusivity of belief does not necessarily produce superiority of posture. The distinction between doctrinal conviction and relational humility is central: elitism arises not from believing something to be true, but from believing that possession of truth makes one superior to others. After examining Christian inclusivism, pluralism, and exclusivism, the essay explores restorative justice, redemptive judgment, and the biblical theme of the “powers” to show that Christian theology places all humanity under the same need for grace. Drawing on the Christus Victor understanding of the cross and the “already/not yet” kingdom of God, the article contends that authentic Christian faith leads not to religious triumphalism but to solidarity, repentance, and self-giving love. Properly lived, Christian conviction undermines elitism and fosters humility, reconciliation, and service within a diverse world.

Are Christians Elitist?

Lawrence R. Taylor, M.Div., Ph.D.

Religious Diversity and Christian Claims

That traditional Christianity makes unique and exclusive claims about Jesus is undeniable. 

For in [Messiah Jesus] the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily … (Colossians 2:9)

If, as Christianity insists, the man, Jesus of Nazareth was the exact image of YHWH, the one true living creator God of the Hebrew scriptures, (Hebrews 1:1-4) and, if, as Christianity also insists, Jesus physically rose from the dead in an immortal body (1 Corinthians 15), then he is unique. He cannot simply be a great prophet or brilliant moral teacher. He claims to be not a witness of divine light, but the light itself.

John 14:6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Yet there is profound truth in all historic religious traditions, including indigenous beliefs, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and so on. Christianity emerged as a sect of Judaism and embraces the Hebrew canon as divinely breathed. Christians can learn much by listening to Native people and people of other religious traditions. All truth is God’s truth.

C. S. Lewis wrote: “If you are a Christian you do not have to believe that all the other religions are simply wrong all through.” 

Nevertheless, if we assert a central place for Jesus, are we not simultaneously claiming superiority? Is that not an elitist position?

The issue is not whether Christianity makes exclusive claims — it clearly does. The issue is whether those claims produce a posture of humility or superiority. Elitism is not believing something is true; it is believing that possessing that truth makes us better than others.

Christian faith is not elitist when the uniqueness of Christ is expressed through humility, self-giving love, and solidarity with others rather than superiority, coercion, or contempt.

That Christians have too often come across as bearers of absolute truth looking down on poor ignorant souls they designate as “unbelievers,” or “lost,” is irrefutable. Fundamentalists and some evangelicals confine those outside a small fold to eternal damnation. Some branches of Christianity are known more for what they are against than for the love that Jesus said should be their hallmark. (John 13:35)

Additionally, the history of missiology is deeply problematic. For centuries, Christian missionaries promoted occidental culture and Euro-American values under the guise of evangelism. More tragically, missions were tied to imperialism, exploitation, enslavement, and genocide. That Christendom has been far removed from the teachings of Jesus is sobering. 

The charge of elitism is too often quite valid.

Is it possible to maintain the centrality and uniqueness of Jesus as both the Jewish Messiah and the Son of God without belittling or dismissing the sincerely held religious beliefs of others? Clearly, it is possible. Contemporary Catholic and mainline Protestant missions do a good job of serving those on the margins by providing basic life necessities and hands-on care without coming across as disrespectful or pompous. 

Others go a step further and emphasize commonalities in religious beliefs. There are many, but that does not remove the exclusivity of statements such as Acts 4:12: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.”

That verse is often used to promote exclusivism – the belief that only implicit, cognitive faith in Christ results in salvation and eternal life.

“Jack” Lewis was more inclusive: “We do know that no person can be saved except through Christ. We do not know that only those who know Him can be saved by Him.”

Lewis’s view is often described as inclusivism — the belief that salvation is always through Christ but not necessarily limited to those with explicit knowledge of him. What Lewis is arguing is that salvation comes to all through what Jesus did on the cross whether a person is aware of that or not. His point is that God accepts all who are faithful to whatever light or truth they have received. It makes no difference to God whether that light came through a Christian missionary or a Buddhist monk. He might further speculate that the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus extends the offer of salvation to all regardless of whether they explicitly know him.

Christian universalists take that a step farther than Lewis and suggest that Jesus’ passion provides blanket forgiveness for everyone. That that appears to negate freewill is answered by supposing that God will continue gentle persuasion after a person dies for as long as it takes until they voluntarily acknowledge God’s truth. Possibly. 

Pluralism, in its theological form, suggests that multiple religions are equally valid paths to ultimate reality. While this promotes harmony, it also tends to flatten important differences between traditions. The three Abrahamic religions believe in a personal God – not an anthropomorphic god, but a God who is both wholly other and actively involved with creation, i.e., a God who has a personality, who experiences emotions, has likes and dislikes, can love and be loved. Mainstream Christianity would add that that God is only fully accessible through the Jewish Messiah risen from the dead, viz., Jesus. Most Eastern and New Age religions do not believe in a personal God but rather define the divine as an impersonal life-force that may contain both good and evil. The three Abrahamic religions explain evil by appealing to human and angelic freewill, not by incorporating it within God.

The question of elitism is not only about religious comparison; it is also about how we understand justice and accountability.

Justice, Judgment, and Transformation

Then there’s the soteriological problem. Are all humans automatically saved? Where is justice if Hitler, Stalin, Bull Conner, and Pol Pot simply get off scot-free? If the moral arc of the universe bends towards justice, does there not have to be genuine repentance, a change of heart? If the teleios, the omega point of evolution, is Isaiah’s vision of a peaceable kingdom, that kingdom cannot be inhabited with brutal murderers. Either they must be excluded or they must change.

The atheist might respond that there is no justice in the cosmos. Either might makes right (Friedrich Nietzsche), or existence is simply absurd so make the best of it (Albert Camus, Franz Kafka).

However, if, as the Abrahamic religions maintain, there is a God and God is just, there must be judgement, though not necessarily condemnation. There must be some means of pronouncing (for example) racist genocide as wrong. The orchestrator of the genocide must be held accountable.

In my previous work with perpetrators of sexual assault against children, the aim of therapy was for offenders to own their wrongs, genuinely understand the depth of pain they caused their victims, make amends as much as possible, and face the consequences of their behavior without blaming anyone else. The goal was not to make them feel worthless or lock them up and throw away the key. We found that some did in fact own their sin (the word seems to fit here), authentically empathize, make amends, serve whatever sentence the courts imposed, and move on never to reoffend. Granted, they were the minority, but their transformation indicates to me that there is hope for humans who do bad things to change. This kind of justice is not about separating the “good” from the “bad,” but about restoring broken people — a vision deeply at odds with religious elitism. The God of Abraham and Jesus is consistently depicted as both merciful and just.

Judgement, then, can be seen as redemptive, reformative, and reconciling rather than retributive, vengeful, and punitive. That does not necessarily imply universalism – freewill can deny culpability and resist reformation. 

If divine judgment is restorative rather than vindictive, then Christian faith is not about separating “us good people” from “them bad people,” but about the healing of persons and the setting right of the world.

Christian faith also refuses elitism because it locates evil not merely in “bad people,” but in enslaving powers that afflict us all.

The Cross and the Defeat of Evil

If, as the Hebrew and Christian scriptures assert, there are forces of evil (personified or analogized as devils, demons, dragons, beasts, monsters, the satan, chaotic waters, or barren deserts), and if those forces underlie and motivate the evil done by despots and empires, we have a deeper problem. Hurtful, sinful, evil, immoral decisions made by humans can conceivably be dealt with at a final judgment; but what about the underlying forces of chaos? What to do about the Dark Side of the Force, Asuras, Mara, Wu Wei, Angra Mainyu, Tohu Va-Vohu, chaos, nonbeing? However we conceive of that stuff, it is purported to be the foundation of injustice.

Judaism and Christianity assert that non-life, non-being, chaos, are countered by a God who is the author and sustainer of life, being, and order. The first creation story in Genesis is all about the Creator pushing back the chaos and elevating flourishing life. Throughout the biblical narrative, evil keeps trying to push its way back in. The Hebrew prophets predicted a messianic figure who would ultimately overcome the forces of evil and open the way for a universal beloved community where heaven and earth would harmonize.

In Christian theology, the cross involves more than just somehow enabling God to be both just and merciful with individuals. While on that Roman gibbet, Jesus absorbed all the disorder, chaos, evil, Tohu Va-Vohu, into himself. He did so out of sacrificial love, much like a soldier throwing herself on a grenade to save her mates. Evil imploded. Or, to use another analogy, all the energy of the hurricane we call evil spent itself, blew itself out, on Jesus.

Yet, if that is true, why is there still evil? It’s clear that first generation followers of Jesus expected his return to fulfill Isaiah’s vision of a new creation (Isaiah 65) imminently. After a few decades, Peter had to explain to them that time as we perceive it is meaningless in the divine realm. (2 Peter 3:8) With that as a base, theologians assert that we live in the liminal state of accomplished but not yet. The kingdom of God was initiated by Jesus, guaranteed by his crucifixion and subsequent resurrection, is now advancing wherever we see an expansion of shalom, and yet to come in its fullness. 

Living Without Elitism

Despite the gross misrepresentations of Jesus in the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Doctrine of Discovery, as well as the justification of genocide, slavery, wars, empires, greed, and all manner of injustices, the kingdom of God has been advancing. Caring people object to slavery, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and state sanctioned violence. Caring people appreciate hospitals, hospices, orphanages, and efforts to care for the environment. Much of the moral imagination behind hospitals, orphan care, abolition movements, and civil rights was deeply shaped by Christian convictions. Christians cared for the throw-away Roman babies, tended those sick in epidemics and pandemics, invented hospitals, created hospice, and founded the first orphanages. Mother Theresa (now Saint Theresa of Calcutta) exemplified the true spirit of Christ. Martin Luther King, Jr. showed us how the teachings of Jesus can confront an unjust society.

Followers of Jesus see themselves joining God as God makes all things new and serving God in pushing back the chaos, whether by tending the sick, visiting the incarcerated, working for social justice, resisting empires, or shoveling the snow off a neighbor’s walkway. The tragic fact that so many conservative Christians of European decent have embraced fascist nationalism, militarism, xenophobia, and racism in direct opposition to everything Jesus taught does not negate the good being done by those who quietly align themselves with the central ethics of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). 

Several things bear clarification. First, I am differentiating between followers of Jesus and people who dismiss his ethics but call themselves Christian. 

Even admiration for Jesus’ ethics, apart from trust and obedience, risks turning his teaching into a menu we control rather than a life that reshapes us. We wind up picking and choosing which of his teachings feel right to us. Being a nice person is not enough. Jesus demands that I voluntarily surrender control of my finances, my family, my way of life. The way of Jesus requires unconditional, self-sacrificial, other-oriented, practical love that does what is best for the other. The way of Jesus requires loving in four directions, viz., loving God wholeheartedly, loving others unconditionally (including enemies), loving oneself as a beloved child of God, and loving creation by caring for nature. 

Jesus’ ethic is one of living out of grace and love. It is a life of gratitude, wonder, and awe, in which we are known and loved. It is about relationship, not rules. We live in an interconnected web of life that requires mutual honor, dignity, hospitality, reconciliation, and acceptance. It is a life where grace infuses creation with the presence of the God who, at God’s core, is love.

This is where the charge of elitism finally collapses — not in argument, but in encounter. Once I am assured that God is love, that I am God’s beloved, that all others bear God’s image and are unconditionally loved by God, that nature is a divine temple in need of stewardship, and that truth, justice, and shalom will ultimately triumph, I will run into the arms of God, rest my head on the divine bosom of grace, and allow the heartthrob of deity to wash away my shame and angst. I will align myself with the poor, disenfranchised, abused, and dismissed. I will stand against injustice. I will join God in making all things new.

Christians are elitist whenever they confuse being loved by grace with being better than others. But when faith in Christ produces humility, repentance, and self-giving love, Christianity becomes the opposite of elitism: it becomes solidarity with the world God loves.

Assured of divine love, I cannot be elitist, judgmental, prejudiced, or think of myself as better than anyone. I can only love and be loved. 

Selected Bibliography for Further Reading

Aulén, Gustaf. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of the Atonement. New York: Macmillan, 1969.
(Classic work on the “Christus Victor” understanding of the cross as God’s victory over the powers of evil.)

Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Vol. I/1. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1936.
(Foundational treatment of revelation as God’s self-disclosure in Christ, undercutting human religious superiority.)

Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. New York: Macmillan, 1959.
(Classic articulation of costly grace and obedience shaped by the Sermon on the Mount.)

Bosch, David J.. Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology of Mission. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991.
(Definitive study on the evolution of Christian mission, including critique of colonial distortions.)

Hauerwas, Stanley. The Peaceable Kingdom: A Primer in Christian Ethics. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983.
(Influential vision of Christian ethics as a communal life shaped by Jesus rather than cultural dominance.)

Ladd, George Eldon. The Presence of the Future. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.
(Seminal work on the “already and not yet” kingdom of God.)

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2001.
(Accessible yet profound defense of core Christian belief, including reflections on salvation beyond explicit knowledge of Christ.)

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.
(Major contemporary treatment of hope, judgment, and the renewal of creation.)

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Gospel in a Pluralist Society. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989.
(Landmark work on proclaiming Christ faithfully and humbly in a religiously diverse world.)

Sanders, John. No Other Name: An Investigation Into the Destiny of the Unevangelized. W.B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1992. (A comprehensive work on the long- standing and much-debated question regarding the ultimate destiny of those who die without hearing the gospel.)

Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996.
(Profound theological reflection on justice, forgiveness, and reconciliation without denial of wrongdoing.)

Wink, Walter. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992.
(Explores the biblical idea of “principalities and powers” and systemic evil.)

Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996.
(Historical and theological study of Jesus’ kingdom proclamation and its world-reshaping implications.)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.