Christianity
Nietzsche objects to the State because it appears to him as the power that intimidates man into conformity. Christianity, as he sees it, was originally a call to man not to conform, to leave father and mother, and to perfect himself.
He includes Luther’s Protestantism in his indictment; for Luther impressed upon the new church he founded the fateful words of Paul in whose Epistles he had found what he took to be true Christianity: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.” (Rom. 13: 1–2.)”
Nietzsche’s opposition to political liberalism cannot be analyzed in this context either—but one statement that helps to explain his position can be found in the Meditation on Schopenhauer: “How should a political innovation be sufficient to make men once and for all into happy inhabitants of the earth?” (4). Nietzsche opposes not only the State but any overestimation of the political. The kingdom of God is in the hearts of men—and Nietzsche accuses Christianity of having betrayed this fundamental insight from the beginning, whether by transferring the kingdom into another world and thus depreciating this life, or by becoming political and seeking salvation through organizations, churches, cults, sacraments, or priests. He will not put his faith either in a church or in a political party or program, for he believes that the question of salvation is a “question for the single one.”