After socializing with various types of Christians, the easiest way to explain what kind of Christian or what type of Christian I am is to say I'm a “Jordan Peterson Christian.” Another way to put it is that I support “Petersonian Christianity.” This is my position as of 2025. I appreciate and value Jordan Peterson's attempt to popularize Christianity today from a more psychological and “Nietzscheanish” perspective. Jordan Peterson has points of view regarding scripture that is not of the literalistic or fundamentalist kind which he makes clear in his Bible Lectures. So in saying I'm a Jordan Peterson Christian, I am basically saying “I am on your side” to Christians when it comes to the larger goals of modern Christianity (kindness-ethics, family focused, civility, etc.). I'm not dogmatic or creedal in my approach to Christianity. Like  Jordan Peterson, I see Christianity as a set of cultural values and psychological symbols and stories designed to generate a close knit social club aimed at creating kind and civil people and stable families.  


I am basically like Tom Holland, the writer not the actor, who describes himself as culturally Christianity even though he doesn't believe in the doctrines literally. Likewise, I am culturally Christianity in that Christianity is the ethical framework in which most of us Westerners live and breathe as if fish in a fish full of Christian Waters. A good book that summarizes Holland's larger book Dominion is the book The Air We Breathe by Glen Scrivener. 


I am also emphasizing common sensical Christianity, the version of Christianity where we just treat Christianity with a certain degree of common sense. For example, if one is reading the New Testament and gets the impression that the Lord is coming back any second, this doesn't mean one does not pursue a job or career and see such language as more mythological; so common sensical Christianity looks at things in terms of common sense. When we go to the local Walmart, we don't see demons flying around and don't ask for an exorcist if someone on aisle 7 is foaming at the mouth but we call for an ambulance and medical help. That is just plain common sense. Yet Christianity is more than just a supernatural set of ideas but it is a cultural and psychological set of ethical values. So common sensical Christianity distinguishes between supernatural and the psychological.


Petersonian Christianity combines the ideals of American meritocracy, capitalism, and insights from Nietzsche's philosophy of healthiness over degeneration, and forms a coherent psychological model for the modern Christian. 


In his Bible Lecture series, Peterson talks about the psychological value of the stories of the Bible, which when combined with the first chapter of his book 12 Rules For Life on standing up straight with your shoulder back, which makes the argument for raising your status; and not seeking a lower status which would lower your self-esteem and cause harm to yourself and those around you. Thus Petersonian Christianity is in my view what most Americans Christians practice today in that American Christians are functioning less as literal believing New Testament Christians and more as Petersonian Christians.  


So I see that Petersonian Christianity as a good reference term to point to this evolutionary trajectory toward our current modern common sense cultural Christianity, where most Christians simply do not seek an exorcism to cast out a headache demon as was common in the first century, but instead we have learned to interpret the concept of demons as psychological phenomenon and mental illness or describing things like epilepsy. The average Christian today is more likely to go to the doctor than an exorcism. Only the extreme radical fundamentalist type Christians deny modern science and medicine. I'm not including those types in my category of Petersonian Christians or common sensical Christians.


After years of being critical of Christianity and examining Christianity through the lens of supernaturalism and positivism (or scientism) I now look at Christianity through a more cultural and civilizational lens. I have found that a very good term to describe where I'm coming from is that I am basically defending “Common Sense Christianity.” To understand what I mean by that see the book Common Sense Christianity by C. Randolph Ross.


So I'm beginning from the intellectual space of Common Sense Christianity. From that perspective, I'm less interested in the supernatural veracity and the scientific validity of Christian claims. I'm more interested in the psychological, sociological, and familial impact of the overall Christian mythos. In other words, does somebody with the basic Christian paradigm in their psyche become a better family man or woman and citizen than someone with a for example an Atheistic Nihilist and moral relativist paradigm? 


Yes, one's personality and upbringing and other factors play a large part in one's character; however, I would argue that in general the Common Sense Christian paradigm is a better ethical influencer than most other options. 


What I've experienced in my lifetime is that the criticism and deconstruction of Christian beliefs has not been replaced by something better (a better worldview, ethical code, social club or family unifyer): it has instead produced people clinging to things like Wokeism. In other words, no one has produced anything better. Churches continue to be the most popular “spiritual social clubs” in America for families. Christian soup kitchens and food giveaways continue to provide support and help to the poor in America. Neighborhoods full of Christians families produce safer, healthier neighborhoods than neighborhoods full of those adopting the worldview of atheistic nihilism and selfishness that causes an increase in fatherless homes, gangs, greed, and crime. 


The fact is Christianity is here to stay. In my own hometown where I live there are Christian churches everywhere, not Wokeism assemblies or Norse pagan clubs. I did meet one practicing Norse Pagan at my gym in 2024, and we had an interesting conversation, but he is an outlier and an extreme minority. So I'm more interested in practical Cultural Petersonian Christianity or Common Sense Christianity even if that means looking at Christianity through a psychological lens as Jordan Peterson does. Even if that means seeing Christ as an avatar of a set of ideas, ideals, and ethical values. I'm interested in the ethical framework and practical outcomes of encultured Christianity more than I am the scientific veracity of any particular “Creedal claim.” 


You are always going to have fanatical extremists. You're going to have your holy roller fundamentalist Christian types, they are never going to go away. But there's always going to be a moderate commonsensical Christianity as well. I would rather have a commonsensical “Christian moderate/middle way types” and a few extremists than a destructive Marxist Nihilist moderate/middle and a few of their extremes.


I also realized that Christianity is more than just the New Testament, but it was an ongoing developmental historical value system and cultural identity which evolved over the last 2,000 years: which included the influence of my own Germanic ancestors (see the book The Germanization of Medieval Christianity by James C. Russell). So for me Christianity is more than a “belief system” but is a religion that my own Indo-European Germanic ancestors chose as their religious identity around the year 1000 forward; so that moving forward as a people and a culture my Germanic and Scandinavian ancestors chose Christianity over Norse Paganism. This process of influencing was not one-sided, as my Norse Pagan ancestors with their heroic masculine value system of a warrior’s valor transferred into the culture of Christianity which produced what is known and felt today as Cultural Christianity or Common Sense Christianity. For more details see my series of posts on the subject at this link: Indo-European Christianity.



I now see Christianity as a particular worldview and ethical system at this point. Those core values are:




Common Sense Christianity is basically a psychological representation of biological life in a healthy productive state of growth. Cultural Christianity is basically a worldview with an image of God as a parental figure representing the leader of a household, so that God acts as the model, as a “heavenly family”: with a Father God, Mother & Queen Mary, Noble Son (Christ) and the Body/Assemblies of Christians as the birthing of the Good Society through Christian loving-kindness. So the Mother Queen Mary births the Son (Christ) who forms Christians, with Jesus as the image of the Father and his Mother (a divine Family). This family-based ethos grounds a family-centered value system, producing healthier societies through families mirroring the image of the divine family toward a more civil and harmonious ethical ideal. 


Culture Christianity for me is this family imagery with Father God and Mother Mary at the top of the pyramid framing the Christian's psychology; so that from the top down, this heavenly familial ideal, forms an ideal family resulting in good parents who raise good children which produces good cities and countries. Common Sense Christianity generates civilized, just, individuals, through families: based on the biological process of heterosexual male and females producing children and raising those children with the commonsensical Christian value system.


Some pro-family verses from New Testament:


On Children & Their Value:




On Husbands & Wives:


"Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord. Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them".



"Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her". 


On Children & Parents:



"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother,' which is the first commandment with a promise: 'that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth'". 


"Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord". 


"Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not turn from it". 


Other key verses promote parental responsibility through providing for the household in 1 Timothy 5:8 and raising children with discipline and instruction.


 So if this is what the Core of Christianity is (God→ Family → Healthy Society). So I think that which is “anti-Christian” is anything seeking to attack this biologically grounded pyramidal structure based on a divine family model. What I have seen in my own lifetime is that the anti-Christian segments among the media propagate an anti-biology, anti-herosexual, misandrous (hatred of men), anti-family nihilistic cultish agenda; causing a deterioration of biological gender roles and the family unit through the absence of fathers in homes so sons don't develop with healthy masculine traits like self-control and discipline and daughters raised so they do not have “daddy issues,” leading to a collapse of the civilization pyramid mentioned above of God→ Family → Healthy Society. One does not even need to literally believe in God to appreciate the psychological conceptualization of the family pyramid with the heavenly Father and Mother atop the pyramid as the ideal model for the production and growth of healthy families producing healthy societies.


So for me, all the atheistic arguments against Christianity have basically lost their potency. I have seen Atheism act as a segway down the road to Nihilism, man-hating 4th Wave Feminism, and Modern-Marxism gaining greater ground. So that as Jordan Peterson argues, the “idea of God” is as much a functional concept as a metaphysical assertion. In my own research I have learned that the very idea of God as the daylight “sky father” goes back to my Indo-European ancestors. This early conceptualization of God acted at the very least as a functional model for my Indo-European forefathers and their families. Meanwhile, the Jewish People maintained social cohesion as an ethical tribal family over centuries and have passed on those cultural values into Judaism; as Christianity was basically a synthesis of the best of Judaism and the best of Indo-European philosophy and spirituality. 


Cultural Christianity is therefore not about any particular set of beliefs or even “going to church” every Sunday. It is about psychology, cultural ideals, mythological structures, and a value system. Cultural Christianity is at its core an ethic of civility, of friendship, of racial unity, of having a meaning in life and hope in a higher cause greater than one self. When I look at Christianity this way, I wonder why or how anyone who cares about family stability and civilizational functionality would be against Common Sense Christianity? 


This is a project of love and a hobby. The following are my thoughts put into essays and blog posts and near book length arguments, as I grew from agnostic-atheist to more pragmatic-doer-of-the-word. Note that I have no editors and so much of this work is constantly being edited by myself.  Thus, words in blue designate areas I have not yet edited and may not make much sense or have many typos and  crazy grammatical mistakes and contain ideas I could have even written tens years ago and changed my mind about; and so I could delete the words in blue entirely when I get to proof reading such sections and editing them. In short, words in BLUE are the first rough draft version and will be edited and possibly even deleted.