By Brannon S. Howse
For several years, I have read and listened as major EC leaders embrace socialism and even Marxism. Thanks to the research of Bob DeWaay, I discovered how Moltamann came to Hegel’s way of thinking. He studied a neo-Marxist by the name of Ernst Bloch, a devotee of George Hegel. DeWaay traces this connection:
To most of us the idea that an atheist philosophy and Christian theology could both be valid is a contradiction. It certainly is to me. But what binds Moltmann and Bloch together is the philosophy of George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The idea that contradictions, through the process of history, synthesize into a better future can be found in Moltmann's theology….Moltmann, by the way, uses the term "emerging" often in his book as characterizing that which synthesizes from contradictions.
One prominent Emergent leader, Pastor Jim Wallis, is a committed neo-Marxist who runs an organization called Sojourners. Wallis is also reportedly President Obama's spiritual advisor. According to Frontpagemag.com:
The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis. Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have “been talking faith and politics for a long time.”
In an article for my website, David Noebel explained why all Americans should be concerned about Wallis and his worldview agenda:
[quote] First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
Second, his "Witness for Peace" was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor of 20 years) "rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels" (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).
Third, Wallis and his Sojourners community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro's Cuba, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, and the other revolutionary forces "restructuring socialist societies" are the Communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish "social justice." Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, "Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of Communist revolutions in Central America" (Laksin, "Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas" in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).
The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place "a radical nonconformist community" patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.). [end quote]
Noebel also outlines Wallis’s impact on American evangelicalism:
[quote] For years, Wallis has been in the forefront of the "evangelical" left and has been fêted at numerous evangelical colleges and seminaries. That seems to be the "in" thing right now! His publication Sojourners is piled high on these campuses for the reading pleasure of the naïve and foolish.
Unbeknown to these colleges and seminaries is Wallis' Red background. He was the president of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at Michigan State University. The SDS was the youth arm of the League for Industrial Democracy—the American counterpart to the British Fabian Society founded to promote socialism throughout the West. One of the League's mentors for years was Norman Thomas, who argued that "the American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened" (Google, Norman Thomas quotes). Another prominent League mentor was John Dewey, a signatory of the atheistic, socialistic 1933 Humanist Manifesto. The SDS actually merits a chapter in Richard J. Ellis's work The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America published by the University of Kansas Press. [end quote]
Are the Emergent Church leaders trying to create heaven on earth, a communist utopia? Bob DeWaay says indeed they are:
"As we shall see with the Emergent Church's theology, which is derived from Moltmann and others, a serious problem exists. The problem is that this hope is based on the idea that history is not headed toward cataclysmic judgment in which those who do not believe the Christian gospel are judged and lost for eternity but is headed toward the kingdom of God on earth with universal participation."
Like many cults, false religions, and liberal mainstream churches, the Emergent Church, which has hijacked scores of once solid Bible-teaching churches, proclaims there will be universal participation in the kingdom of God. Universalism is exactly how we will see the false-dominant church in America blend with pagan spirituality.
DeWaay concludes his book by revealing that the Emergent philosophy is based primarily on the writings of Ken Wilber, an Emergent Church leader who, in turn, draws on the philosophy of Jurgen Moltmann and George Hegel:
"We began by showing theologian Jurgen Moltmann to be the source of Emergent's eschatology. We will conclude by showing that Ken Wilber is the source of Emergent philosophy. Both their theology and philosophy contend that everyone must be headed toward a future utopia with God. Wilber describes a philosophical framework for the idea of "emergence" by describing an upward spiral, whereby everything is evolving into something better. Wilber is rather a mystical Darwin, promoting a "holistic" concept of evolution in which things are not only evolving physically but also spiritually. This spiritual evolution is the basis of "spiral dynamics," where the world evolves into a physical/spiritual paradise over time. What is most important to learn from this chapter is that Wilber's philosophy also has its roots in Hegel, the same philosopher from whom Moltmann drew his "theology of hope." In some sense, Hegel's belief in a synthesis where opposites like good and evil combine to form a better, third option is the root of both Wilber and Moltmann. These men, Moltmann and Wilber, and their belief in a world where everything gets better and ends in utopia, are the sources of the Emergent church. Really, there is nothing unique or special about the Emergent church. Emergent simply is what a church would look like if it rejected the scriptures and looked to Hegel as its prophet."
Copyright 2009 ©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.
