The politics of beauty and mercy seek what all great reforms (and reformers) have sought: to universalize their radical subjectivity through the fundamentally unfounded logic of the State.

So what does this all have to do with Elizabeth’s post? What does it have to do with religion being of use or the tension between bottom-up and top-down politics?

Everything.

John Thomas and Dietrich Bonhoeffer were both essentially wondering if religion was, by its nature, necessarily complicit in the structural horrors of the modern world. For example, they might wonder if religion, with its emphasis on radical forgiveness, demands that we forgive-and thereby indirectly endorse-structural crimes? But they were also wondering if religion, by its nature, was capable of solving for that cruelty in ways that politics could not. Thomas’ suggestions about how we can reclaim religion to solve for structural violence in the world might seem laughable to other people. Reclaim our imaginative power? Revive the true meaning of the Eucharist? Many would find these solutions to be delusional and beside the point. They would argue that we must do something more than just that-that we need to demand real justice politically.

So far, my response has been an essay on politics, particularly the way that we have misunderstood politics and reduced it to consensus democracy. Now I want to focus on religion. Specifically, I want to decide whether or not religion is uniquely capable of doing what the State cannot-namely, to usher in and universalize the politics of beauty, joy, and mercy.

Any self-respecting liberal is already well-trained in the appropriate response to religion. It is dangerous, they will say. It can’t be trusted. It is the agent of oppression. It should be separated from the State.

Let’s forget, momentarily, that these criticisms are myopic and hypocritical-that they fundamentally miss the fact that the State is a religion that requires faith, that initiates members, that converts and that does real violence. Let’s forget, too, that their epistemological criticism is wrong, too, and that they have forgotten that there is paradox (and, consequently, faith) at the bottom of all knowledge systems.

What we should not forget is that these people have fundamentally misunderstood the purpose and role of the State-particularly its limitations. The State, as we have discussed, is entirely incapable of ushering in its own logical ‘rights’ revolutions because ‘rights’ are radically unassimilable, subjective claims that cannot originate or be adequately accommodated by a government. The State cannot legislate extenuating circumstance, but the politics of beauty, joy, and mercy is the politics of the extenuating circumstance. The demands for ‘rights’ are actually deeply religious demands. I use the word ‘religion’ broadly to mean the feelings that are based on sacredness, subjectivity, and a non-consensus-based ethic. (The word anarchism could also apply, and does, except I believe that any anarchism that is not rooted in the deeply religious principle of mercy and humility will itself become a State.) A subjective demand originates in an experience of radical emotion or alterity, and it speaks in the language of that happening. It does not speak about money or statistics or codes; it speaks the language of radical equality and effulgence-in the language of what we already are and what we live for. The State can eventually accommodate this impulse into its operations, provided that it gut the ‘happening’ out of it and replace it with legalese. But even when it does that, it cannot ensure rights or freedoms. The only thing that can ensure that is if people continue to radically experience that happening and speak in its merciful language. Rights are only as good as the continual transformation of individuals who then believe in them-whose daily reawakening to that belief keeps the rights strong and real.

Thinking of all this has caused me to revise my notion of Jesus. Once again, the Left comes ready with its accolades: They do not believe in Jesus, but admire him as a radical. They see him as a revolutionary who could have toppled the State.

But I have begun to wonder if there isn’t some necessary reason that Jesus couldn’t have come as a revolutionary in a traditional sense-if there is something inherent in true revolution that makes it utterly different from the State. Reading about Jesus’ life, it is obvious that he did not come to call for any uniform code, but the abolishment of one. His demands on people and his reactions changed with every person because each person was radically singular and each situation demanded a different response. That is why in some stories he bellows against the rich like an organ but, in other moments, allows a woman to buy and ‘waste’ expensive oils on worshipping him. In the former instances, he knew the people were selfish and must become radically unselfish, and so he demanded their money. In the latter circumstance, he knew the woman needed an object of reverence and allowed her a moment of extravagance-of beauty. He was not the grim enforcer of a bland, State communism, but a prophet of an expansive communalism-of people in extenuating circumstances communing with each other.

Jesus’ demands could never have been codified because they were radically singular, mercurial and situational. He knew that making a State that demanded change from people would not guarantee that change but would, rather, ruin it. It would enforce outward obedience, but it would not radically transform a person. But he must also have know that there were other limitations. He must have known that the State, qua State, cannot speak in the language of effulgence and mercy and remain a State. That revolution would have to come from the bottom up, in a series of individual acts that together overpowered the State entirely-a series of voluntary acts of kindness and cooperation and radical recognitions of equality that would eventually render the State useless, non-existent.