The Misery of Christianity: or A Plea for a Humanity Without God by Joachim Kahl

This afternoon I read a book that seemed to be written with straight molten lava, Joachim Kahl’s The Misery of Christianity: or A Plea for a Humanity Without God. First published in 1968, I am dealing here with the 1971 translation by N.D. Smith put out by Pelican books. I was initially unsure if I would write about this because I doubted anyone would be able to find a copy of the thing, but to my surprise in the Spring a newer edition became available on Kindle. I cannot speak to that newer edition in detail, only to my taped-up and barely clinging to life paperback, but in that more recent Forward Kahl nicely summaries his situation back in the late 60s:

My book. . .is the work of a twenty-six-year-old. This circumstance serves to explain all the strengths and the weaknesses of the work. Before this book, I had only written my theological dissertation (Philosophy and Christology in the Thinking of Friedrich Gogarten), which was accepted by the theological faculty of Philipps University Marburg after a long examination period. In June 1967, I passed the final oral examination. A few days after receiving my doctoral diploma, I left the Evangelical Church of the Rhineland in Cologne, which had been my first home.

He also writes that his “criticism of religion never once escalated into hatred of religion, nor did my atheism ever degenerate into antitheism.” That’s a fine thing, but do not be mistaken in thinking what follows for the next couple hundred pages is anything like tepid. And he prepares you in his original introduction, starting with a point I’ve been insisting on for years (anger and sound thinking/argumentation are not mutually exclusive!):

The middle-class prejudice that rational criticism can only be properly expressed if one is removed from the heat of the conflict is not one which I share. I have not written this book, as Tacitus said in his Annals, ‘without anger and without study’, but with anger and with study. In the course of writing it, study preceded anger, which came about almost as a matter of course. Anyone who has never become indignant about Christianity has never really known it.

Unsettling as it might be to some, that is precisely what you want in a book that is explicitly an attack on Christianity – or, really, anything; change the subject, half the enjoyment of reading, say, Karl Marx is in the venom of his pen (okay, that’s probably the only enjoyment in reading him). The important balancing factor then is doing so “with study.” That is, you want the thinking to be as sharp as the sword.

This so often was the missing element in books published under the banner of New Atheism. Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything is a perfect example (and I think may have more than just borrowed from Kahl, in places). While I agree with much in it, and the prose often soars (I just assume those are the bits he wrote while sober), the book is a bumpy ride: it’s awash with dirty pool, lazy arguments, and pointless excesses. You can see it just in the subtitle – everything? How many homeless shelters in your city are run by a local Catholic charity? Take another small example from the text where Hitchens writes, “as for consolation, since religious people so often insist that faith answers this supposed need, I shall simply say that those who offer false consolation are false friends.” But, obviously, just because a belief is false does not mean the consolation is false. You don’t need to think about it any longer than it takes to read the sentence to see the lazy cheapness of the point.

This doesn’t earn you the goodwill of the reader, and it doesn’t challenge them and make them think. That’s important because the ‘attacks’ category of writing about Christianity is bound to attract brave readers who are also believers. In fact, I think they’re the ones who most ought to be reading these. If your faith is really drawn from that ‘still small voice’, then there’s nothing to fear. And if attacks like these do move you, then you have more thinking to do. Either way, you’ll learn something. In other words, these books can be measuring sticks of how deep your faith goes. (and there are worse fates than becoming a secular humanist).

Joachim Kahl’s The Misery of Christianity is one the best examples of these books I’ve ever read. It’s sharper, more biblically literate than, say, Hitchens, and more respectful of the reader’s intelligence. (he treats you like an adult).

Kahl puts his foot on the gas straight away and never lets up. To give you a sense, in the first few pages of the first chapter, he has a section titled ‘The Church As A Slave-Owner’, in it he writes:

Paul, too, not only accepted slavery as a matter of course, but even affirmed it explicitly. He sent Onesimus, the runaway slave whom he had converted, back to his Christian master, Philemon (see the letter to Philemon). It is moreover quite clear from the apostle’s own words that he was not concerned with the emancipation of slaves: ‘Everyone should remain in the state in which he was called. Were you a slave when you were called? Never mind. But if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition instead. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a slave of Christ’ (I Cor. Vii, 20-22). Most Christian readers of the Bible are hardly conscious of the monstrous cynicism underlying these words. By means of a verbal trick worthy of a crooked horsedealer – giving a double meaning to the two concepts slave and freedman – those who are already oppressed are completely take in. By virtue of the religious fiction that they are really freedmen of Christ, these factual salves are persuaded that they ought to be indifferent to their lack of freedom. Paul at the same time also renames the slave-owner the slave of Christ and thus draws a veil over the existing injustice of slavery, which is justified as God’s will.

This keen, piercing, almost impatient writing is not prepared for, he starts at a gallop, and it makes for a totally engrossing couple hours.

The book is most refreshing, in my view, in his section ‘The Impossibility of Knowing the Historical Jesus’, because he pushes this point further than even current popular scholars like Bart Ehrman:

Is it, however, possible to go beyond the historical fact that a man called Jesus existed at a date and place which can be established approximately and learn something about the peculiarities, the life, the teaching and the fate of this person? If we cannot find out this kind of information, the name of Jesus is bound to remain cryptic and meaningless, indistinguishable from a myth. I will now try to show, by discussing the sources, that this is so, and that it confirms my conclusion that the name of Jesus is empty.

Of many biting points he makes here, he writes that “what cannot be disputed is that Jesus only comes to us through the filter of the geomatics of the evangelists.” Right, a basic fact is that we dealing here with religious texts, so they are inherently suspect. Why is that so little emphasized today?

Tempted as I am to continue quoting from the book and following his line of argumentation, the point is that however harsh and bitter, or refreshing and welcome, you find this, it is a smart and challenging broadside against Christianity worth your time. It’s a classic example of a book you want to push on fellow readers immediately upon finishing it (but it’s physically out of print and I only have the one, so get your own).

You’ll find different chapters more or less convincing, but you’ll be stimulated the whole way through. There are some oddities too, such as Kahl’s stupid 60’s Marxism (happily he got over it, it seems) and a few other peculiarities that make this a product of Germany of that time - but these are rarely distracting.

If you have a shelf (whole bookcase?) dedicated to Christianity or religious studies, I would consider The Misery of Christianity an essential to be added.