A circle of pastors surrounds a seated man. They bow their heads, lay hands on him, and pray as though blessing a servant of God.
But this is not a church, and the man is no humble servant. It is the Oval Office, and the figure at the centre is Donald Trump.
The image, we have all seen many times, captures the central paradox of modern Christian politics. Religious authorities preach values of altruism and self-sacrifice, drawing on countless examples of selflessness oozing biblical teachings. Yet politically, the religious conservatives pursue agendas rooted in competition and power. Stuck between self-denial, virtue-signals and the realities of political life, Christian politics abandons its unlivable religious tenets. Evangelical right, then, has political methods devoid of its Christian values, but still corrupted by the desire to enforce religious dominance.
The Christian Moral Framework
The tension in American Christianity between selfless altruism and selfish materialism did not begin with politics. It was theological all along. Traditional Christian morality taught believers to subordinate personal desire to higher purposes: God, charity, humility, and the good of others. It warned against pride, greed, wealth, and worldly power. Yet American Christianity never demanded such purity for long. By the late nineteenth century, new religious currents were already softening the old hostility toward material success. Long before televangelists promised wealth to the faithful, conservative businessmen and pastors had fused Christianity with free enterprise, turning the market into a moral order.
The contradiction was impossible to resolve. Pride and greed remained serious sins. Jesus still warned that no one could serve both God and money. Yet American churches increasingly found ways to baptise ambition, prosperity, and worldly success. Catholic tradition had long venerated ascetic saints, monks, and hermits who renounced pleasure, comfort, and property in pursuit of holiness. American evangelicalism moved in the opposite direction. It did not merely tolerate the pleasures of wealth and status. It learned to see them as signs of blessing.
Objectivism As Moral Contrast
Objectivism enters precisely where Christian ethics and Christian politics rupture. Ayn Rand’s philosophy illuminates the contradictions of Christian politics by inverting the script. Where Christianity holds that self-interest must be tamed for the sake of others, Objectivism holds that rational self-interest is the foundation of ethics. Rand’s moral framework defends what Christian morality tries to suppress: the individual’s pursuit of their own happiness and goals. In her view, centuries of traditional ethics, religious and secular alike, got things backwards by treating self-interest as a moral defect.
She argues instead that “self-interest, properly understood, is the standard of morality and selflessness is the deepest immorality.” This claim does not mean Rand advocates senseless greed or cruelty. Rather, she reframes virtue as acting in one’s long-term self-interest, using reason. Each person, according to Objectivism, is an end in themselves, not a means to others’ ends. Thus, it is morally right for each individual to pursue their own life and happiness as their highest values, without sacrificing themselves to others or sacrificing others to themselves. In effect, Rand rejects the premise that morality is about renouncing self-interest. Instead, she posits a morality of rational egoism, where one’s duties are to one’s own flourishing while respecting the equal rights of others to do the same.
For Christians and others accustomed to equating morality with self-denial, Rand’s position sounds radical, even blasphemous. Yet Objectivism insists it is not a license for hedonism or callousness. It upholds virtues such as rationality, honesty, integrity, productivity, and justice, all regarded as principles that serve one’s enlightened self-interest.
Notably, Objectivism even regards pride as a virtue, seeing in it “moral ambitiousness,” the commitment to making the most of oneself. This is a direct inversion of the Christian view that pride is a sin. Rand sees servility and humility as the true sins against the self. Hypocrisy, likewise, is condemned in Objectivism not because it offends God, but because it is a form of self-deception and “self-destruction” by betraying one’s own values.
In political and economic terms, Objectivism aligns with laissez-faire capitalism and limited government on moral grounds. If each individual’s rational self-interest is moral, then each individual must be free to pursue that interest. Objectivism holds that individuals have inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Government, in Rand’s view, should exist only to protect those rights. Any attempt to compel people to live for others, for society, God, or the greater good, is regarded as a violation of moral principles. Economically, a free market is a moral system because it allows voluntary exchange for mutual benefit, rather than forcing anyone to sacrifice for others.
Objectivism gets the ethics right when it rejects the Christian ideal of a communal or self-denying society. It offers a vision of society as a collection of free individuals trading value for value by choice. It doesn’t reject cooperation, but know that when it happens, it is a byproduct of enlightened self-interest rather than selfless duty.
Ayn Rand was an avowed atheist and a scathing critic of altruistic ethics. In a 1943 letter, Rand argued that as long as conservatives “go on screaming ‘service’ and ‘self-sacrifice’ louder than their opponents, they will never have a chance,” calling altruism “the curse of the world.” She even wrote two merciless rebuttals of papal encyclicals, one on capitalism and the other on sex.
From an Objectivist standpoint, Christian political movements attempt to have it both ways: they denounce selfishness while depending on the energies unleashed by self-interest. Rand would argue that this is a losing battle: one cannot indefinitely preach self-sacrifice while practising self-interest without moral confusion. In essence, Objectivism throws down a challenge: if your political program relies on ambition and competition, why not admit that self-interest is not a vice but a virtue? If hierarchy, wealth, and power are marshalled for your cause, why keep pretending that the highest ideal is to renounce those things?
By treating rational self-interest as morally legitimate, Objectivism removes the guilt that Christian ethics places on power and profit. It exposes the moral war at the heart of Christian politics and its central contradiction. And without a coherent defence of markets, free enterprise will remain politically defenceless.
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This piece reflects the author’s views, not necessarily the entire magazine. We welcome a range of pro-liberty perspectives. Send us your pitch or draft.
