Magic In The Modern Church

In Seminary, while pursuing my degree in cross cultural dynamics I did a course work and a good deal of reading on the idea of magic. At that time I thought we were headed for the mission field and being familiar with how culture worked was a natural fit. Most of the reading and study I did on magic was as sat in the context of third world pre-modern cultures. We looked at the idea of totems, charms, spirit-animals, grimoire, shamans, and everything in between. As it turned out Jane and I didn’t end up on the mission field (not for lack of trying) but oddly enough all that work studying magic and cross-culture contexts ended up being instrumental for understanding culture in modern and post-modern contexts right here in the USA.

When one strips all the mysticism and spooky context from the idea of the magical one is left with the reality that Magic, by definition, is the attempt to manipulate one’s surrounding by means of gaining control of the cultural context. In a pre-modern context magic is about manipulating the false gods (the supernatural) so as to put them in the magicians service. Magic thus is a way of gaining power over every circumstance that one encounters. Magic works to put the gods in the service of the one who knows the keys to manipulating the supernatural forces that guide the universe. In magic the practitioner is the one who is controlling the controllers (supernatural).

Now in a third world pre-modern context that means gaining control by means of manipulating the gods. However in a modern context magic still gains traction even though the concept of supernatural is diminished and/or dismissed. Because the gods don’t go away, even if they no longer exist in a pre-modern animistic setting, magic still is a thing. However, the adjustment one needs to make in applying the idea of the use of magic manipulating the gods in a third world setting is to understand that while magic might look different in a modern/post-modern world magic is still practiced in leverage against the gods. The secret was translating the gods of animism to the gods of in the post-modern world. Now, unlike a animistic setting where the supernatural is everywhere and the gods are thick as flies the modern/post-modern world, having denied god, has merely rearranged the deck chairs of divinity so as to find the supernatural as being controlled by the new God in town — sovereign Man. Once one understands that one begins to see that magic, as a means of establishing total control over the world, other men, and the “supernatural” via manipulation of reality in one’s favor is still a thing with the difference that the shaman, witch-doctor, and sorcerer translated into modern/post-modern culture is now called the sociologist, the marketer, the psychologist, and the propagandist. If you pause to consider it, it is easy to see that these categories of people are to us today in the modern world what the magician was to the animistic world.

Secondly, wherein “primitive” cultures it is the gods who are manipulated in modern/post-modern culture it is man as god that is controlled and manipulated by our new forms of magic. And sociology, psychology, propaganda, and marketing are the means by which man the controller magician has established manipulative control over man as god. Modern man as magician uses these forms of magic to control man as god just as the Shaman in animistic cultures used magic to control men.

You see the difference is that in the world of animism the magician worked on the supernatural to control it to his ends, whereas today in the Western world the magician works on the natural that has taken the place of what the gods were to the animistic world. In the third-world the Magician resorts to reading entrails, casting bones, chanting spells, and making potions. In today’s modern/postmodern world the Magician is more likely to read statistics, cast marketing reports, chant psychological gibberish, and map simple ways, via propaganda to get people to act the way you want them to act. However, in the end it is all about controlling people via controlling the gods. It’s all magic.

Scientism is a sub-category of modern magic as well. Scientism is used as a magic to control and manipulate modern man. This was most recently clearly seen in the whole Covid fiasco – disaster. Scientism, aided by propaganda, sociology, and psychology worked the work of magic by the magicians to control mass man. There was no reality there. It was all “magic.” It was all manipulation and control of god — of modern man. Looking back, who could ever doubt the control of the magicians? It was breathtaking to see how they used their magic spells to control the world’s population. The greatest sorcerers  of all time (Merlin? Allanon? Bremen?) would be envious of the magic cast by the Covid magicians of the 21st century.

A troubling thing happened at the tail end of the 20th century and that the kind of magic spoken of above came into the Christian Church via Fuller Seminary’s “Church Growth Movement.” Lead by the likes of Donald McGavern, C. Peter Wagner, Allen Tippet and then taken up by the likes of Rick Warren,  Lyle Schaller, and Bill Hybels magic was brought into the Christian Church and has not waned since its introduction. The Church growth movement was all about sociology, psychology, propaganda, and marketing. It was the magic movement coming into the last place magic should have been seen. People were “converted” by means of this magic but like all magic the spell wore off for a considerable portion of these people. Hybels went down in a sex scandal. Warren became connected to the CFR. Wagner went off the Pentecostal edge with the Vineyard movement.  However it ended each of these people and many others introduced magic into the Church.

In Seminary we had to study how marketing plans could build the church. We had to take humanist psychology dressed up as Christian, we had to take a whole semester class in Church Growth techniques. (Somewhere around here I still have my Donald McGavern and C. Peter Wagner books.) We had to understand how sociology could direct people’s affections. They were all magic courses.

And now one can barely function as a church apart from the operation of magic over the congregation. Indeed, Pastors have become known more for their marketing skills or psychology counseling skills than for their understanding of reality because of familiarity with God’s Word. It is not too much to say that magic has turned the Pastorate into a Shaman or Witch Doctor. Pastors are expected, as one Pastor told me years ago, “to put the meat in the seat.” That is to be accomplished via the control that comes from rightly handling the magic. Because this is so our churches are burgeoning with people who are not converted but instead have had a successful magical spell cast upon them. Some form of modern magic (sociology, psychology, marketing, scientism, propaganda) has gripped them and holds them in congregations. Much like a voodoo doll in ancient magic would find it controlling the person who it represents so much of the modern church controls its members via magic and sociological manipulation.

Understand that the sociology, marketing, propaganda, and psychology used by the modern church is manipulation by means of modernist notions of magic. Modern magic manipulates reality by convincing people of realities that are not real. Just as the magic of Covid created a reality that dictated that poisonous vaccines were a cure, that masks stopped disease, that social distancing made one whit of difference so the modern magic of the Church creates a reality where the awe of God is lost in worship, where the law is no longer proclaimed, where egalitarianism is a spell that is cast over the congregants, where the Pastor is Shaman.

It’s all magic folks, and you need to wake up from the spell that has been cast.

On The Virtue Of Forced Conversions

“They open their breasts, while they are alive, and take out the hearts and entrails, and burn the said entrails and hearts before the idols, offering that smoke in sacrifice to them”

Hernan Cortes
Writing of the Aztecs

One bromide that those who oppose Christian Nationalism routinely reach for is the horror of the idea that Christian Nationalists would bring in forced conversions. I want to go on record as saying I have no problem with forced conversions to Christianity as long as we understand what we mean by the phrase “forced conversions.”

There are two ways to look at conversion. On a societal / cultural level when dealing with peoples like the Aztecs mentioned in the opening quote then forced conversion is the only option for a compassionate and God fearing people. Forced conversion at this level should be seen as conversion in an objective sense. This kind of conversion is the bringing in of a Christian law order by the sword that would force a previously wicked people to live under the terms of God’s law on a societal basis. Force would be used to bring in order and righteousness with God’s law in its political use leading the way. In the Aztec example above, sacrifices to the gods would end, laws against sundry sexual perversion would be enforced upon pain of death, property rights would be recognized and people forced to attend worship services.

Now, there can be no doubt whatsoever that most of the people that are being forced into this kind of conversion to Christian social dogmas and order would be converted in a subjective sense of the Holy Spirit taking from them a heart of stone and giving them a heart of flesh but they would be converted in the sense that publicly they would not longer have a social order based on false gods. That kind of conversion would be a positive good think even if there was a need for heart conversion that would be betters still.

This kind of forced conversion by the sword would also have the advantage of preparing the social order for the presence of the Gospel being proclaimed. For example, those people freed by Cortez from the gods of the Aztecs would clearly be more open to owning a Gospel proclamation. Likewise Missionaries would have a more free opportunity to set forth the glories of Christ to a people subjugated by the Christian sword. Those Missionaries would not find their own lives in jeopardy for merely bringing the good news of Jesus Christ to a people long under the tyranny of false gods.

The ideal in forced conversions would be that the change that arrived in a massive social order change brought by the sword would open up opportunities for what we are calling “subjective conversions.” So, objectively the social order is forced to convert to Christ in the sense that the old gods are not allowed to be served, a new law order system is implemented, and the macro structures of society are changed thus making room for subjective conversions wherein people are now gladly forced to convert by the Holy Spirit’s irresistible work of regeneration.

So, mark me down as someone who has no problems with “forced conversions.” Indeed, it is my prayer that forced conversion would be brought to our formerly Christian culture. I would be delighted if Abortion clinics were forced to close down because of a policy of forced conversions. I would be delighted if idols to false gods would not be set up in our capitals across the nation because of forced conversion. I would revel in the Lord’s Day being reconstituted consistent with Blue Laws by means of forced conversion. I would rejoice if because of forced conversion a law order was established that made criminal tattooing, piercing, aborting, and soliciting for Prostitution. Now, even if that happened here I still would understand that the heart is desperately wicked beyond all things and that as such the heart would have to be reached in a way that the sword could not accomplish but that reality doesn’t make the idea of “forced conversions” a bad idea.

Also, we should state that all law orders are examples of forced conversions. There are many things our current State does that yield routine forced conversion to idol gods. The people who decry the possibility of Christianity using the sword for conversion don’t mind the sword being used to convert the majority of America’s children to a false religion via the requirements of the law for the education of children.  Christians are forced, at the point of a sword, to pay taxes for all kinds of things that belong to the bailiwick of false gods that are forcefully imposed upon this nation and work to keep it worshiping false gods.

Finally, it seems to be the case that only Christians have a problem with forced conversions. This may be due to the incredible pietistic influence on the Christian faith. Christians in the West today are not realistic as to the way the world works. Christians are scared to death of the idea of using power in a righteous way. Indeed, Christians tend to think that Christians having and using power is automatically an evil thing. Now, to be sure, Christians having and using power can be an evil thing but it is not necessarily an evil thing and Christians should once again contemplate the honor to Christ it might be to wield power in a Christ like fashion.

The idea of converting by the sword means that you make the adherents of the false gods be martyrs to their false gods. It is not automatically virtuous to be the only ones ever dying for their God, as Christians seem to think.

If Charlemagne and Cromwell had no problem conquering by the sword than neither do I.

Dr. Herman Bavinck, The Kinist

Thanks to the girlish hyperventilating of people like Joe Boot, James White, Andrew Sandlin, and Doug Wilson the idea of Kinism has become a “set your hair on fire” controversial position. However, it is simply the case that prior to 1945 or so Kinism was merely one doctrinal petal in the whole Reformed flower. Kinism was part and parcel of “Reformed Christian” just as “total depravity” was.

There are now two different anthologies out that demonstrate that in spades. If you haven’t read them you should.

Who Is My Neighbor — Achdow & Ord
A Survey of Racialism in Christian Sacred Tradition — Alexander Soren

Given that Kinism was merely one doctrine that comprised the Christian faith for pretty much all Christians with the exception of Anabaptists we should not be surprised to find that the great Dutch Reformed Theologian
Herman Bavinck was Kinist.

Bavinck is clear that grace does not eliminate creational differences among men:

“God does that by establishing the structures of family, society, and state among human beings. He awakens in the human heart a natural love between men and women, parents and children. He nurtures a variety of social virtues among people: a pull toward social relationships and longing for affection and friendship. He also scatters humanity into different people groups and languages to protect them from total decline. Among those nations, he creates the national virtues of affection for and love of fatherland. He permits these different people groups to organize themselves into states to whom is given the calling to regulate the relationships among the many diverse spheres of society and maintain justice.”

Herman Bavinck

“Reformed Social Ethics”
(GBP, 440-41)

1964 Rushdoony Nails The Purpose Of The Hart-Cellar Act — McAtee Expands

“The purpose of the Hart-Cellar immigration law of 1965 was threefold.

First, it was described by NY Republican Senator Javitz as ‘the civil rights legislation for the world.’ Now, had we so described the bill, we would have been accused of misrepresentation, but we have the authority of Senator Javits that this bill is ‘the civil rights legislation of the world.’ In other words, it will establish, as a civil right of any person, anywhere in the world that they have a right to come to the United States, that immigration is no longer a privilege, a right which we hold and which we extend as a privilege to whomever we choose, but a civil right of anyone in the world. This then is the first function of the Hart-Cellar 1964 Immigration Act.

Its second function is to transfer immigration control from the legislative branch to the executive, so that the control of immigration, which has historically been in the hands of congress will be transferred to the administration.

Third, the law would be basically secondary to the president’s wishes, so that the basic law would be the will of the president, and it really would be a blank check. There would be no effective prohibition of anyone, whether subversive, mentally defective, a prostitute, a pervert, anyone would have the right to come into the country. There would be no effective bar.

This then, is the nature of the Kennedy-Johnson bill (Hart-Cellar Act). The likelihood of passage is very, very great unless a storm of protest overwhelms congress and compels them to surrender their present inclination to accept the bill. The purpose of this immigration policy then is to unify man, to bring about the unity of the godhead. Its purpose, and its premise, is not economic but religious. It is theologically rooted in this religious dream, the United Nations.

R. J. Rushdoony
Pocket College Lecture — 1964 Lecture

If ever the title of “Prophet” should be laid on someone that someone should be Rushdoony.

If we fill in the blanks just a wee bit more we would say now;

1.) The unification of man, as desired by the Globalists in these uS – a unification that RJR insists was inspired by the desire to have a unified manhood (world population) serving as god — was to be achieved by massive emigration patterns from the third world to the first world.

2.) Think of the purposeful change in immigration patterns as the pursuit of the lowest common denominator in order to level the nations. This is immigrational socialism.

3.) This vision of the Globalists that RJR exposed in 1964 could only be brought about by both the re-configuration of global populations via emigration AND massive propaganda agenda to push miscegenation once those populations have been re-arranged. As such, miscegenation, serves alongside the purposeful emigration agenda. Man will be melded, via marriage and breeding, into a singular non-distinguishable interchangeable cog. Once achieved it is a small step to Global citizenship in a New World Order.

4.) Because all of this is, as RJR writes above, was a part of the dream of the Globalists this means, by necessity, the homogenization process cannot be restricted to racial homogenization via miscegenation, and cultural homogenization via the same process, but also what also must be pursued in religious homogenization. A globalist New World Order requires not only a homogenization of race and culture but also requires a homogenization of all religions into one. Of course, this means the overthrow of distinctive Christianity which is being accomplished via the “Christian” churches refusal to speak out against Globalism (Babelism). As sure as night follows day you can count on the fact that Christianity will increasingly be less and less distinctive (than it already is) from other religions.

5.) If immigration is a civil right of anyone in the world then by necessity America cannot be anything but a propositional nation. If immigration to America is a civil right of anyone in the world then America cannot be a place defined by a people sharing a common ancestry and heritage, a common history, a common Anglo culture or even a common language.

6.) The ultimate purpose for all this was to destroy Christianity and this remains the ultimate purpose for all this. Those in the Church who cannot see this are co-conspirators in the silly attempt of rolling Christ off His throne.

Nationalism Then & Now

I took every course offered by Dr. Glenn R. Martin in undergrad. He remains to this day a instrumental and formative presence in my life. He was the one who set me on the trajectory of presuppositionalism and Weltanschauung thinking. After, I left Martin’s tutelage I still had miles to go in understanding those categories of thought but I was set on the trail.

One of the courses I took from Martin was “American Intellectual & Social History.” It was basically a “History of Ideas in America” course. The kind of course that looked behind the events of American History to ask the question; “What was the thought world that drove the disputes and ideas in American history.”

Naturally enough a good amount of time was spent on the epochal event of US History — what we were taught to refer to as “The War of Northern Aggression.” We examined the theological thought world of both North and South and through that prism we were taught how to understand that conflict.

We were taught, rightly enough I still believe 45 years later, that the conflict was between those who theologically were committed to a social order system where authority and power was purposefully diffused and decentralized against those who were theologically committed to concentrated and centralized power. One one side one found the Nationalistic impulse of the Hamiltonians that resulted in a Unitarian Nationalism and on the other side one found the Anti-Federalist impulse of the Jeffersonians that resulted in a old style Republicanism. Over the decades I’ve continued pursuing this explosion in American history in my study and with my books and nothing I learned in 1980 in my “American Intellectual & History” course has overturned that essence of the conflict.

What has changed, oddly enough, is that I am now pursuing my Republicanism via a stodgy and unstinting defense of Nationalism. My convictions have not changed. However, the historical circumstances that we are now living in have changed. The contest we are now in against the Globalist is not significantly different than the contest our American forebears in the South fought against the Yankees. The difference is that in 1861 they wanted National Unitarianism. Today they desire Global Unitarianism.

I was and remain opposed to Lincolnian Nationalism because it was a centralizing and top down Nationalism pursued with a vision of destroying the various nations that comprised these united States of America. I now strongly champion Christian Nationalism because it is, at least in my vision, a movement that is committed to pursuing a of maintaining the distinctiveness of White Anglo Saxon America as against the earlier Lincolnian tendency to support Unitarian elimination of distinctives as found among states, regions, and even peoples.

In other words whereas the Unitarian Nationalism of 1861 was basically a nationwide globalist-like movement against regionalism and sectionalism, today Christian Nationalism, in my vision, is basically nationwide anti-globalist-like movement in favor of a regional identity (Americans as a distinct people and place) vis-a-vis a opposition that would do to all the world what Lincoln and the Black Republicans did to all of America, to wit, put us all in a blender in order to make all mankind into interchangeable cogs in a New World Order.

So, my remaining anti-Unitarian Nationalism in relation to the War Against the Constitution pursued by the Blue Devils in 1861 is consistent with my pro-Christian nationalism anti-Globalist convictions today. Indeed, my anti-Unitarian Nationalism formed between 1865-1877 is of a piece with my pro Christian Nationalism of 2025. If you genuinely understand the dynamics of the contest today against the globalists you will find yourself embracing increasingly the position of the Anti-federalists in 1787 and the Southerners in 1861.

It is interesting that historically speaking, Karl Marx, in a letter to Lincoln spoke of how he saw Lincoln’s war as having continuity with the European Revolutions of the 18th century. Indeed Marx writes to Lincoln clearly connecting the dots between the work of Lincoln and the Declaration of the Rights of Man scribbled in the French Revolution. This is consistent with the observations by some that the War Against the Constitution was America’s “French Revolution.” What more reason does one need to conclude that not only did the bad guys win out during the French Revolution against a faulty but a still clear Christendom but also the Enlightenment strength carried the day in the last Protestant Christian social order in the West.

There are some other similarities between the Unitarian Nationalism recreation of the US social order and the attempt today to snuff out Christian Nationalism’s resistance to globalism.  One of those similarities between now and then is the “conservative” church. As the Yankee Church gave “Christian” cover for Unitarian Nationalist project of 1861 so even the “conservative” “Reformed” churches give cover today for the Anti-Christ Globalist project. Just as Yankee Churches in 1861 needed to be plowed under & salted so the Globalist churches today need to be treated as the enemy.

Like Confederates of old we are now fighting not to be absorbed in a heathen top down system that would erase our identity in favor of bland sameness. Johnny Reb fought against a Unitarian Nationalism. We are fighting against a technocratic Globalism. If we lose, we lose who we are just as Johnny Reb lost his civilization between 1861-1877 and just as all Americans lost all remnants of that same civilization with the burgeoning impact of Wilsonian Democracy, FDR’s New Deal, and LBJ’s great society as well as the hits that have just kept coming since then.

I must say though that just as Johnny Reb lost in his contest with collectivization and centralized authority so I am not optimistic, in the short term, that we will succeed any better. Johnny Reb knew what it was to be a free man living in a free social order that was regulated by Christian law. We however, who desperately want to resist just as Johnny Reb did do not live among a people who have much knowledge of what it means to be a free man living in a free social order regulated by Christian law. Modern Americans have become accustomed to living off the teat of the centralized state. It is hard for me to believe that when push comes to shove the average American is going to be willing to be (switching metaphors) unhooked and detached from the Matrix. We as a people have become so attached to the centralized, managerial, and technocratic state that I don’t think that, in the short term, we have the will to tell the Globalists to “go bugger yourself.”

Americans may have to, for a time, live under the lash of Globalism with its creation of mass, uniform, global culture. However, I remain hopeful for the long term. Globalism is a culture of death because at its foundation is a hatred of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords; Jesus the Christ. Scripture teaches us that, “All those who hate Christ, love death.” As such since Globalism hates of Christ (which is the chief characteristic of Globalism)  therefore I am assured that it will die and everyone knows that death can’t win. So, while Globalism may continue to be victorious in the short term, in the long term, like its attempt in Genesis 11, it will be totally and utterly defeated. With its defeat will be the return of Christian nations embracing variant expressions of Christian nationalism.

In the short term we epistemologically self-conscious and stubborn few must continue to run up the flag of Christian Nationalism and the banner of Christendom. We must be able to explain the connection between men bowing to Christ individually and the subsequent result of all the nations being discipled and bowing in allegiance to Christ. We must earnestly pray that the Lord Christ would leverage us to advance His Kingdom. We must pray that we might get the opportunity that Samson got in his last hour — the ability to deal a devastating blow to the enemy of Christ and His people.