A Coalition of Victims To Prove The Source of All Suffering & Oppression is Christianity & Capitalism
NOTE: The following is protected by federal copyright law and is an excerpt from the book Marxianity written by Brannon Howse and is not to be published online. The footnotes that document the content in this article are found in the book Marxianity or the eBook.
Guilt always has a victim who is the reason for the guilt, and the victim coalition is crucial to the fabricated racial and economic offenses used as leverage to get people to accept Neo-Marxism. Herbert Marcuse wrote openly about the need to create a victim coalition of poor, minorities, immigrants, feminists, and homosexuals. Once these groups are positioned as victims, he believed, Christians and capitalists could be positioned as their oppressors. The “coalition of victims” is part of an information operation that brainwashes people into believing that the source of all suffering and oppression is Christianity and capitalism.
In his essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse declares that the way to handle what he calls the ‘intolerance of conservatives and Christians’ is to be even more intolerant:
[quote] I suggested in “Repressive Tolerance” the practice of discriminating tolerance in an inverse direction, as a means of shifting the balance between Right and Left by restraining the liberty of the Right.…Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc. [end quote]
Marcuse believed that true Christians and conservatives should be deprived of the right of free speech and freedom of assembly. This is why the cultural Marxists have been pushing for hate crime laws, as now exist in many parts of the world, to shackle Christians and conservatives from speaking publicly the truth about Islam or the Marxists’ LGBTQ agenda.
Real censorship happens when a government—using law and the coercive force of punishment—prohibits individuals from saying or writing something deemed hateful or intolerant. For many people, for example, John 14:6—in which Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”—is both intolerant and hateful.
Although the teachings of Islam as revealed in the Qur’an are demonstrably intolerant and hateful of Jews and Christians, Islam will most assuredly not be the ultimate target of persecution for hatefulness and intolerance. Even if anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial are initially outlawed as hate speech, the legal language will be so vague that eventually the proclamation of John 14:6 and the clear teaching of Romans 1 on homosexuality will become a crime punishable as hate speech.
A June 2015 article by Nick Cohen in the European newspaper, The Guardian, entitled “Tony Blair Has Just Joined the Crew of Reckless Muzzlers” outlined the attempts by Blair and others to implement tolerance laws:
[quote] Democracies appear to be turning into the caricature middle-class leftist, who wants to silence the politically incorrect. But there are two important differences: powerful states are more thoroughgoing than PC censors, and, in their own way, more honest…. Blair has joined the European Council on Tolerance and Reconciliation, which is not only concerned about Holocaust-denial. It is lobbying governments to recognise that the only way to stop extremism is to stop tolerating the intolerant. It wants to protect everyone who may be subject to threats as a result of “their ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity.” The authors don’t just mean that we must protect them from physical harm—as of course we should. They want to extend the borders of censorship by criminalising prejudiced speech as “group libels.”
This ambition makes Blair and his allies seem no different from the average British or American university, which bans speakers and declares whole swaths of thought heretical without even bothering to pretend that they provoke violence….
Blair does not make the same mistake. His friends do not exempt favoured groups or minorities either. For all their appeal to universal values, their draft statutes are a response to the radical Islam so many liberals and leftists have ignored or indulged. Tolerate others or we’ll lock you up, they say to European citizens….
Despite the Blair law’s opposition to Holocaust-deniers, many Jews are opposed to attempts by Blair and his cohorts to ban free speech that many find offensive. Writing in the Jewish Chronicle Online, Joshua Rozenberg concluded:
Of course, it’s unpleasant to come across those who seek to belittle or, more often, to justify the murder of our families. It’s equally disturbing to find people in continental Europe who assure you that their compatriots were victims of the Nazis rather than their accomplices. But I’d rather put up with the intolerance of others than lose my right to speak freely, even intolerantly. The cause of freedom is best served by free speech. [end quote]
Commentator Andrew Coyne similarly notes:
[quote] “The code itself outlaws material that ‘exposes or tends to expose to hatred’ any person or group, on the usual list of prohibited grounds. It is not necessary, that is, to show the material in question actually exposes anyone to hatred—only that it might,” he advised. “The Court then upholds the ban on the grounds that the hatred to which individuals might or might not be exposed might in turn lead others to believe things that might cause them to act in certain unspecified but clearly prejudicial ways: it ‘has the potential to incite or inspire discriminatory treatment’, or ‘risks’ doing so, or is ‘likely’ to, or at any rate ‘can’.” [end quote]
The LGBTQ Coalition of Victims
In order to convince a large percentage of the population to join the persecution of true Christians and conservatives, a false dominant church must be enlisted into the shaming operation led by the cultural Marxists. This false church will declare that true Christians are, in fact, extremists, fundamentalists, and false Christians deserving of public, and then governmental, persecution through such methods as hate speech laws. In order to win this information operation, a false church will attack the morality of the biblical, New Testament church.
Among the many battlefronts on which this war will be fought, one is the mainstreaming of the LGBTQ community within evangelicalism. By setting up this conflict, cultural Marxists within evangelicalism draw into the open “intolerant Christians” so they can be identified, marginalized, vilified, and, if need be, criminalized. This is startlingly consistent with the approach Lenin proposed when he declared:
[quote] Members and front organizations must continually embarrass, discredit and degrade our critics. When obstructionists become too irritating, label them as fascists or Nazi…constantly associate those who oppose us with those names that already have a bad smell. The association will, after enough repetition, become “fact” in the public mind. [end quote]
One book we discussed earlier is at the forefront of pushing the cultural Marxist, LGBTQ agenda within mainstream evangelicalism: Nate Collins’ All But Invisible. Recall Collins’ vision for LGBTQ within the church:
[quote] We’re going to find ways how the church can make the Christian journey livable for the gay people in our pews. So, join me as we’re turning forward together and find ways to bring the gay people in our congregations out of invisibility so we can walk forward together into our faith communities. [end quote]
Anyone who opposes this will be labeled intolerant, thus furthering the Marxist goal.
Nate Collins also writes articles for cultural Marxist, Ron Sider, at Evangelicals for Social Action. On October 20, 2017, for instance, Sider’s site posted a Collins article entitled “Inclusion Is Only the Beginning of Christian Community.” Apparently, Collins is not only a useful idiot of cultural Marxists, but also of Islamists when, in the article on Sider’s website, he writes: “In his book Exclusion and Embrace, Creation theologian Miroslav Volf reflects on the interpersonal dynamics that the four ‘structural elements’ of an embrace signify.”
In case the meaning of that statement is not clear: it’s not meant to be. Collins is not quoting some benign creation theology as he seems to want you to believe. Miroslav Volf is the founder of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture at Yale Divinity school, and since at least 2004, Volf has been involved in what he calls his ‘Building Bridges Seminar’ to promote the Muslim Brotherhood agenda of interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims, even though the Brotherhood has admitted that this strategy is meant to be a one-way bringing of non-Muslims to Islam.
Collins also conveniently leaves out the fact that in 2007, Volf was involved in writing the document known as “A Common Word Between Us and You,” which avows that Muslims and Christians worship the same God. This, of course, is a lie, and even the Qur’an makes it clear this is not the case. That Collins quotes Volf favorably is a solid example of the ‘Red-Green Axis’ between the cultural Marxists and the Islamists, with the red representing Marxism/communism and the green representing Islamic jihad.
Elsewhere in the battle, Al Mohler not long ago publicly apologized for not believing in sexual orientation. He offered this sentiment:
[quote] One of the things we should not be embarrassed to say is that we are learning. One of the embarrassments that I have to bear is that I have written on some of these issues now for nearly 30 years, and at a couple of points I have to say, “I got that wrong,” and we have to go back and correct it, correct it by Scripture.…Now early in this controversy, I felt it quite necessary, in order to make clear the gospel, to deny anything like a sexual orientation. And speaking at an event of the National Association of Evangelicals twenty-something years ago, I made that point. I repent of that. [end quote]
He also allowed the possibility of a “gay gene” when he wrote in 2007:
[quote] The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations. [end quote]
Some of the most popular men today within evangelicalism participate in leadership of the Gospel Coalition—which should really be called the ‘Cultural Marxist Gospel Coalition.’ As a result of the work of men like David Platt, Al Mohler, John Piper, Russell Moore, D. A. Carson, Matt Chandler and Tim Keller, thousands of churches and pastors are fully immersed in the agenda of the Gospel Coalition. It’s more evidence that communists and cultural Marxists have co-opted countless pastors and once biblically sound evangelical organizations to carry out an information operation promoting left-wing Christianity that will support Neo-Marxism. When a religious Trojan horse invades evangelicalism as it has, it can become confusing for people to know what to think or believe when names they have trusted open the door and invite in the Trojan horse.
In my 2016 book, The Coming Religious Reich, I warned that persecution was going to come from the left and the right. On the right, it will be mainstream evangelicals who have been co-opted by change agents, seduced by power and money, or who have been sexually and financially compromised. I pointed out that:
[quote] The stage is set for the coming persecution of the West as true believers in Jesus Christ are targeted by both the left and the right. Do not be shocked when Christian leaders position themselves so they can be thought well of by the powers that be. Neither be surprised when members of the remnant are criticized and mocked by these same leaders. [end quote]
Christians are going to be more and more shocked that ministries and leaders they thought they could trust are compromised, corrupted, or turned into con-men.
The Victim Coalition of Immigrants
Cultural Marxists have turned Islamic jihadis infiltrating America into victims. Their goal is to paint anyone concerned about national security, border protection, and the flood of unvetted Muslims as racists, bigots, haters, intolerant, promoters of xenophobia, and, of course, bad Christians. Who better to hurl insults at, undermine, and discredit conservative Christians than well-known evangelicals?
The Marxists have made great strides at co-opting religious useful idiots to support bringing countless Islamists into America in order to destroy America from within.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, for example, was headed by Richard Land from 1988 to 2013, and an article in the New York Times demonstrates Land’s enthusiastic support of Obama’s amnesty for illegals. Times called Land and other pro-amnesty evangelicals as “a secret weapon” for Obama, noting that Land has declared:
[quote] I’ve had some older conservative leaders say: “Richard, stop this. You’re going to split the conservative coalition,” Dr. Land continued. “I say it might split the old conservative coalition, but it won’t split the new one.” [end quote]
The new coalition is anything but conservative, but is indeed the neo-evangelicals and neo-Calvinists I have warned about for years.
To support Obama’s amnesty agenda, Land has taken assorted scriptures out of context. For example, he used Leviticus 19:34—“You must regard the foreigner who lives with you as the native-born among you. You are to love him as yourself, for you were foreigners in the land of Egypt” (HCSB)—to claim that a pro-amnesty position is biblical. This verse, however, has nothing to do with immigration law. It is part of the ceremonial and civic laws of Israel. It does not support acceptance of law-breaking, illegal immigrants. Rather it addresses the issue of Jews being gracious and fair with non-Jews who are traveling with them or through their land. The scripture also speaks to church practices. Matthew Henry’s Concise Commentary describes the meaning this way: “Strangers shall be welcome to God’s grace; we should do what we can to recommend religion to them.”
Apparently, though, Land thinks it is biblical and moral to have millions of illegal immigrants in America when, at the time he made these comments, the true unemployment rate for U.S. citizens stood at 22 percent. Most illegals in America painting houses, cutting grass, and siding and roofing homes do not pay federal taxes, state income tax, or worker’s compensation insurance. Most do not buy liability insurance, nor do they spend countless hours and thousands of dollars each year complying with government red tape. Illegal aliens can drastically underbid American small business owners precisely because they do not comply with all the laws of our land. As a result, American small business owners cannot complete with illegal aliens.
Some Americans have gone out of business and lost their livelihoods because illegal immigrants underbid them by working for cash under the table, without the overhead of American business owners who comply with the law. Is that just and biblical? A serious problem with people like Richard Land is that many pushing Obama’s plan have never actually run a business. But undermining capitalism with the influx of illegal immigrants fits precisely with the goal of the cultural Marxists.
Romans 13 declares the purpose of government is to reward the righteous and punish the wicked. Yet, unenforced immigration law is rewarding those who break the law while they steal from law-abiding Americans.
Something is clearly wrong when Richard Land and the Communist Party USA are both pushing for amnesty. The CPUSA wants to turn millions of illegal residents into legal voters for the communist agenda. As Worldview Weekend columnist Trevor Loudon writes:
[quote] From a paper entitled “Special Convention Discussion: Mexican American Equality” submitted by Rosalio Munoz, for discussion before the May 21-23, Communist Party USA National Convention in New York. The pre-convention call for our 29th convention gives the right lead for our party, class and people and the Mexican American people and their struggles for equality and justice. It stresses:
Mexican Americans are strong supporters of the Obama administration’s efforts to move away from the right wing policies of the past and to move for progressive reform… Mexican Americans are a necessary force in the struggle to break through the right wing obstructionism and counteroffensive and win progressive changes in health care, jobs and income, immigration, civil rights, labor rights and a more reasonable foreign policy in ongoing electoral struggles and the coming elections. [end quote]
Another Southern Baptist has also joined the work of cultural Marxism. In 2013, Russell Moore became the head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. Moore is a proponent of communitarianism (communism lite) and supports the three-legged stool. In an interview, Moore specifically noted that “the time has come to replace moral majoritarianism with moral communitarianism.” He’s not even ashamed to use the term communitarianism. Any Christian who advocates communitarianism is redefining the mission of the Church and positioning it to take dominion through social justice, but Moore describes his reconstructionist worldview this way:
[quote] The locus of the kingdom of God in this age is within the church, where Jesus rules as king. As we live our lives together, we see the transforming power of the gospel and the in-breaking of the future kingdom. [end quote]
In broadening the appeal of his social justice theology, Moore even re-cast Jesus as “an immigrant” in a 2013 interview on C-Span:
[quote] I have said earlier that when welcoming the sojourner and the stranger among us, those who are undocumented and in a strange land, we need to remember that our Lord Jesus Himself was an immigrant in Egypt. Our Lord’s parents took him into Egypt after the threat that was coming from Herod, living in a strange land for a period of years in exile. And so, I said people who understand and follow the Lord Jesus ought to then have compassion upon people who also are taking their children out of very, very difficult situations, going into a strange land, where they don’t know the people; they don’t have connections; they don’t have support networks, and to show mercy to them. [end quote]
Given this view of Jesus, it is not surprising that Russell Moore met with President Obama in the Oval Office to lend Southern Baptist support for amnesty, which would give 20 million illegal immigrants the right to vote—something the U.S. Communist Party has been working toward for years. Obama’s form of amnesty would also swell the welfare rolls and take jobs from American citizens.
Despite mosques being used in countries such as France to support jihad, in 2016, Moore signed on to an amicus brief to defend the building of a mosque in New Jersey. Yet, if any of us point out the security problem with that, we are accused of victimizing Muslims—never mind that it is documented that most mosques and Islamic community centers in America have ties to Jihadi groups. If you think these mosques are built only for their worship services, then you do not understand Islam or the example that Mohammed set for Muslims. France, at least, is wising up. According to an article in American Thinker:
[quote] The French are raiding mosques and not liking what they are finding: hundreds of war-grade weapons and large quantities of Kalashnikov ammunition. French interior minister Cazeneuve reported, “In 15 days we have seized one third of the quantity of war-grade weapons that are normally seized in a year.” [end quote]
Nevertheless, Moore is one of the founders of the Evangelical Immigration Table, an organization funded by globalist George Soros. Soros is known for his goal of open borders and ending national sovereignty for all countries, including America, which is why his organization is called Open Society Foundation.
All you have to do is look at Europe to see the consequences of the cultural Marxists and Islamists as they work the red-green axis to destroy Great Britain through unvetted immigration. A friend of mine, who is a former Muslim and now Christian, visited Great Britain in June 2018. Upon returning, he reported to me that Great Britain is lost. The Marxists and Islamists have succeeded in flooding Great Britain with so many Muslims and Jihadis that Great Britain cannot recover.
So, who are the real victims: the Muslim immigrants or the people of Great Britain? A quick look at the facts make that clear. In their white paper, “Russian Strategy and Europe’s Refugee Crisis,” J. R. Nyquist and Anca-Maria Cernea report:
[quote] Since the refugee crisis began, Europe has been hit with an unprecedented wave of terrorist attacks (not to mention rapes and robberies). First came the Paris killings of November 2015, then the Brussels bombings of March of 2016, then the Nice truck attack and the Normandy church attack of July 2016. Then there was the string of Islamic stabbings across Europe. [end quote]
For many years I have proclaimed on radio and television that globalists are letting the Islamic dogs off the leash in order to destroy the free societies of Great Britain and America, as well as to destroy traditional Christianity that stands in opposition to globalism. And make no mistake, until the election of President Donald Trump, Marxists and Islamists were well underway in bringing to America what has thus far occurred in Great Britain. By creating an immigration crisis, which culminates in an Islamic Jihad crisis, the globalists rush in to offer the solution of global government to fight the terrorism they encouraged to begin with.
As bad as the globalist tactic is, there appears to be someone else who is using the Islamists, but going much further than the globalists are willing to go, and for much different reasons. That person is Vladimir Putin, the former KGB officer who is now president of Russia. Marxists weaponized Islamists in the early 1900s and that work continues through the former USSR and Vladimir Putin.
Again, the Nyquest-Cernea white paper offers startling facts that point to Putin’s involvement: [quote]
- In a recently published article by the Katehon Institute in Russia, B. Ozerov explained that the Soviet government in 1918 “was guided by understanding Islam as a close ideology to the communist doctrine.” After all, Islam favored ideals of equality, social justice, and the redistribution of wealth. According to Ozerov, Moscow’s initial plan in the region was to “transform Islam into an Eastern edition of Communism…”
- Some of our sources have claimed that modern terrorism was introduced to the Muslims by the communist block a half a century ago. This point must not be forgotten when evaluating the left’s strange love affair with Islam. “From the very beginning,” said former KGB Lt. Col. Konstantin Preobrazhensky, “the so-called Bolsheviks, or communists, were considering Muslims as the reserve [army], as the human resource for the world revolution.”
- Prof Przemyslaw Zurawski Vel Grajewski, is one of Poland’s best political analysts…According to Prof. Zurawski, the Russians are not responsible for all the refugees who have flooded into Europe, but it is certain “they did their best to make [the problem] larger…to confuse the political scene in European countries…as much as they can.
- In July 2005 the Russian KGB/FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko told the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita that Ayman al-Zawahiri (then Al-Qaeda’s second in command) was trained by the FSB in Dagestan in 1997.
- The Ukrainian MP, Anton Gerashchenko speaking on TV Channel News One, stated: “The crisis of migrants in Europe arose because of Putin. The war in Syria began in 2011, but migrants flooded [Europe] like a large river in the spring of 2015. Russia made a decision after Europe imposed economic sanctions on Russia: ‘Let’s create problems for them.’ They created a problem: $1,000 was allocated for the head of [each] refugee who will be taken from Syria to Europe. A million refugees are a billion dollars. This is nothing to Putin…” The cost to Europe, however is much more than $1 billion. Gerashchenko added that an atmosphere of xenophobia has been created in Europe along with the growing influence of various nationalist parties, which are known for their favorable position toward Putin’s Russia.
- The Romanian intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mahai Pacepa, has described Moscow’s use of Arab terrorist organizations throughout the Cold War in his books. We know that Russia stands firmly behind the Islamic terror regime in Tehran.
- As reported by the BBC, U.S. Gen. Philip Breedlove, the senior NATO commander in Europe, said that Russia and Syria were “deliberately weaponizing migration in an attempt to overwhelm European structures and break European resolve.” He cited Russia’s use of barrel bombs against Syrian civilians. What was the purpose of such indiscriminate attacks? The purpose was, he said, to “get them [masses of people] on the road” to Europe.
- In terms of the Muslim refugee crisis in Europe: reports of ISIS training camps in Russia, reports of GRU/SVR and Russian Mafia assistance to a massive influx of refugees, reports of Russian infiltration of terrorist organizations throughout the Muslim world, etc., constitute a loaded gun. [end quote]
So, when today’s evangelical leaders or pastors try to convince Americans that it is their duty to bring countless unvetted Muslims into America, then know you are listening to a useful idiot championing a distorted Christianity to help the Marxists use the Islamists.
The Victim Coalition of the Poor
As I said earlier, the American Association of Evangelicals formed in recent years to counter the liberal leanings of the National Association of Evangelicals. Ironically, though, the NAE had been formed in 1942 to counter the liberalism of the Federal Council of Churches which eventually became the National Council of Churches. The Federal Council had been organized by Fabians Walter Rauschenbusch and Harry F. Ward. Yet today, the NAE embraces many of the same radical ideas supported by the National Council of Churches.
From radical environmentalism to redistribution of wealth to compromising on biblical theology and doctrine, the NAE is a major player in the religious Trojan horse. For instance, it promotes a socialist scheme called “The Circle of Protection” which states:
[quote] Funding focused on reducing poverty should not be cut. It should be made as effective as possible, but not cut….National leaders must review and consider tax revenues, military spending, and entitlements in the search for ways to share sacrifice and cut deficits…. [end quote]
In other words, the NAE wants to continue the failed 1960s war on poverty in order to redistribute more income of working Americans to the slothful and lazy among us. Where in the Bible—or in the U.S. Constitution—is it the job of the government to fund the poor? Answer: nowhere.
In an April 28, 2011 article, the Christian Post explains the NAE’s participation in “The Circle of Protection”:
[quote] In a move that may be surprising to some, evangelicals have formed a coalition with progressive Christians as well as Catholics to oppose federal budget cuts that would hurt the poor. [end quote]
Given that “progressive” is another word for a socialist, even the Christian Post writer recognizes this is an agenda of socialists. The article also reveals that the NAE is working with Jim Wallis and the radicals at the National Council of Churches to accomplish their goal of redistribution of wealth:
[quote] Alongside the Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, David Beckmann of Bread for the World and the Rev. Peg Chamberlin of the National Council of Churches USA, NAE President Leith Anderson is among the signatories to the “Circle of Protection.” [end quote]
Since progressive income tax is one of the ten planks of the Communist Manifesto, it should come as no surprise that Leith Anderson, Jim Wallis, and the other members of this theological and economic cabal embrace taxing “wealthy” Americans in order to steal the private property of one group and give it to another. The Christian Post reported:
[quote] In a Wednesday media call, coalition members also urged for increased taxes to the wealthy… The Circle of Protection’s mission is a continuation of the “What Would Jesus Cut?” campaign launched by social justice group Sojourners and Evangelicals for Social Action’s “Call for Intergenerational Justice.” All three proposals emphasize the biblical importance of helping the poor. They also all recommend that Congress explore other financial options rather than make cuts to programs that offer health, educational and food aid to the poor. [end quote]
I would guess that Leith “Robin Hood” Anderson and Jim “the Red” Wallis have never started a for-profit business from scratch and thereby come to appreciate America’s free-market system. Both men have likely lived their entire adult lives off the donations of others as the primary source of their church and organizational salaries. What’s more, in talking about the poor, it is crucial that we understand the biblical definition of “poor.” In the Bible, someone who was poor did not have a coat or a place to lay his or her head. The Bible also speaks at times of the unsaved as poor. This is a reference to being spiritually poor.
What we call “poor” in America today is not poor in the biblical sense. The facts noted below refer to people defined as poor by the Census Bureau, taken from various government reports: [quote]
- Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes. The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.
- Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning. By contrast, in 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
- Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.
- The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)
- Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.
- Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.
- Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.
- Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher. [end quote]
While I believe in bringing the gospel and material assistance to the truly needed, the reality is that most of today’s neo-evangelicals are only interested in promoting a socialist agenda, not in helping those truly in need—and they are certainly not interested in sharing a biblical gospel.
Today’s young people get a heavy dose of social justice curriculum written by individuals such Bill Ayers. As a result, many people tell me they are pleased that their church or denomination is involved in social justice. But Carl Teichrib explains why social justice is completely unbiblical: [quote]
“My church has a social justice mandate… This is something I support.”
Sounds nice, but can you tell me what you mean? The usual response I get, thankfully, centers on feeding the poor, helping at a homeless shelter or safe house, assisting the elderly, working with troubled teens, or supporting an orphanage.
Sorry, that’s not social justice. The dominant social justice concept for the past 150 years has been centered on the sliding slope of Papal-advocated wealth redistribution, and a Marxist version of Collectivism. Feeding the poor and assisting the helpless, from a Christian perspective, isn’t social justice—its Biblical compassion, a generous act of love. Such acts of compassion engage individual lives and are based on the Christian call of loving others more than self. This is the heart of compassion: An individual sees a need, and operating out of love, reaches to meet that need. Churches, too, are to function in a similar manner. A need is evident, and moved by compassion, the congregation works to solve the dilemma. Coercion never enters the picture, nor does a political agenda emerge, nor is a call for economic equality heard.
The Biblical parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates true compassion (Luke 10). A Jewish man has been beaten, robbed, and left to die on the road. Various people pass him by, including the religiously pious. However, a Samaritan traveler sees the individual, and although the Samaritan is culturally alienated from the beaten man, he recognizes the desperation and individually takes action—dressing his wounds and providing a place of rest and refuge. And the Samaritan pays for it himself without demanding remuneration or compensation, either from the victim, his family or community, or from the government or ruling class.
However, if the Samaritan were a supporter of the dominant theme in social justice, he would have acted with a different motive for different ends. The Samaritan would have used the occasion to lobby for social transformation.
- The robbers were really victims of an unjust economic system and had acted in response to the oppression of the ruling class.
- In order to bring justice to this oppressed class, and to steer them back to a caring community, equitable wealth redistribution should take place. The rich must be taxed to fund necessary social programs. A more equitable society is needed.
- Who will pay the victim’s medical bills? The community or the rich.
- This tragic event, the Samaritan would tell us, is a graphic reminder of the class struggle. We are all victims of an unjust economic order. Therefore, we must be the “voice of the voiceless” and advocate for radical social change.
In the social justice framework there is another agenda that lurks behind the tragic: A political/economic cause is piggybacked and leveraged—the cause of economic equality through wealth redistribution. This isn’t about truly helping the victim; it’s about using the victim.
Biblical justice, on the other hand, never seeks to dismantle class structures. Evil actions are condemned, but this isn’t specific to a particular social strata. Consider the words of Leviticus 19:15: “You shall do no injustice in judgment. You shall not be partial to the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty. But in righteousness you shall judge your neighbor.” [end quote]
Mark W. Hendrickson praises Mr. Teichrib’s commentary when he writes:
[quote] [Biblical] Justice not only means that nobody is to be picked on because he is poor or favored because he is rich, but that (contrary to the doctrine of “social justice”) nobody is to be picked on because he is rich or favored because he is poor.
The fundamental error of today’s “social justice” practitioners is their hostility to economic inequality, per se. Social justice theory fails to distinguish between economic disparities that result from unjust deeds and those that are part of the natural order of things. All Christians oppose unjust deeds… [but] it isn’t necessarily unjust for some people to be richer than others.
God made us different from each other. We are unequal in aptitude, talent, skill, work ethic, priorities, etc. Inevitably, these differences result in some individuals producing and earning far more wealth than others. To the extent that those in the “social justice” crowd obsess about eliminating economic inequality, they are at war with the nature of the Creator’s creation.
The Bible doesn’t condemn economic inequality. You can’t read Proverbs without seeing that some people are poor due to their own vices. There is nothing unjust about people reaping what they sow, whether wealth or poverty.
Jesus himself didn’t condemn economic inequality. Yes, he repeatedly warned about the snares of material wealth; he exploded the comfortable conventionality of the Pharisaical tendency to regard prosperity as a badge of honor and superiority; he commanded compassion toward the poor and suffering. But he also told his disciples, “you have the poor always with you” (Matthew 26:11), and in the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:24-30) he condemned the failure to productively use one’s God-given talents—whether many or few, exceptional or ordinary—by having a lord take money from the one who had the least and give it to him who had the most, thereby increasing economic inequality.
The Lord’s mission was to redeem us from sin, not to redistribute our property or impose an economic equality on us. In fact, Jesus explicitly declined to undermine property rights or preach economic equality when he told the man who wanted Jesus to tell his brother to share an inheritance with him, “Man, who made me a judge or divider over you” (Luke 12:14). [end quote]
I mentioned earlier the work of psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple among the poor in slum hospitals and prisons in England, and it’s worth recalling the observation from his book, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass:
[quote] Patterns of behavior emerge—in the case of the underclass, almost entirely self-destructive ones. Day after day I hear of the same violence, the same neglect and abuse of children, the same broken relationships, the same victimization by crime, the same nihilism, the same dumb despair. If everyone is a unique individual, how do patterns such as this emerge? [end quote]
Dalrymple later answers his own question:
[quote] Welfare states have existed for substantial periods of time without the development of a modern underclass: an added ingredient is obviously necessary. This ingredient is to be found in the realm of ideas. Human behavior cannot be explained without reference to the meaning and intentions people give their acts and omissions; and everyone has a Weltanschauung, a worldview, whether he knows it or not. It is the ideas my patients have that fascinate—and, to be honest, appall—me: for they are the source of their misery. [end quote]
While there are a few true victims of poverty—children who suffer from their parents’ bad choices (which all too many choose to repeat as adults)—the blame for poverty does not lie solely with those who make lifestyle decisions that lead to their status. Dr. Dalrymple asserts that the great facilitators of chronic indigence are liberal humanists and their worldview of ‘if it feels good do it:’ “most of the social pathology exhibited by the underclass has its origin in ideas that have filtered down from the intelligentsia.”
“Intelligentsia,” of course, refers to the liberal, humanistic elite—educrats and social engineers. Propagation of the liberal, morally relativistic worldview has raged through the underclass most ruinously in the form of glaring sexual promiscuity. Remember what the humanist manifestos have to say about moral relativism, sex, and the pursuit of pleasure:
• Humanist Manifesto I: “…the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind.”
• Humanist Manifesto II: “We strive for the good life, here and now…neither do we wish to prohibit, by law or social sanction, sexual behavior between consenting adults. The many varieties of sexual exploration should not in themselves be considered ‘evil.’”
Dalrymple articulates the agonizing consequences reaped by the underclass because they embraced, however unwittingly, the worldview of humanists:
[quote] Of nothing is this more true than the system of sexual relations that now prevails in the underclass, with the result that 70 percent of the births in my hospital are now illegitimate (a figure that would approach 100 percent if it were not for the presence in the area of a large number of immigrants from the Indian subcontinent).
…The connection between this loosening and the misery of my patients is so obvious that it requires considerable intellectual sophistication (and dishonesty) to be able to deny it.
The climate of moral, cultural, and intellectual relativism—a relativism that began as a mere fashionable plaything for intellectuals—has been successfully communicated to those least able to resist its devastating practical effects. [end quote]
I know from firsthand experience that Dr. Dalrymple’s observations are true. For five years, on the first Tuesday of each month, I traveled to the Union Gospel Mission in St. Paul, Minnesota, to speak and lead music for the nightly service before the mission’s free supper. Except for the few mentally ill regulars left on the streets after the death of a parent who had cared for them, I met individuals who chose to be homeless. In fact, most had a home and parents, or even a wife and children, but they opted to live awash in drugs, alcohol, and serial sexual encounters—in short, a life of no responsibility. Many men who showed up for the service (attendance required if they wanted the free meal), admitted that they chose to live as they do.
The mission chaplain told me numerous personal stories of habitual attendees who could return to their families if they would simply take responsibility for their actions, clean themselves up, get a job, and stop abusing drugs and alcohol. There were men, he explained, who at one time had been judges, doctors, attorneys, or businessmen who destroyed their lives through drugs and booze.
To be sure, Jesus promised that the poor will “always be with us,” and a key reason is man’s sinful nature. Quite simply, one all-too-common consequence of sin is poverty. But this will not be what your children learn from a humanistic, state-sponsored youth service program specifically designed to manipulate their emotions, ignore the facts, and brainwash them into the belief that the solution is government-sponsored socialism and a rejection of free-market capitalism.
The humanist’s love affair with socialism is deeply entrenched in the humanist mindset that denies anything like the all-too-evident tendency of people to do the wrong thing (the Christian worldview calls this “the sin nature of man”). In its Pollyanna fashion, socialism assumes the best about us, denying the reality that people routinely succumb to greed, selfishness, bitterness, dishonesty, and anger—that they are often awash in pride or envy and that virtually anyone will be lazy if given the opportunity. All of these sinful human qualities undermine a system of economics based on equal work, equal income, and shared benefits. What “sin nature” requires is a system where overcoming these tendencies is in everyone’s own best interests—namely, capitalism.
Those promoting Marxianity today, within the ranks of the neo-evangelicals and neo-Calvinists, have clearly bought the humanist lie that man is simply a product of his environment. If the right environment is created, they reason, then people will do what is right for the “common good.” In his book The Battle for Truth, David Noebel explains the twisted thinking that makes people think socialism is viable:
[quote] If one denies the inherent fallen nature of man, socialism becomes the most attractive economic system for creating a heaven on earth. For the Humanist, there is no original sin to stand in the way of creating a helping, sharing, co-operative community on earth. Therefore, the economic system best suited to promote the ethics of Humanism and amend the evils of capitalism is socialism. [emphasis mine] [end quote]
There are even some non-liberals who mistakenly maintain that the Bible endorses socialism. While many people described in the New Testament Church shared their goods and livelihood, the key distinction is that theirs was a voluntary system, not a compulsory governmental system of sharing. Whenever government tries to equalize salaries or standards of living and education, productivity takes a nosedive.
The free enterprise system is the most equitable economic system available to our sin-prone humanity. Whereas socialism sets a few powerful elite in control of whether or not you have a job and how much money you make (for the benefit of the all-powerful state), capitalism offers the individual control over his or her own earthly future, destiny, and wealth.
After the miserable failure of humanistic socialism, the Christian worldview is the hope that is left—and a genuine hope it is. Christians must reach out to the underclass, seek to change hearts, renew minds, and reframe their deformed worldview by showing them their need for Christ.
As this book goes to press in the fall of 2018, we find that almost two years into his first term, President Donald Trump has rolled back many of the socialist policies of President Obama that were crushing the free market system. As a result, the poor have jobs and, thus, income is available to them. In fact, reports show that unemployment among the black and Hispanic communities fell to an all-time low. On January 5, 2018, USA Today reported: “The unemployment rates for African-Americans and recent veterans dropped to record lows in December, underscoring the health of the U.S. economy heading into 2018.” The unemployment rate is so low in the fall of 2018, that there is a national shortage of workers. According to the Los Angeles Times, “‘Never before have we had an economy where the number of open jobs exceeds the number of job seekers,’ Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta said.”
So, we can say, essentially, as of fall 2018: if someone is of sound mind and body, there is no reason for him or her to be poor in America; they can find a job. That’s because capitalists put their money at risk and start businesses that create jobs and income for those willing to work. But it is the socialists, progressives, Marxists, and globalists who victimize the worker.
The Victim Coalition of Minorities
Let’s remember history accurately: true conservatives and Christians were the ones who worked to free the slaves in America and to enact civil rights laws. It is liberal progressive Democrats who continue to pursue policies that enslave black Americans—and everyone else with them—and make them dependent on government for the redistribution of income.
As I detailed earlier, Republican leaders from 1866 on, promoted civil rights legislation that was routinely quashed by Democrats. Martin Luther King took advantage of a “victimized minority” to support the Marxist agenda in America. As much as anything, that is his legacy that continues to today. He solidified the victim status of blacks—and by extension, other minorities—who could then become tools for the promulgation of cultural Marxism.
The Victim Coalition of Feminists
If “tolerance” is the core value of political correctness, feminism is its most cherished cause, and the implications of our cultural devotion to feminism are monstrous. Feminism is not about equal rights for women but about the feminization of the American male. It is an ideology that is anti-family and anti-father—and virtually guaranteed to bring about the wholesale destruction of the American family. The Frankfurt School staff knew that “even a partial breakdown of parental authority in the family might tend to increase the readiness of a coming generation to accept social change.”
Dr. Gerald L. Atkinson, CDR, USN (Ret.) describes the success of this attack on the American male through the propaganda of the Frankfurt School:
[quote] The Frankfurt school studied the “authoritarian personality” which became synonymous with the male, the patriarchal head of the American family. A modern utopia would be constructed by these idealistic intellectuals by “turning Western civilization” upside down. This utopia would be a product of their imagination, a product not susceptible to criticism on the basis of the examination of evidence. This “revolution” would be accomplished by fomenting a very quiet, subtle and slowly spreading “cultural Marxism” which would apply to culture the principles of Karl Marx bolstered by the modern psychological tools of Sigmund Freud. Thus, “cultural Marxism” became a marriage of Marx and Freud aimed at producing a “quiet” revolution in the United States of America. This quiet revolution has occurred in America over the past 30 years. While America slept!
“The Authoritarian personality,” studied by the Frankfurt School in the 1940s and 1950s in America, prepared the way for the subsequent warfare against the masculine gender promoted by Herbert Marcuse and his band of social revolutionaries under the guise of “women’s liberation” and the New Left movement in the 1960s. The evidence that psychological techniques for changing personality is intended to mean emasculation of the American male is provided by Abraham Maslow, founder of Third Force Humanist Psychology and a promoter of the psychotherapeutic classroom, who wrote that, “...the next step in personal evolution is a transcendence of both masculinity and femininity to general humanness.” The Marxist revolutionaries knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. They have succeeded in accomplishing much of their agenda. [end quote]
Among the champions of feminism have been Gloria Steinem, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and, most assuredly, Betty Friedan. Friedan co-founded the National Organization of Women (NOW), one of America’s most radical feminist organizations.
Friedan’s book, The Feminine Mystique, could be described as the “Feminist Manifesto.” Released in 1963, it was a major force behind the 1970s explosion of the radical feminist agenda. Benjamin Wicker explains the background of Friedan, an atheist who embraced Marxism:
[quote] Before she published The Feminine Mystique, Friedan had spent years in Marxist-inspired agitation on behalf of mistreated lower-class workers—and the abstractness of her analysis is fundamentally Marxist. . . . She had been a Marxist since her college days at Smith in the late 1930s and early 1940s. In the years after, she belonged to, worked for, or wrote positively about a string of leftist organizations and publications—like the Popular Front, the Federated Press, UE News, Congress of American Women, Jewish Life—that had significant Communist membership or Soviet sympathies. Knowing that the call to revolution in The Feminine Mystique would be damaged if it was associated with the call to revolution in the Communist Manifesto, she hid her radical past. [end quote]
Wicker believes Friedan’s book is much longer than needed to convey her belief that “women who are only wives and mothers are secretly or openly miserable because they cannot venture outside the home and cheerfully maximize their potential as human beings in meaningful work, just as men do.”
In critiquing her obsessive work, he asks an obvious and telling question: What makes Friedan think it is a guaranteed fact that men just can’t wait to get up each morning to drive a truck, build a house, pave a road, paint a house, manage a store, fill out people’s tax forms, or work in a laboratory? Countless men rise dutifully each morning to do jobs they really don’t enjoy and, in many cases, jobs they detest. But they do it for love of their families and for the purpose of providing for them. Many men long for the day they can retire and leave behind a job they long since stopped enjoying. Just because Friedan doesn’t want to acknowledge the self-sacrifice of such men does not mean they’re not fulfilling a God-given role of protector, defender, and provider. Most women (my wife among them) are happy to have husbands who willingly and eagerly embrace this role, so they can pursue their God-given role and passion of being wives and mothers.
Feminism is not about equal rights for women, but about the destruction of a patriarchal society in favor of a matriarchal society. The goal of feminism is the destruction of the family by eliminating the husband and father as provider, protector, and principled leader of his home. Think of fathers like Charles Ingalls from Little House on the Prairie, John Walton from The Waltons, and Ward Cleaver from Leave It to Beaver. Each of these television programs presented what American society at one time expected and loved about the patriarch of the family. A father who did not shape and encourage his children to embrace and live out a Christian worldview through their character and life choices was looked down upon by society as being a dead-beat, a drunkard, a reprobate, or at least slothful.
Our society no longer has these high expectations, nor do we shun men who are not principled and present fathers. In today’s television programs, the father is often not even in the picture, and, if he is, he certainly is not a leader trying to disciple his children in truth and right living. Often, Dad is the whipping boy of the show that the stooge children treat with disrespect or even contempt.
Friedan and friends do not want women to find fulfillment in being wives and mothers. Conservative Phyllis Schlafly explains that feminists are really dictators who want to leave women no choice, but to follow a humanist, politically correct lifestyle:
[quote] The feminists whine endlessly using their favorite word “choice” in matters of abortion, but they reject choice in gender roles. The Big Mama of feminist studies, Simone de Beauvoir, said, “We don’t believe that any woman should have this choice. No woman should be authorized to stay at home to raise her children . . . precisely because if there is such a choice, too many women will make that one.”
The feminists have carried on a long-running campaign to make husbands and fathers unnecessary and irrelevant. Most divorces are initiated by women, and more women than men request same-sex marriage licenses in Massachusetts so that, with two affirmative-action jobs plus in vitro fertilization, they can create a “family” without husbands or fathers.
Despite the false messages of the colleges and the media, most American women are smart enough to reject the label ‘feminist,’ and only 20 percent of mothers say they want full-time work in the labor force. I suggest that women suffering from unhappiness should look into how women are treated in the rest of the world, and then maybe American women would realize they are the most fortunate people on earth. [end quote]
Schlafly, a Washington University Law School educated lawyer, also describes in an article, “The Feminists Continue Their War Against Men,” how feminist leaders feel about motherhood:
[quote] In 1970, Gloria Steinem told the Senate Judiciary Committee it is a “myth” to believe “that children must have full-time mothers . . . The truth is that most American children seem to be suffering from too much mother, and too little father. Part of the program of Women’s Liberation is a return of fathers to their children. If laws permit women equal work and pay opportunities, men will then be relieved of their role as sole breadwinner.” [end quote]
Articulating vintage feminism in the 1974 Harvard Educational Review, Hillary Clinton wrote disparagingly about wives who are in “a dependency relationship” which, she said, is akin to “slavery and the Indian reservation system.”
Schafly expands on this feminist notion of marriage and motherhood as slavery:
[quote] Then-ACLU attorney Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in her 1977 book Sex Bias in the U.S. Code, that “all legislation based on the breadwinning-husband, dependent-homemaking-wife pattern” must be eliminated “to reflect the equality principle” because “a scheme built upon the breadwinning husband [and] dependent homemaking wife concept inevitably treats the woman’s efforts or aspirations in the economic sector as less important than the man’s.” Feminist literature is filled with putdowns of the role of housewife and mother. This ideology led directly to feminist insistence that the taxpayers provide (in Ginsburg’s words) “a comprehensive program of government-supported child care.”
. . . The icon of college women’s studies courses, Simone de Beauvoir, opined that “marriage is an obscene bourgeois institution.” Easy divorce became a primary goal of the feminist liberation movement. Robin Morgan, one of the founders of Ms. magazine, said that marriage is “a slavery-like practice” and that “we can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” Three-fourths of divorces are now unilaterally initiated by wives without any requirement to allege that the cast-off husband committed any fault. [end quote]
In a political bait-and-switch that would make Karl Marx proud, once feminists achieved their goal of easy divorce, they did a complete turnaround on the importance of mothers raising their children. Again, Schlafly reports:
[quote] As divorces became easy to get, the feminists suddenly did a total about-face in their demand that fathers share equally in child care. Upon divorce, mothers demand total legal and physical custody and control of their children, arguing that only a mother is capable of providing their proper care and upbringing, and a father’s only function is to provide a paycheck. Gone are the demands that the father change diapers or tend to a sick child. Feminists want the father out of sight except maybe for a few hours a month of visitation at her discretion.
. . . Suddenly, the ex-husband is targeted as a totally essential breadwinner, and the ex-wife is eager to proclaim her dependency on him. Feminists assert that, after divorce, child care should be almost solely the mother’s job, dependency is desirable, and providing financial support should be almost solely the father’s job.
What’s behind this feminist reversal about motherhood? As Freud famously asked, “What does a woman want?” The explanation appears to be the maxim, Follow the money.
Beginning in the mid-1980s, the feminists used their political clout to get Congress to pass draconian post-divorce support-enforcement laws that use the full power of government to give the divorced mother cash income proportional to the percentage of custody time she persuades the court to award, but unrelated to what she spends for the children or to her willingness to allow the father to see his children.
Since the father typically has higher income than the mother, giving near-total custody to the mother enables the states to maximize transfer payments and thereby collect bigger cash bonuses from the federal government. When fathers appeal to family courts for equal time with their children, they are opposed by a large industry of lawyers, psychologists, custody evaluators, domestic-violence agitators, and government bureaucrats who make their living out of denying fathers their fundamental rights. [end quote]
The bottom line is that feminism has been a tool of the humanists to destroy the family. Leading humanist Paul Kurtz said, “Humanism and feminism are inextricably interwoven.” Humanists and communists have sought the destruction of the American family because they know that, for America, the family has been the instrument for passing on Christian values and a biblical worldview—the source and foundation of our freedoms and Constitutional Republic. Founding Father Jedidiah Morse reveals the deep connection between our form of government and the biblical institution of marriage:
[quote] To the kindly influence of Christianity, we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys…Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican form of government, and all blessings which flow from them must fall with them. [end quote]
Through the drastic increase in divorce resulting from the feminist movement since the 1960s, the strength, respect, and permanency of the marriage covenant in the civil arena has eroded. No-fault divorce made separation fast and allowed couples to split up without admitting fault or accepting responsibility.
Friedan and the cultural Marxists have used the civil law, courts, and the media to destroy the family and fathers and to make possible the rise of the welfare-nanny state. The break-up of the family has been the leading cause of generational poverty and the permanent underclass. This chaos is used by the radical left to convince the American people that we need more government and more intrusion into the family. Feminism has accomplished its goals—the destruction of the American family through the destruction of the father, resulting in the rise of the welfare state.