On Privilege and Original Sin

The forbidden fruit taken by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden certainly seems like it must have had a sour taste. For indulging their appetites a little, the two brought sin and death into the world, got kicked out of paradise, and were each assigned their own specially frustrating labor projects. Bible commentators down through history have noted an obvious lesson here: sometimes what we learn through experience is pretty bitter. Thanks to the actions of Adam and Eve, we all have been corrupted and stand in need of salvation… or so the story goes.

Some thinkers on the right and the left have likened the concept of privilege to that of Original Sin. Both are things we are born into, that we cannot escape, and are meant to be dealt with through a confessional or penitent approach. Authors James A. Lindsay and Peter Boghossian draw this comparison in their article, Privilege: The Left’s Original Sin. There is no greater sin in the eyes of the left, they claim, than “having been born an able-bodied, straight, white male who identifies as a man but isn’t deeply sorry for this utterly unintentional state of affairs.”

Part of what makes this analogy compelling is that some similarities do exist between privilege and Original Sin. Yet there are also plenty of concepts like apostasy, faith, and even religion itself that routinely get tossed around with secular ideas in…