The Communion of Communitarians
By Branon S. Howse
Communitarianism and Fabian Socialism are twin sisters, although we do not generally label communitarians as Fabian socialists because most do not or did not belong to the Fabian Socialist Society. But communitarians and Fabian socialists are united in the common goal of merging capitalism with socialism, promoting social justice, and establishing a new world order.
The hallmark of Fabians, of course, is their methodology for implementing socialism through gradual, surreptitious change rather than overt, revolutionary conversion. Today’s communitarians have done a great job of employing the Fabian playbook and in many ways have taken surreptitious change (the Gramsci approach) to an even more insidious level. Some of today’s most popular religious and business leaders are among the most active communitarians among us. In this chapter, we will look at several communitarians with massive public followings, such as Peter Drucker and Rick Warren.
Opposites Detract
One technique communitarians like to employ is especially effective at taking opponents off-guard. In debate, interview, sound bite, or any other communication platform, they encourage conflict between opposing ideas, develop a mixture of the thesis and the antithesis, move it toward the left, and work toward a predetermined outcome of their choosing.
I have quoted Julian Huxley many times over the years, because he so clearly represents this deceptive formula. Huxley, a Fabian Socialist, was also the first director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization known as UNESCO. This is how he describes the “Hegelian Dialectic Process” originated by the German philosopher:
…at the moment, two opposing philosophies of life confront each other….You may categorize the two philosophies as super nationalism, or as individualism versus collectivism…or as capitalism versus communism, or as Christianity verses Marxism. Can these opposites be reconciled, this antithesis be resolved in a higher synthesis? I believe not only that this can happen, but that, through the inexorable dialectic of evolution, it must happen.
Hegel has had a tremendous influence on the growth of communitarianism. While the term “communitarian” is thought to date back to the 1840s, “communitarianism” has been made popular in the 20th century by Dorothy Day. Day, a Catholic, published the Catholic Worker Newspaper, promoting communitarianism and social justice.
If you grasp the Hegelian Dialectic Process, you will understand much of what is happening in economics, law, and religion. The Hegelian process is a thoroughgoing manipulation of America and the world population. Karl Marx was a proponent of the dialectic process, and others have similarly influenced thought through outlets such as The Frankfurt School. (For more information, Grave Influence includes an entire chapter on Aldous Huxley, brother to Julian and author of Brave New World.)
But can the thesis, an idea, and the antithesis, an opposite idea, fight, conflict, synthesize, and merge together to produce a third option, or a mixture of both? That’s certainly the intent. Huxley calls it the “the dialectic of evolution,” but many of today’s communitarians call it the “Third Way.” Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are promoters of this way of talking about their system. Many globalists like them believe in societal evolution tied to spiritual evolution.
They believe we are all spiritually evolving, spiraling up toward some greater existence. In their worldview, nobody goes to hell. Emergent Church philosophers jump on this same bandwagon with their concept that “good and evil will merge to produce a better third option.” They believe compromise—even between opposites—will produce an ultimate harmony among people. But, as the Gospel makes clear, spiritual evolution is a lie. People have never and will never evolve to the point of purifying themselves and their social systems.
Fabian socialist Walter Rauschenbusch was Richard Rorty’s grandfather, and it is evident that Rauschenbusch passed on his worldview to his grandson. Instead of terms like Fabian socialism, statism, globalism, or communitarianism, Rorty called his approach welfare-capitalism. He explains the development of welfare-capitalism this way:
Most people on my side of this…cultural war have given up on socialism in light of the history of nationalization enterprises and central planning in Central and Eastern Europe. We are willing to grant that the welfare-state capitalism is the best we can hope for. Most of us who were brought up Trotskyite now feel forced to admit that Lenin and Trotsky did more harm than good.
Globalists and their useful idiots promote the idea that through the dialectic process, both socialism and capitalism can merge, and the end result will be “welfare-state capitalism.” However, the dialectic is not only applied to economics but also law, society, spirituality, and ecclesiology.
Church in Process
The area that concerns me the most is how the Hegelian Dialectic Process is being applied to the Church to produce what I call the communitarian church growth movement. Most people know this as the seeker-sensitive, church growth movement, but a more accurate name would be the “sinner-sensitive church growth movement” since the real goal is to transform the church from a place where the saints are equipped for the work of ministry to a place where the world is made comfortable, and consensus is achieved.
Robert Klenck summarizes the dangers of the seeker-sensitive church growth movement:
...in this movement, it is imperative that unbelievers are brought into the church; otherwise, the process of continual change cannot begin. There must be an antithesis (unbelievers) present to oppose the thesis (believers), in order to move towards consensus (compromise), and move the believers away from their moral absolutism (resistance to change). If all members of the church stand firm on the Word of God, and its final authority in all doctrine and tradition, then the church cannot and will not change. This is common faith. Soon, we will see why these “change agents” are pushing so hard for change to occur in the church.
Klenck is saying that the movement is dangerous because “change agents” who implement the Hegelian Dialectic Process know exactly how to alter people’s behavior. They build on the work of behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner (also covered in more detail in Grave Influence). Twentieth century socialist Saul Alinsky also promoted the idea that change comes through conflict.
Change agents have deliberately brought this philosophy into the Church in order to set up conflict. They know that to be effective in church, they need discord so people will tire of disagreeing and be willing to compromise biblical truth so as to attain consensus.
Many pastors read books by change agents and run to church growth conferences hosted by change agents who tell them how to grow their churches by attracting unbelievers through seeker-sensitive church programs. Yet most of these change agents are not Christians. Often, they do not believe in absolutes. They are Fabian socialists, globalists, pagan spiritualists, and communitarians. Many church growth conferences are sponsored by people and organizations such as the Rockefellers and the Council on Foreign Relations.
The public face on what these people do is always calculated to sound and look good. Take the popular “Co-exist ” bumper sticker, for instance. With letters created from various recognizable religious symbols, it is crafted to encourage everyone to “get along.” Yet the communitarians which this so well represents are not interested in co-existing with Christianity. They want to co-opt Christianity for their own ends, expressing a supposed form of godliness but denying God Himself. The Bible warns of such a sign of the apostasy of the last days, and we are seeing disguises like this emerge as a major characteristic of the religious Trojan horse.
Far from biblical principles, the communitarian church growth movement (CGCM) is built on points like these:
∙ Societal evolution;
∙ Spiritual evolution;
∙ The social gospel is proclaimed instead of the biblical Gospel;
∙ The end justifies the means;
∙ Pastors are not shepherds but managers;
∙ Church members are customers;
∙ Pastors are community organizers;
∙ Marketing and managing is emphasized instead of preaching and praying;
∙ Felt needs should determine church programming.
Some common phrases used by the communitarians include:
∙ Shared opportunity,
∙ Shared community,
∙ Shared experience,
∙ Shared values,
∙ Common good,
∙ Social justice,
∙ Healthy society,
∙ Third Way,
∙ Group consensus,
∙ New World Order,
∙ Global governance.
For the communitarian church growth movement, it does not matter what you do to attract an audience in order to get customers into your church. In the CGCM world, the end justifies the means—do whatever it takes to grow a church. Some have had “clown communion,” pastors dressed up as Elvis or superheroes. Some CGCM churches have a circus. Do a quick video search on the internet, and you can see some of this bizarreness for yourself.
Many pastors fall for the communitarian church growth movement because they believe their churches can have a major impact on the community. They see themselves feeding the hungry and providing clothes to those who need assistance, painting an elderly person’s home, mowing lawns, or raking leaves. And if any of this is used to bring people the Gospel, I am, of course, fine with it. But these pastors and their congregations try to impact the community and be a force for “change,” even though everything they’re doing is the social gospel, social activism, and social justice. The truth, of course, is that the Gospel is the only thing that changes lives. Yet most of these ministers will not preach the Gospel. Instead, they take part in “interfaith dialogues” with other religions in their community. So should we be shocked when someone they emulate, Rick Warren, sits on the advisory board of Tony Blair’s Faith Foundation? Should we be surprised when people like Leith Anderson, Bill Hybels, Rick Warren, and nearly 130 others sign onto “A Common Word at Yale,” published as a full-page advertisement in The New York Times on November 13, 2007? These “Christian” leaders were responding to an open letter written by Muslim leaders and released on October 13, 2007. The Christians who signed the “Yale document” agreed that:
What is common between us lies not in something marginal nor in something merely important to each. It lies, rather, in something absolutely central to both: love of God and love of neighbor…. We applaud that A Common Word Between Us and You stresses so insistently the unique devotion to one God….We find it equally heartening that the God whom we should love above all things is described as being Love. In the Muslim tradition, God, “the Lord of the worlds,” is “The Infinitely Good and All-Merciful”….“Let this common ground” – the dual common ground of love of God and of neighbor – “be the basis of all future interfaith dialogue between us,” your courageous letter urges. Indeed, in the generosity with which the letter is written you embody what you call for. We most heartily agree. Abandoning all “hatred and strife,” we must engage in interfaith dialogue as those who seek each other’s good, for the one God unceasingly seeks our good. Indeed, together with you we believe that we need to move beyond “a polite ecumenical dialogue between selected religious leaders” and work diligently together to reshape relations between our communities and our nations so that they genuinely reflect our common love for God and for one another… We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.
What are the problems with this statement? First of all, Christians do not serve the same God as the Muslim. Allah is not the God of the Bible. In fact, Allah, in the Koran, fits the definition and the characteristics that we find of Satan in the Bible. We don’t worship the same God, and clearly, Muslims don’t love their neighbors as themselves. Islam teaches its followers to be nice until they have the upper hand, and then they will slay or enslave any “infidel.” Rick Warren, Leith Anderson, and Bill Hybels are some of America’s leading false teachers—and, tragically, its most effective “useful idiots.”
Copyright 2012 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.
