JP recently appeared on “Jubilee”, the YouTube channel known for having “debate-ish” videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pwk5MPE_6zE
The setup here is they will take some person and surround them with tens of their opponents, so you have “Jordan Peterson vs 20 Atheists”.
In this exact video, one of the people asks JP if he’s a Christian and he replies “Don’t be a smartass!”
I haven’t seen someone that espouses so many Christian values and philosophy while trying to hold it at arm’s length. Is this just part of the usual JP tactic where you call into question any terms used in a discussion to sound deeply philosophical?
He seems to have an atypical relationship with Christianity and I can’t decide if that’s some genuine crisis he has OR if he just pretends to hold this stance just to add one more slippery facet to his behavior.
If nothing else, it’s very odd.
I’m a Christian myself and have listened to a couple of Peterson’s lectures on the Bible and I see him as someone who approaches the Bible with the mind of a conspiracy theorist or a New Age believer. He makes grand claims while using a handful of loosely related facts to support his beliefs and could care less about using a more rigorous approach. To him, any and all notable pieces of imagery in the Bible actually play important archetypal roles for fundamental principals in our grand cosmic reality
I believe JP has at the least strongly implied that he doesn’t actually believe in the truth of the Bible, that he is agnostic towards an actual God, and that he instead uses Christianity more as a vehicle for understanding his own set of beliefs. So, to answer your question, you could fairly call him a Cultural Christian, but it would be very unfair to call him an actual Christian.
He is 100% a Christian - a rather devout and conservative one at that, he just doesn’t like to admit it in public as he doesn’t like to agree to any premise on anything he believes in, or really any statement he’s made - as he’d then have trouble linguistically dancing around it when it was no longer convenient for whatever argument he was in.
If you’ve not read this open letter / article written by a colleague and (ex) close friend of Jordan’s way back in 2018 I highly recommend it to everyone researching him. Though it is long it gives a lot of insight into who he is behind closed doors, and his aspirations.
https://curtismchale.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/I-was-Jordan-Peterson’s-strongest-supporter.-Now-I-think-he’s-dangerous-The-Star.pdf
It’s an interesting enough read, however, the only thing I saw that was indicative of Christian belief was his desire to create and lead a church. However, plenty of cult leaders have already done the same. What makes him a real Christian and not just another brand of cultist along the lines of Mormonism or Jehovah’s Witnesses?
I see JP’s public presentation of Christianity as actively steering people away from what it really is. He focuses far too much on a mythologized, deistic form of Christianity and far too little on the beliefs that set Christianity apart. So, regardless of what he might think he believes in secret, I will continue believing, until things change, that someone who has intentionally given such a flawed interpretation for as long as he has cannot truly be called a Christian.
Fair enough. I don’t see Mormons or Jehovah’s as ‘not Christians’ though, nor do they as they believe in Christ as the son of their God - which is really all it takes to be a Christian fundamentally. However I do agree that the practices of the Mormon and JW church are very manipulative and controlling to their followers in the way cults often are, and overall a negative impact to the lives of most of their followers (except those at the top).
When people brand certain Christians as not Christian because they don’t follow Christs teachings the way they believe they should be followed or by some other personal metric then it quickly becomes a ‘No True Scotsman’ situation.
Okay. So…lemme ask you…
Does that fact that there are an innumerable and wide variety of competing views and ideologies around the very basic teachings of one simple woodworker not tell you that it’s all bullshit?..or do you think that YOUR concept of this religion’s absurd and anti-factual claims are correct and its everyone else in the world who is wrong?
Not asking in disrespect, but asking of every christian.
And let’s not even mention the fact that there are countless other ideologies that also claim to be the sole truth, and which one you subscribe to is heavily dependent on where you were born.