John Corrigan defined Christianity in a way it has never been defined before during his lecture at Iowa State on the night of March 12 about Emptiness in Christian America.

“American Christians define themselves by saying what they are not,” Corrigan said.

Corrigan said he believes Christians define their lives by using their identity as Christians as a point of pride and priding themselves mainly off of what they do not identify with, such as not identifying with another religion they look down upon.

In his lecture, Corrigan discussed what he said is a deep-rooted history of emptiness in American Christian culture, dating back to the settlers of the continent. 

“European Americans saw America as an empty place to be filled,” Corrigan said. “Emptiness is good, and it must be filled. This is the Christian perspective.”

The lecture aimed to explain the core cause of hatred in several protestant religious groups. Corrigan said deep-rooted feelings of emptiness that define several Christian practices leads to a focus on explaining what Christians aren’t instead of what they are.

“They made the feeling of emptiness the center of their emotional lives,” Corrigan said. “I found that 12,000 people a week were tweeting about a feeling of emptiness.”

Corrigan said this feeling is created through several Christian practices, including fasting, bloodletting, tears, work and sex.

“Sex is an emptying of oneself into each other, according to Christians,” Corrigan said.

All of this leads back to Corrigan’s view that this feeling of emptiness leads some Christians to focus and lash out against what they define as unchristian, thus explaining anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.

“They go looking for trouble because it helps them create a social identity and a personal identity,” Corrigan said.

At the end, Corrigan was met with cheers and several questions, but not everyone agreed with Corrigan’s points.

“Talking in overly-generalized terms could not be the right direction when discussing this subject,” said Anne Clifford, professor in religious studies. “Emptiness might be a little differently conceived depending on denomination.”