Category: Marxism/Cultural Marxism

A Horse By Any Other Name is Still Marxism — Pt. I

Many are those who believe Karl Marx to be categorized as an economic theorist. This is false. Marx, like all ideologues was a theologian and Marxism is a theology that competes with Christian orthodoxy. If we realized that all sociology, ideology, macro economic theorists, philosophers, can only be what they are because of the theological a-priories they have accepted to make their theorizing go, we should not make the mistake of not understanding that these men are theologians before they are anything else. This is true of Marx as hope to tease out a little bit here.

Marx’s subset in theology was anthropology. Marx was seeking to answer the question “What does it mean to be human,” apart from presupposing the God of the Bible. Marx is answering, “What is Man,” without considering God. Marx then answered the question by saying that man is “homo economicus.” Marx believed that man was an inherently social being who wrongly understood himself only in terms of his labor. Marx believed if man was to find his true nature he had to release himself from the chains of property, as driven by capitalism with its theories of division of labor and the ownership of private property. Marx followed Rosseau’s theological claim that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” The chains that Marx sought to loosen men from were the chains of private property. In theological terms private property was man’s original sin and Marx was a sociological prophet seeking to release people from their chains of private property.

We see the theological component in Marx’s emphasis on Revolution. For Marx Revolution is to the proletariat what regeneration is to the Christian. Revolution is the means by which men die to themselves and are reborn as a “New Socialist Man,” finally stripped of all private property and the desire for private property. Revolution then becomes a religious rite for Marx and his followers. This notion of stripping people of private property via the sacrament of Revolution is central and is the key to understanding where we are right now in this cultural moment in the West.

As an aside, as we understand this, we will see why Dr. Gary North was absolutely nuts when he insisted, towards the end of his life, that Marxism had been defeated. Marxism has not been defeated, it has merely morphed into new channels as well shall see. The outer shell may look different but the essence remains.

This anthropology of the necessity for man to be rebirthed and experience renewal so as to become the “New Soviet Man,” or the “New Socialist Man,” or the “New Sustainable and Inclusive Man,” is all over the literature of the Marxist writers. It is another indication that we are dealing with theology here and not primarily economics or sociology. If we don’t realize that we will never be able to think right about our task at hand in championing the cause of our Lord Christ. Not thinking rightly about this explains why so many of our clergy corps has fallen into Marxist like clap trap when they support ideas like “race is a social construct,” or “race doesn’t really exist,” or “race is only about pigment levels and nothing else.” These are all statements that have as their foundation a Marxist anthropology as we shall see.

Marx believed that human beings were perfectly social entities who’s fall entailed being caught up in the snare of private property. Marx believed that the perfectibility of man could be achieved if only he could be delivered from the sin of private property via revolution. Marx believed that the proletariat were kept down by the bourgeoisie and could only return to the garden by Revolutionary activity that eliminated private property. Only then would the workers of the world unite so that they were no longer alienated from themselves. Only by Revolution could man be man again and so build his Utopia.

Here we see the core of the issue. Property is man’s primal sin and the elimination of property by way of Revolution that tears down the social order that countenances property is how man returns to paradise.

This, of course is clearly seen in classical Marxism where the oppressors are the Capitalists/bourgeoisie property owner who are guilty of oppressing the proletariat. Some of us know and understand this story and have seen it played out in history.

But what if the category of “property” is fungible? What if a nuanced Marxism arises that relocates and redefines property to be other than material extrinsic possessions? What if a Marxism arises that finds property as a defining characteristic of immaterial intrinsic qualities like race and gender? Well, then, consistent with Marxist theory a Revolution must occur that seeks to strip that intrinsic property from the oppressors so that they can not lord it over the oppressed who do not have those intrinsic property markers.

If the possession of extrinsic property leads to class warfare in order to loose the chains of men born free, then possession of intrinsic property like whiteness, or maleness, or heterosexuality likewise can, should, and must lead to race warfare to pull down the bourgeoisie oppressor white man who is oppressing the proletariat pigmented man, lead to the war of the sexes where revolution pulls down the bourgeoisie male oppressor oppressing the oppressed female gender, lead to the war of the proletariat pervert class who is being oppressed by the oppressor bourgeoisie heterosexual class.

You see the claims of property have changed but all the theory surrounding the varying Revolutions remains Marxist at its core. The oppressed vs. oppressor class category remains. The Bourgeoisie vs. Proletariat conflict remains. The absolute necessity of revolution unto the destruction of social orders because of the sin of property remains. And though we have not spoken of it yet, the dialectical methodology that drives the Revolution remains. It’s all Marxism again all the way down.

Indeed, that the dialectical methodology is working is seen in the fact that the Revolution in classical Marxism has jumped the shark and is now operative for gender, race, sexuality. Marxist dialectics required that Revolution eventually find its way into other areas besides class.

All of this then demonstrates that the Marxist Revolution always leads to a leveling where any and all notions of property (both extrinsic and intrinsic) are destroyed. The old Saturday Night Live routine, “It’s Pat,” was prophetic in this regard.

Of course political tools are needed to eliminate private property. In order to eliminate extrinsic private property we see the rise of socialism and then communism. In order to eliminate intrinsic private property such as whiteness we see the rise of “Critical Race Theory.” In order to eliminate the intrinsic private property of heterosexuality we see the rise of “Queer theory.” In order to eliminate the intrinsic private property of assigned roles in femaleness and maleness we see the rise of feminism. From all of this we are reminded again that “the issue is never the issue, the issue is always the Revolution,” and the Marxist Revolution is about setting man free from all his social givens. If man was a text, Marxism’s goal is to release man from all context that defines the text.

Perhaps it is helpful here to employ the Roman Numeral system. Were we to outline this we would have;

I.) Marxism

A.) Classical — Communism
B.) Gender  — Queer Theory
C.) Sexual – Feminism
D.) Racial – Critical Race theory
E.) Able studies
F.) Fat studies

Or if we were Scientist we would talk about;

Genus — Marxism
Species — Classical, Gender, Sexual, Racial, Ableism, Morphism

The point to see here is that the chief opposition to Biblical Christianity remains Marxism, and one titanic application here is that when clergy like Doug Wilson, Voddie Baucham, J. Ligon Duncan, Albert Mohler, and countless others inveigh against Kinism or Christian ethno-nationalism they are that moment wearing the colors of team Marxism, and frankly are being anti-Christs. What other conclusion can be settled upon?

The ultimate goal is to abnormalize the normal and to normalize the abnormal so that man is free from his chains, free from any social givens, free from the defining hand of God.

Of course this isn’t going to relent. The dialectic continues. There are those out there now, continuing to press the boundaries of post-modernism, who are insisting that meaning and knowing are intrinsic properties that the intellectual bourgeoisie have and are using to oppress those clueless and dumb proletariat. This means that even meaning and knowledge must be deconstructed via the Marxist model of social order Revolution.

As near as I can tell, it is the Kinists alone who get the above in a consistent fashion and who alone are doing the grunt work of opposing the Marxists.

What Was Righteousness In 1973 is Now Sin In 2024

In 1973 a new Reformed denomination was being birthed. It eventually became known as the PCA. Dr. John Edwards Richards was one of the founders of that new denomination and Dr. Richards gave us some of the reasons why this new denomination was leaving the PCUS.

Causes of Separation in 1973

The Socialist, who declares all men are equal.  Therefore there must be a great leveling of humanity and oneness of privilege and possession.

The Racial Amalgamationist, who preaches that the various races should be merged into one race and differences erased in oneness.

The Communist, who would have one mass of humanity coerced into oneness by a totalitarian state and guided exclusively by Marxist philosophy.

The Internationalist, who insists on co-existence between all peoples and nations that they be as one regardless of ideology or history.

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA).

“No human can measure the anguish of personality that goes on within the children of miscegenation… Let those who would erase the racial diversity of God’s creation beware lest the consequence of their evil be visited upon their children.”

John Edwards Richards
One of the founders of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA)

“The vast majority of good thinking people prefer to associate with, and intermarry with people of their respective race; this is part of the God-given inclination to honor and uphold the distinctiveness of separate races. But there are many false prophets of oneness, and many shallow stooges, who seek to force the amalgamation of the races.” 

Dr. John E. Richards

Dr. Richards perhaps knew that Marxists were pushing for a world and social-order that was the very opposite that he believed should be supported by Christians.  When you read the above it sounds like Dr. Richards was aware of the Marxist agenda. An agenda which was clearly put forth by Marxist “wise-men.”

1.) ”What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities?

The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and hereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.”

~ Frederick Engels in “The Principles of Communism”, 1847

2.) “The equality of races and nations is one of the most important elements of the moral strength and might of the Soviet state. Soviet anthropology develops the one correct concept, that all the races of mankind are biologically equal. The genuinely materialist conception of the origin of man and of races serves the struggle against racism, against all idealist, mystic conceptions of man, his past, present and future.”

—Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959
“The Origin of Man” (Moscow)Mikhail Nesturkh, Soviet anthropologist, 1959:

3.) “The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and end all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer together but to merge them….”

Vladimir Lenin
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination — pg. 76

4.) “… Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the dictatorship of the proletariat, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all oppressed nations, i.e., their right to secede. “

Vladimir Lenin 
The Rights of Nations to Self Determination 

5.) “Even the natural differences within species, like racial differences…, can and must be done away with historically.” 

K. Marx’s Collected Works V:103,
As cited in S.F. Bloom’s The World of Nations: A
Study of the National Implications in the Work of Karl Marx, Columbia University Press, New York, 1941, pp. 11 & 15-19:

6.) “Full-scale Communist construction constitutes a new stage in the development of national relations in the U.S.S.R., in which the nations will draw still closer together until complete unity is achieved…. However, the obliteration of national distinctions and especially of language distinctions is a considerably longer process than the obliteration of class distinctions.”

Nikita Khrushchev

Today it has become passe’ and nekulturny to disagree with the Marxists on this matter and to agree with Dr. Richards. It is an odd thing that a whole new Christian and Reformed denomination in 1973 could be birthed based on issues that are now seen as non Christian in putative conservative Reformed Churches.

A “conservative” church in Pella, Iowa for example just adopted a tenet that I’m pretty sure that Dr. Richards and the people who, at that time, formed the PCA — having seen this kind of conviction in the denomination they were leaving — would have strenuously disagreed.

“Furthermore, we reject Kinism, which teaches that it is consistently unwise or a sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry, and that civil societies ought to take steps to remain ethnically or racially segregated.”

I don’t know if Dr. Richards would have said it was sin for people of different ethnicities or races to intermarry but from the quotes above I know he would have certainly said it was consistently unwise.

There are two things that trouble me about this kind of thing.

1.) It seems to me that given enough time, truth will change because the Overton window moves to the left.  The PCA is formed because certain things they are seeing in the Churches they were leaving were understood by those leaving as being, at the very least “unwise.” Now 50 years later conservative churches are saying that the reasons why people left their previous denomination were unwise for doing so because their reasons were unbiblical and sin. This is lightning fast social change.

2.) Because of these kinds of social order changes people alive today who agreed with the convictions of Dr. Richards and those that formed the new denomination no longer can find a denominational church home. Bad theology hurts people and this theology that crept into the liberal churches in 1973 that required people to leave has now crept into what is thought of as Conservative churches and some people, who have a memory longer than 5 minutes, have no where left to attend church.

Understand when this Pella, Iowa church “rejects Kinism,” they are rejecting what the people who abandoned their previous faithless denomination believed in 1973 was standard Christianity. They didn’t call it Kinism then. They just called it Christianity.

Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne 
But the scaffold sway the future
And behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadows
Keeping watch above His own

The Zielinski / McAtee Chronicles …. Exchange II

Bret,

You will always, within any given group, find extremists who want to eradicate others who aren’t like them — Christianity has those too — but I very much doubt most Jews, at least today, care about Christianity except to the extent of wanting it to leave them alone. But suppose I’m wrong about that. What then?

In that case Judaism would be no different from either Christianity or Islam, each of which seeks to bring about “peace” by killing off, converting (forcibly if necessary), or intimidating into silence all non-conformers. I’ve read enough of your Christian nationalism to know that that’s essentially your end game, even if you might quibble with how I just described it. I’ve read enough world history to know that that’s pretty much what Christian nationalism looked like when it had power (the Inca, Celtic pagans and Native Americans would like a word). So why are you criticizing the Jews for doing the same thing? Other, I mean, than the bald, naked and unsupported assertion that you’re right and they’re wrong.

And here, ultimately, is the societal choice that needs to be made: There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching as the result.

As for your claims about the inquisition and the holocaust, and the books you recommend, I was raised by anti-Semites so I’m already familiar with them. An elder in the church I grew up in once said, in a sermon, that his only real objection to the holocaust was that it wasn’t 100% successful in destroying all Jews. Having been raised in that, I’ve already heard your arguments, and they’re garbage. There really was a holocaust, it really did try to kill off Europe’s Jewish population, and it really was a continuation of the inquisition under a different name, even though Catholics weren’t the only ones involved. If you want to buy into historical revisionism, that’s your right, but that’s what it is.

Kathleen,

All that you’ve sent me is hot garbage stew. You keep pining for Pluralism/multiculturalism without realizing that is a religious conviction that requires a monotheism that says … “No God can be uniquely worshiped in a social order except for the God that requires no other singular God.” Sorry… that’s why I said pluralism is a myth. You want to force that “pluralistic” monotheistic religion on me and you want to force your God upon me. Not happening.

And of course you are wrong about Jewish people wanting to just live and let live. Jewish people HATE Biblical Christianity because a social order governed by Biblical Christianity would not allow porn … would not allow anti-Christ films being made in Hollywood, would not allow the attempt to marginalize Christianity as the Jewish faith of multiculturalism/pluralism has successfully done,. would not allow children to be brainwashed with your propaganda in Government schools. Pluralism = Jewish Nationalism.

If you look and learn your history you will see that Christianity did not seek to kill the Jewish people. By way of official Church policy Roman Catholic teaching early in the Church, w/ its policy of “Sicut Judaeis Non,” taught a doctrine that stated no one had the right to harm the Jew, but at the same time, the Jews were — like Christians and Jews living under Islam — required to accept second class status and refrain from undermining the Christian cultures in which they lived. This is hardly a doctrine that encouraged the killing of Jews as you so wrongly think. It is either have that kind of social order or a social order of your pluralism where Christians living under your pluralism are required to accept second class status being restrained from undermining your filthy pluralistic/multicultural social order.

Again, I say, Kathleen, you just don’t know what you’re talking about. God has provided you the opportunity to learn aright. Will you not take it? And before we leave this you might want to read a Jewish author named Ariel Toaff who wrote; “Passovers of Blood: The Jews of Europe and Ritual Murders.” This book has the potential of cleansing your cheery view of what happens when Christians allow pluralism in their midst.

Your grasp on World history is what I might expect from someone who has read only the court historians with their official anti-Christian narrative. Have you never learned that the official history is written by the winners? Wise up and realize that it is typically only in revisionist history where the truth is buried waiting to be discovered. Again, I recommend Rodney Stark’s “Bearing False Witness,” as an antidote for your gross misunderstanding of history. Another book that would help you see straight again is Wm. T. Cavanaugh’s, ”The Myth of Religious Violence.” You are operating under a strong delusion that these kind of books can help you disburse.

Next we speak briefly to your laughable appeal to the ill treatment of “Incas, Native Americans, and Celtic Pagans.” The peoples under the thumb of the Incas and Aztecs praised God for the work of Cortez. Have you read Cortez’s diaries? Have you read Christopher Columbus diaries? I have. You are absolutely clueless when you suggest sympathy for these murderous people. The Native Americans were so busy killing one another, that I’m surprised they noticed when the white man begin to kill them as a defensive measure to stop their raping, murdering, and pillaging.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1y_0NfhF9c

Next, my conviction that I am right and the enemies of Christ are wrong are not in the least bald, naked, or unsupported. I have God’s own Word to substantiate all of my claims about Christianity being the truth. All you have is the bald, naked, unsupported, assertion that Christianity is not true and that because Christianity is not true therefore everything else is true. You are not wise.

Then you write this hilarious bit that is worthy of a stand up comic routine;

“There are so many world views, religious and non-religious, that no one of them is going to attain supremacy over the others. That leaves us with two choices. We can continue to have bloody religious warfare, like what is currently going on in Israel and Gaza. Or we can decide to live in peace with our neighbors whether we agree with them or not. At least in this country, enough people are sick of competing religions trying to lord it over the rest of us that we are seeing a great dechurching (sic) as the result.”

1.) There are so many worldviews therefore there must be no true worldview?

2.) Really, there are, in the end, only two Worldviews. Christianity or Humanism. It’s not that hard. Though I concede humanism can wear any number of masks.

3.) Or, there is another option, and that is people and nations recognizing that religio-ethno states are inevitable. This is what you are arguing for Kathleen. You are arguing that America should be a religio-ethno state that is a place where all colors bleed into one (ethno) and where the religion that rules is the religion that allows no other singular religion or God then the religion of all religions and all gods.

However, where all religions are allowed then the God is really the state (man in his corporate expression — Humanism) so that the God-state can dictate to all the other gods how far they are allowed to go in the public square. You are not a pluralist Kathleen. You are a raging monotheist who desires that this social-order outlaw people like me who desires a different god besides your multiculturalism god to rule over the social order. Can you not see this?

I could care less about the de-churching of the church if that is happening because people don’t want a clear alternative between your god and the God of the Bible. Elijah was alone on Mt. Carmel against all pagan comers. I’ve no problem standing alone. McAtee contra Mundum. 

I quite agree that the Jewish people suffered greatly during WW II.  However as Jewish people were understood as being the ideological champions of Communism, then we understand why many people in Europe were concerned about the enemy in their midst. That it went badly for too many rank and file Jewish people I weep over. It is one reason I am so adamantly opposed to war when not waged on a Christian basis.

Please repent Kathleen. Your understanding of History has been fed to you by Dr. Mephistopheles and his imp culinary school of chefs. Christ will receive you and teach you a better way … a way not characterized by your bitterness and hate against Him.

Back to Begging… Well, Maybe Not Exactly Begging

“The one badge of Christian discipleship is not orthodoxy but love.”

Billy Graham
Circa 1957

The Christian has to say to Homosexuals, ‘We will not treat you in those ways. We can’t revile you, but we can’t affirm you. The reason that we can’t revile you is same reason why we can’t affirm you, because of the Bible, because of God’s love, because of His grace, because of His goodness.’”

Rev. Alistair Begg

A recent post here dealt with Rev. Alister Begg’s comments advising a Grandmother that she can indeed attend the perverted wedding of her grandson, and with a gift.

https://ironink.org/2024/01/alister-begg-r-c-sproul-2-0-on-matters-surrounding-attending-sodomite-marriages/

In the face of withering criticism coming from what remains of the Christian dissident voice in America Rev. Begg decided to double down and tell his critics to, in essence, “go pound sand.”

Actually, I admire Begg’s willingness to give the middle finger salute to his critics. I always like seeing backbone. Now if it only was backbone as standing for a righteous cause instead of backbone standing for wickedness.

Rev. Begg opens up by appealing to Luke 15 and the parable of the prodigal son. Rev. Begg tries to position himself as the Father who eagerly anticipates the return of the prodigal son. Rev. Begg sees himself as the loving Father in the prodigal son parable. Further, he sees the perverted grandson getting “married” to another pervert to be the prodigal son and Begg sees all his critics as Pharisees and tax collectors, who are the Older son in the parable.

The problem here of course is obvious to those with eyes to see. In the Parable of the prodigal son, the prodigal is returning to his Father, with a mindset of repenting to take a servant’s place in the household. To the contrary, in real life, the prodigal (perverted) grandson remains in the pig stye dining with the swine, still refusing to return to his grandmother’s God and Christian faith. So, the passage that Rev. Begg appeals to in order to double down finds him guilty of gross eisegesis.

Let it be said here that any Christian worthy of the name Christian would be the first in line to welcome back any returning prodigal pervert. The Christian faith prides itself on the fact that it restores prodigals.

9 Or do you not know that the unrighteous[b] will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,[c] 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. 11 And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

Furthermore, any Christian worthy of the name Christian would even be willing to exercise great effort to articulate the saving message of Christianity to all prodigals, commanding them to repent. However, what a Christ honoring Christian will never do is celebrate perversity, or drink a toast to perversity, or be found countenancing a stiff necked perversity happening in God’s face. A Christ honoring Christian does not deny the message of Christ in the hopes that by their denial of the message of Christ they might win some to Christ.

Rev. Begg in his sermon quotes from a book the he wrote on the necessity of loving one’s enemy. Rev. Begg admits that he does not like perverts but that is irrelevant since he is called to love them. The problem here, I think is Begg’s understanding of love. Allow me to posit that Begg advising the grandmother to attend that “wedding,” is not counsel wherein biblical love is found. It is not Christian love to the lost as God defines love to join in celebration of a pervert marriage, though I am glad to concede that it is Christian love to the lost as fallen man defines love. The most loving thing possible that Begg could counsel is to explain to the grandmother how she is demonstrating love for her grandson by not attending the wedding. Rev. Begg is using the word “love” here in the sense of “that harlot sure loved her latest customer.”

The love I am talking about is the idea found in teaching parents that it is love for a child that visits the child with discipline, and even, when warranted, spankings. Rev. Begg’s logic is the same logic that says that disciplining your children is not loving. However, as any parent knows, as painful as discipline is for both parent and child it is the very nard of love and to neglect it is not loving but is full on hate. This is what Begg told the grandmother. Begg told the grandmother, “In the name of love, you go ahead and hate your grandson by attending this ‘wedding.'” It is profoundly unwise counsel coming from a chap who is 72 years old and who has been in the ministry his whole adult life.

We should note here that Rev. Begg’s warning against Pharisaic behavior is still worthy of hearing. We all (or at least I do) have this tendency towards self-righteousness, and as such it is always good to be probed by God’s warning Word on this matter. Having said that, I continue to insist that Rev. Begg has missed the mark in accusing people of being Pharisaic because they oppose his advice. Speaking only for myself, my life has found me attending gay bars and having gay friends who were genuine friends hoping by some means to communicate Christ. (To my great sadness they never did embrace Christ.)

Rev. Begg said in his double down sermon;

“In that conversation with that grandmother, I was concerned about the well-being of their relationship more than anything else. Hence my counsel. Don’t misunderstand that in any way at all.”

Now, I will be accused of being picayune but here is Begg’s major problem. We can applaud Begg for his well intended compassion here but, as the saying goes, “good intention pave the road to hell.” Rev. Begg’s concern should have been about the well being of God’s glory more than anything else. How is God glorified by the grandmother celebrating a monstrosity called a “wedding,” which is in point of fact a mockery of God and His reality?

In the end one wonders how far Rev. Begg would take this kind of logic? I mean, let’s try a couple reductio-ad-absurdum.

If a lesbian “couple” decides that one of them will get impregnated with the sperm of the brother of her partner so as to be parents does Rev. Begg recommend that their Christian grandmothers tell the lesbians that while grandma loves Jesus and therefore can’t affirm their lifestyle choices, grandma should nevertheless go to the baby shower and take a gift?

If a farmer decides to marry his favorite milk cow does Rev. Begg recommend that the farmer’s grandmother tell the farmer grandson that while grandma loves Jesus and therefore can’t affirm her farmer grandson’s lifestyle choices, grandma should go to the wedding and take a gift — perhaps a silver cowbell for Bessie?

Where does this kind of irrationality end? Honestly the only difference between what Rev. Begg has counseled and these other hypothetical counseling scenarios is that sodomy has now been accepted socially while the others have not. It is still safe to not be seen as being mean, if one counsels grandma not to attend my two pretend scenarios but it is not culturally safe to tell grandma that she shouldn’t attend her grandsons pervert “wedding.”

Rev. Begg goes on to say in her sermon;

“What happens to homosexual people, in my ‘experience,’ is that they are either reviled or they are affirmed. The Christian has to say, ‘We will not treat you in either of those ways. We cannot revile you, but we cannot affirm you. And the reason that we can’t revile you is the same reason why we can’t affirm you, because of the Bible, because of God’s love, because of His grace, because of His goodness.’”

And yet Rev. Begg has no problem whatsoever reviling those non-sodomites who are Christian for insisting he must repent. To those Christians Begg lifts the reviling voice by calling them “Pharisees,” and “Fundamentalists.” Clearly, then the problem for Begg is not the issue of reviling. He has demonstrated he is perfectly capable of doing that. The issue for Rev. Begg is “who shall be reviled.” For Begg, we do not revile perverts but we do revile those we wrongly categorize as Pharisees and Fundamentalists.

Rev. Begg, in his sermon goes on to say that a main reason why there is this problem is that he is a product of British Evangelicalism and not American Fundamentalism. Indeed, in many respects this is the key thing is Begg’s sermon because British Evangelicalism has always been weak. The Brit Evangelicals have been weak on social issues. John Stott, for example, was a proto pioneer for WOKEism. (See his vol. on the Sermon on the Mount.) British Evangelicalism was weak on Biblical inerrancy and inspiration. Even Lloyd-Jones, as solid as he was, found his own church become a laughing stock, after he left, because of his quirky doctrine on the sealing work of the Holy Spirit being a distinct second work of grace. Lloyd-Jones would have never countenanced what replaced him but it was because of his quirky doctrine that his work at Westminster chapel thoroughly deteriorated. British Evangelicalism sucks as is seen by British culture.

We find ourselves asking … Hey Alistair… how’s that British Evangelicalism working out for Britain these days?

Churches filled?
Clergy Orthodox?
Christian family life blooming?
Christian Worldview evident everywhere?
Christian Statesmen abound?
Grooming young girls brought to a halt?

Were I Alistair I would go real slow on glorying in British Evangelicalism over American Fundamentalism.

And while we are on Fundamentalism lets us say note here a dirty little secret. Everyone is a fundamentalist. Rev. Begg just prefers his fundamentalism of celebrating license while I prefer my fundamentalism of maintaining orthodoxy. However, Alister is just as much a Fundamentalist as anybody he would like to name who is opposing him. He is showing in this whole sermon that he is sticking to his fundamentals and one of his fundamentals is celebrating perversity. Rev. Begg is a liberal fundamentalist.

Begg goes on to note how he has been orthodox in the past on marriage and how he has opposed sodomy in the past. He seems to think that because he got it right in the past that makes his getting it wrong today ok, as if being in severe contradiction is not a problem. Sorry, Alistair but a past getting it right does not make sense of a contradiction presently where you get it grossly wrong.

As my Grandmother used to tell me when I did something stupid; “Your heart was in the right place,” so I don’t doubt that Rev. Begg’s heart is in the right place. He has the best of intentions. It’s just that his intentions are driving him to say stupid things that don’t really serve his intentions. Also, there is the matter that when Rev. Begg speaks like this it makes easier for some other young minister somewhere to also compromise because, “Well, if someone like Alistair Begg can say this then certainly I have to be gracious as well.” But, again, this isn’t gracious speech. This is hateful speech on Rev. Begg’s part and good intentions doesn’t change that.

Let’s send British Evangelicalism back to Britain.