Category: Marxism/Cultural Marxism

Bottom-up Pride Month Special Edition

Diversity is about how we are different. Inclusion is about how our opinions are considered and valued among the people we work and live with. The only way to achieve peak performance is to be exactly who we are, contributing with our uncensored ideas, backgrounds and differences. Bottom-up is an affinity network intended to support Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Ally employees, fostering a safe, respectful culture. Help us nurture this intent following these simple steps.

1.) Bring your whole self to work

Your personal productivity will raise if you do not expend your energies hiding a significant part of yourself. It is important to have your entire energies focused on a single activity, instead of having a burden to your performance.

2.) Understand Differences

Keep in mind that we are all different, try and include these differences in your vocabulary. Avoiding exclusion through open questions can help you improve your relationships with others and foster peak performance in others. It is better to ask for a significant other than for a husband/wife, this behavior is called heterosexism.

3.) Join Bottom up.

The Bottom up affinity network is intended to include both heterosexual and homosexual employees. Join the distribution list and learn more about this important business strategy.

This email was sent out to employees of a fortune 500 company. It was passed on to me. The name “Bottom up” is a pseudonym for the real group’s name. This reveals that even fortune 500 companies are pushing this Transformation of American agenda.

The grammar and punctuation mistakes are part of the e-mail. I left them as I received them.

I wanted to spend some time exposing the fallacies.

(1.) No, diversity is about the demand that the pervert and the oddball being accepted as normative. Diversity is about insisting that traditional understandings of normal must be destroyed.

(2.) Inclusion is only important when it means including anything but that which says that including the abnormal is not healthy. Inclusion is not intended for those who have standards that demand that perversity be excluded.

(3.) Are we really to believe that the “Bottom-up” affinity group would want Biblical Christians to be exactly who they are so that they might work at the level of peak performance? Are they going to support the uncensored ideas of those who take the Scripture seriously? Will the worldview differences that exist as between a “Bottom-up” activist employee and a Biblical Christian activist employee really make for a atmosphere where peak performance is achieved?

(4.) #1 in the circulated e-mail is a recruitment tool to lure people out of the closet.

(5.) #1 in the circulated e-mail allows Biblical Christians to talk about the Lord Christ in the work place? After all, Christian employees hiding a part of themselves would be a burden to their performance.

(6.) #2 in the circulated e-mail excludes those who believe that significant others is sin. Why would you want to exclude them. It also excludes those who prefer insignificant others. After all, there doubtless are people in the company who just involve themselves in serial hook-ups with people they don’t know. Why should you ask about a significant other when that could offend the Gay Bathroom stall employees who value insignificant others?

(7.) The example used in #2 in the circulated e-mail is an example of Xenosexism (fear of the “Insignifant Other.”)

(8.) Do you suppose this Fortune 500 company would allow an e-mail to circulate amongst its employees whereby an affinity group was being started that made the point that diversity has always been a weakness? Do you suppose that they would allow an affinity group that excluded all who didn’t agree with perversity just as this groups excludes all who don’t agree with normalcy?

Considering a few thing that Dr. North offers here.

http://www.garynorth.com/public/12623.cfm

I agree with many of his observations. I am just tweaking here.

GN offers,

The heart, mind, and soul of orthodox Marxian socialism is this: the concept of economic determinism. Marx argued that socialism is historically inevitable because of the inevitable transformation of the mode of production. He argued that the mode of production is the substructure of society, and culture in general is the superstructure. He argued that people hold a particular view of society’s laws, ethics, and politics because of their commitment to a particular mode of production. The dominant mode of production in 1850 was capitalism. Marx named this mode of production. The name has stuck, even though original Marxism is culturally dead.

Marx gained support for his position precisely because it was purely economic/materialist. It abandoned all traces of historical explanation that were based on the idea that ideas are fundamental to the transformation of society. Marx believed that the deciding arena of class warfare is the mode of production, not the arena of ideas. He saw ideas as secondary outgrowths of the mode of production. His view was this: ideas do not have significant consequences. Take this idea out of Marxism, and it is no longer Marxism.

BLMc

1.) Of course Marx used non material ideas to communicate his insistence on his Dialectical Materialism and his economic determinism. (But then most intelligent people realize that dialectical materialism is inherently contradictory.)

2.) The way that I like to think about this is that materialistic economics is to Marx what Theology is to the Christian. In other words, Marx made Economic determinism his own Theology. Whereas the Biblical Christian traces everything back to Theology as the source, Marx traced everything back to Economic Determinism. And Naturally, the Biblical Christian traces Marx’s tracing of everything back to Economic Determinism back to His presupposed Theology of Dialectical Materialism. Marx believed what he believed about Economic Determinism because his theology of Dialectical Materialism forced him in that direction.

GN writes,

Gramsci argued, and the Frankfurt School followed his lead, that the way for Marxists to transform the West was through cultural revolution: the idea of cultural relativism. The argument was correct, but the argument was not Marxist. The argument was Hegelian. It meant turning Marxism on its head, just as Marx had turned Hegel on his head. The idea of Marxism in the earliest days was based on a rejection of the spiritual side of Hegelianism. It placed the mode of production at the heart of the analysis of capitalist culture.

BLMc

I would suggest that the commonalities of Cultural Marxism (Gramsci-ism – Frankfurt school) with Marx are,

1.) Both Atheistic

Both Cultural Marxists and garden variety Marxists insist upon Atheism. The denial of God makes it difficult to be able to assert the reality of the “mind” or the idea of “ideas.” If the non-corporeal God does not exist where does a non-corporeal mind and non-corporeal ideas come from?

2.) Both contradictory

Without God it is hard to not be materialistic since God is the fount of the non-corporeal. Marx was in contradiction on this point because he was using “ideas” and non material “Logic” in order to communicate that ideas don’t exist. The Frankfurt school is inconsistent because they likewise insist that culture must be overturned via changing the ideas that create Christian culture.

3.) They are both a religion of revolution and so both a totaltistic anti-worldview.

Gramsci merely took Marx’s work on “Economic determinism” where Economics was seen to be the whole of cultural change and gave instead a “Economic / Education / Politics / Arts / Law etc.” (i.e. — culture) determinism. The Frankfurt school did not abandon Marx’s determinism they merely expanded it, and like Marx (and later Lenin) who believed all of this could be directed and helped along by human guidance and assistance the Cultural Marxists believed that that which was inevitable, could be helped along by human aid. (An inconsistency on the part of both parties given the fact that if all of reality is determined then helping or not helping is incidental to the deterministic processes.)

4.) Both Marxism and Cultural Marxism appeal to order arising out of chaos.

For both variants of Marxism, integration downward into the void is the means by which order is arrived at, and as such both Marxism and Cultural Marxism aligned themselves against structures of order such as Family, and Church. Alexandra Kollontai’s Feminism and war against the family was as much a Part of Lenin’s Marxism as was the famous five year economic plans. Lenin’s destruction and warfare against the Russian Church was as much a part of his Marxism as was his attempts at collectivization for Economics.

5.) Both still advance using the Hegelian dialectic

Both Classical Marxism and Cultural Marxism advance by retreating when necessary.

So, while I agree with Dr. North that Cultural Marxism and Marxism are different, I would also say that still retain much in common and the reason they remain much in common is that it was impossible for Classical Marxists to be consistent with their own dialectical Materialism just as it is impossible for Cultural Marxists to be consistent with their avowed atheism. The commonality between the two is the impossibility to be consistent while holding to Atheistic materialism.

6.) 6.) Both retain a category of the Proletariat

For Classical Marxism the proletariat that must be set free from the bourgeoisie chains was the working class. For Cultural Marxism the proletariat that must be set free from the bourgeoisie chains are the perverts, minorities, and feminist women. What those different proletariats have in common is throwing off Christianity and Christendom.

GN wrote,

We can discuss this split in Marxism in terms of a particular family. The most prominent intellectual defender of Stalinism in the United States during the 1940’s and 1950’s was Herbert Aptheker. His daughter Bettina was one of the leaders of the Free Speech Movement, which began in the fall of 1964 at the University of California, Berkeley. She became far more famous than her Stalinist father. That campus event launched the student rebellion and the counter-culture movement. But the very term “counter-culture” is indicative of the fact that it was never Marxist. It was an attempt to overthrow the prevailing culture, but Marx would not have wasted any time on such a concept. Marx was not a Hegelian. He was a Marxist.

BLMc

But the point here is that it was impossible for Marx to be consistent given his Atheistic Materialism. Because of his inherent contradiction it was a foregone deterministic conclusion that someone like Gramsci or Bettina Aptheker would come along and relieve the inherent contradiction of Marx.

GN writes,

Years later, she wrote that her father had abused her sexually from age 3 to 13. Deep down in her father’s worldview, he was conducting his own personal Gramscian agenda. He was attacking Western culture in his own home. But this did not affect his orthodox Marxism. It affected his daughter’s.

BLMc

The fact that he was sexually abusing his daughter suggests that his orthodox Marxism was very consistent with cultural Marxism. His daughter just made explicit that which was implicit in the Father.

GN writes,

THE COUNTER-CULTURE

Let’s get it straight: Marx was wrong. Gramsci was right. But Marxism was not the primary cause of the counterculture. The counter-culture was based on culture. The alliance between theological modernism and the Progressive movement, which began in the mid-1880’s and peaked around 1920, was the theological underpinning of the roaring twenties. Then the Great Depression came. Then World War II came. When the boys came back from over there, after 1918, they were no longer committed to anything like Orthodox Christianity. When their boys came back from World War II, the cultural erosion that had taken place after World War I was pretty much complete. This had nothing to do with Marxism. Marxism was committed to a defense of cultural change that was based on changes in the mode of production. But there was no fundamental change in the mode of production in 1945, other than the rise of modern management, which took place during World War II. This consolidated capitalism; it did not weaken capitalism.

1.) There are many scholars who connect the dots between Progressivism, Theological Modernism and Marxism.

2.) A good book to read on the connection from the very beginning of Progressivism, Theological Modernism and Marxism is C. Gregg Singer’s “The Unholy Alliance.” Singer traces the rise of the Marxist / Progressive / Modernist Church well before Cultural Marxism had rooted itself here in the States. A read through that book reveals that the Modernist Church was clearly economically Marxist, while at the same time showing signs of what would be later referred to as Cultural Marxism.

3.) I think that with the rise of the Federal Reserve in 1913 one could argue that there indeed was a change in the mode of production. That change in the mode of production went from laissez fair Capitalism to a ever burgeoning Finance Capitalism, a Corporatism that many have argued works well with Marxist Economics. Now the laissez fair Capitalism of the early 20th century was hardly genuinely Market economics but it was a great deal more Market Economics then what came after the creation of the Federal Reserve and the passage of the 16th amendment.

GN writes,

The problem is this: conservatives take way too seriously the claims of the cultural Marxists, who in fact were not Marxists. They were basically Progressives and socialists. They would have been the targets of Marx in 1850. He spent most of his career attacking people like this, and he spent almost no time at all in attacking Adam Smith, or the classical economists. He never replied to the neoclassical economists and Austrian School economists who appeared in the early 1870’s. Marx had plenty of time to respond to these people, but he never did. He spent most of his life attacking people who would be called today cultural Marxists. He regarded them as enemies in the socialist camp. He attacked them because they did not base their attack on capitalism in terms of his theory of scientific socialism, which rested on the concept of the mode of production.

If this paragraph is accurate then the Russian Revolution was not a Marxist Revolution and the Bella Kuhn Revolution in Hungary was not a Marxist Revolution because each of these at one and the same time went both after the mode of production and after cultural issues as well. And keep in mind that cultural Marxists still insist that Economics and mode of production must be Marxist.

Dr. North finishes with the complexity found in tracing the History of ideas and I quite agree with that.

“Do not move an ancient boundary stone set up by your ancestors.”

Christianity is a faith characterized by boundaries, hierarchy, and distinctions. The God of Christianity is a God who assigns roles, who segregates (day from night, land from water, sun from moon, female from male, etc.) and whose existence is the means by which all differences are defined.

Perhaps the greatest boundary in Scripture is the one known as the Creator Creature boundary. It is the boundary that the Serpent and our first parents sought to remove. Not satisfied with a creaturely role our first parents aspired to erase the Creator Creature boundary and transcend so to be as God knowing good from evil.

Since that time the temptation for fallen man has been to transcend the boundaries set by God, in order that, by their own fiat word, they themselves could dictate their own boundaries and so create a reality where they erased Gods’ boundaries and set their own, or at other times merely attempt to erase all boundaries so that “all colors bleed into one.”

We live in such a time when the sin du-jour is the war against all boundaries. Man cannot be limited by his race, his ethnicity, his gender, any transcendent ethic, or any ordained status or definition. This mindset is so ubiquitous that by my usage of the pronouns “his” in the last sentence I have already revealed how insensitive I am to the modern demand that a pronoun boundary that prefers the masculine pronoun is an example of the lack of respect for the erasure of the old boundary once characteristic of the English grammar.

According to our Brave New Egalitarian Boundary-less world man must be allowed to make himself over and over again according to his own fiat word and according to his own template. No boundaries can be allowed to stifle or limit man. Gods after all, by definition, may not be limited.

The evidence of the assault on the idea of boundaries is everywhere, but unfortunately it is getting so common that we no longer have the ability to see it given how close we are to the boundary-less state of affairs. On this subject we have arrived at the proverb, “if you want to know what the water is like don’t ask a fish.

Still the evidence is omnipresent,

1.) The US government, in collusion with the National Chamber of commerce and leftist Marxists are currently literally trying to erase the southern border with Mexico.

2.) It is all the rage among judicial tyrants, by the means of legal fiat, to erase a boundary that has been set in place for millennium in Western Civilization which insisted that marriage requires one from each sex. Judges from Indiana to Utah are telling us that the Christian and historic boundary that defined marriage is now passe.

3.) It was just announced that the Speaker of the House is taking the POTUS to court to sue him because he is not honoring the Separation of powers (Boundaries). It seems that the man who is allegedly POTUS doesn’t care for the boundaries that define his position and role. He will erase those boundaries and set his own.

4.) Recently Facebook went from the traditional two gender option (Male — Female) to a new offering of 51 choices. All previous gender boundaries erased. Man can create his own boundaries in terms of gender.

5.) New forms from the Government no longer read in such a way as to fill in names for “Father,” and “Mother,” choosing instead “Parent 1,” and “Parent 2.”

6.) Recently in Houston, Texas it was decided that public restrooms are now boundary-less.

7.) The fashion world is run by sodomites and so they give us female models who look like little boys with breasts. In such a way the boundary between desiring a woman with curves and desiring a little boy is eliminated.

8.) No ID required for voting. This is to eliminate the boundary between Citizen and non-Citizen. It has become so upside down that it is fast becoming more of an advantage to be a non-citizen than to be a citizen.

9.) Even in the Reformed Church there are those who insist that God requires the boundaries of cultures be extinguished. Such men are convinced that only in a cultural-less, boundary-less “Christian” world can God be glorified.

10.) The mantra is relentless which states that a family can be defined anyway one wants. The boundary that once defined a family as blood relation sharing a common faith has now been eliminated. We all understood that there would be exceptions at time to this truth but for generations we held that normatively, the boundary that defined family, was blood relation sharing a common faith.

11.) The next boundary under assault is between adult and child. Already organizations exist that are lobbying for the sex between adult and children.

12.) The Pulpit used to have a boundary around it by following God’s Word in allowing only Men as Elders. That boundary has largely fallen.

13.) With the rise of deconstructionism in literature the boundary between author and reader has been destroyed. The reader is now the author and the author has been eclipsed. This is the inevitable consequence to eliminating a transcendent Author of all reality. If one eliminates God eventually one must eliminate all other authors. Boundaries in literature fall readily.

14.) Sodomy is on the verge of being publicly recognized. Here is another boundary being erased. Heretofore the public understood that male parts went with female parts. That was a boundary. It is now a receding boundary. Whereas the former boundary said that men and women in marriage should work together to create life. The new boundary insists that the life found in man should be surrounded by death found in the male evacuation canal. The new boundary insists that two women should pursue sterility by rejecting men.

All of this destruction of boundaries is the consequence of Kant’s subjectivism and the subsequent rise of Kierkegaardian existentialism. Man cannot reach the noumena realm and therefore men are allowed to arrange the phenomena realm as they will. Wittgenstein reinforced all this with his language games and postmodernism has sealed the deal for the everyday man on the street.

The elimination of stable and shared boundaries can not help but lead to social order upheaval. No society can long withstand a boundary-less world in religion, morals, fashion, art, education, law, etc. Further the elimination of stable and shared boundaries means the persecution of those who do insist that transcendent boundaries exist. If Biblical Christians will not share in the Brave New Boundary-less world where the only boundaries will be the elimination of boundaries then Biblical Christians become enemies to the State God.

Anthony Esolen on this matter offers this insight on how God is a God who created a world with God given boundaries,

“When God made the world, He made things, with their characteristic boundaries. That is what the sacred author of Job insists upon. God said to Job, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” And, “Who shut up the sea within doors, when it broke forth, as if it had issued out of the womb,” and said, “to here shall you come, but no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed?”

Likewise in Genesis we see that God divides and distinguishes when He creates, not only when He divides the light from the darkness, and sets the firmament between heaven and earth, and orders the waters into one place so that the dry land may appear. He does so when He makes every living thing after its kind, a crucial phrase for understanding the whole. The kinds are so by means of boundaries: an apple tree brings forth apple blossoms after its kind; birds flock together and mate after their kinds. Man too is made after his kind, male and female; and it is characteristic of man to be made by God, for God: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

The sad thing in all of this is that when mankind tears down God’s ordained boundaries they at the same time tear down themselves. Man is not God and man cannot violate God’s order and boundaries without at the same time violating himself.

We live in a time and epoch where boundaries are being attacked. This time is not likely to end soon unless God is pleased to graciously visit us with judgment.

“The more Christianity gains ground, and the more Christians become with their religion, the less cultural differences we will see in the world. In the final day of history, every place on the planet will have the same covenantal views of God, man, law, judgment, and future, and therefore every place on the earth will have the same cultural practices informed by the Christian faith.

In short: people choose their religion, their religion determines their culture. When the world as a whole accepts the Christian religion, the world will be one culture.”

– Bojidar Marxinov

1.) Throughout History the European Protestants formed distinct Protestant cultures. The Swiss Protestants were different from the English Protestants who were different from the German Protestants, who were different from the Dutch Protestants. Is Marxinov telling us that some or all of them were in sin and that postmillennialism requires us to eliminate the differences between Bavinck and Warfield — between Kuyper and Hodge?

2.) Also we need to ask, why is it, given the few cultures that have been considered Christian, by any reasonable estimation, have not all been the same throughout history? If all Christian culture will look the same why didn’t the Christian culture of Charlemagne look the same as the Christian culture of Calvin’s Geneva or why didn’t Calvin’s Geneva look like Puritan New England? Was it because one or all of them were in deep sin?

3.) Marxinov has not taken into considerations the likelihood that Theonomists in one Christian country will come to a different understandings of how the law of God applies in different settings and situations. The reality of this almost certainty has the explanatory power to demonstrate why there might remain legal – jurisprudent differences between two nations in the Postmillennial Kingdom fully flowered.

4.) Marxinov has lost the Many in his search for the One. His God (and so his view of culture) is the view of the Unitarian. Marxinov, channelling U2 actually does believe that all colors will bleed into one. Marxinov has embraced unity and no diversity now remains. Rushdoony pointedly warned against this.

5.) Marxinov’s vision runs face flat into the wall of God’s Word where we find the Nations as Nations still existing in the New Jerusalem. In Revelation 5:9, 7:9 and in 22:2 we do not find the presence of an amalgamated whole in the New Jerusalem, but rather the distinctions of the Nations remain. Marxinov has lost the understanding that Grace restores nature and has exchanged it for the understanding that Grace destroys nature and replaces it.

6.) Marxinov’s vision is the same vision of Saruman who started off with the best of intentions in resisting Mordor but who, because of his desire to save the world, became as evil as Sauron in trying to save the world. Marxinov in seeking to save the world from Marx is actually in competition with Marx seeking to out Marx … Marx.

What a wonderful coincidence that Bojidar’s last name is Marxinov.

We noted last week that during this season of the Church Calendar that what is emphasized is Doctrine and ministry. The idea was that Doctrine would be taught alongside with how that Doctrine could be implemented via some kind of ministry in a person’s life.

This week we want to briefly consider the Christian doctrine of Anthropology.

What we have in Romans 3 is God’s pronouncement on the nature of man. Fallen man is utterly sinful. Even man as Redeemed by Christ realizes that he contends against a nature that is not yet perfected. He confesses his sins weekly and is taught in his catechism to recite to the question,

Q. 82. Is any man able perfectly to keep the commandments of God?

A. No mere man since the fall is able in this life perfectly to keep the commandments of God, but doth daily break them in thought, word and deed.

The Heidelberg echoes this when it teaches,

“even the holiest men, while in this life, have only a small beginning of this obedience (to God’s Law).

Christianity has always taught that man has a sin nature and that the sin nature is not finally put off completely until we put off this mortal coil. So thoroughly has Christianity taught this that the Gospels make it clear that Jesus did not have this sin nature that He might be a pure sacrifice for our sins.

This is so simple and basic but if we get this wrong in our doctrine there is no help of getting anything else correct. And we live in a culture where the idea that man is sinful is

1.) Man is basically good

“I know in my heart that man is good…” — Ronald Reagan

Man left to himself, apart from evil influence, will choose what is good. This is articulated by Cultural Marxist Psychologist Eric Fromm when he writes,

“As far as I know we just don’t have any intrinsic instincts for evil. If you think in terms of basic needs; instincts, at least at the outset are all good — or perhaps we should be technical about it and call them ‘pre-moral’ neither good or evil.”

Another Psychologist Wendell W. Watters writes,

“The true Christian is running furiously on a treadmill to get away from whole segments of his or her human nature which he or she is taught to fear or about which he or she is taught to feel guilty. The Christian is brainwashed to believe that he or she was born wicked … ”

Of course all this denies the plain words of Scripture. If man were basically good and his nature was good then the whole idea of Christianity, and the Church would be irrelevant. Christianity and the Church might exist but if it did exist it would exist as a place where people would attend in order to meet other nice people, hear some uptempo music, listen to sermons about how good they are, how to influence other people, and how to get on in life with people who do not yet know how good they are. If man were basically good then the demand would be for Christianity and the Church to meet felt needs and perhaps be a place where social justice can be pursued. If it were true that men were basically good then there would be no need to hear about a Christ who takes away sin. If it were true that men were basically good then Christianity and the Church would become just about what it currently already is today — currently is that because “man is basically good” is what most of the Church believes today.

But Biblical Christianity does not believe that so when you come to Church you hear God’s law and because as Christians we break God’s law every day in word, thought, or deed, we confess our sins and then hear God’s forgiveness for the sake of Christ.

As we continue to consider Romans 3 we understand that we sin because of our nature. The problem is not primarily with the environment that lies outside of us, but rather what lies inside of us. James underscores this when he writes,

14 But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and is enticed.

You see both St. Paul and St. James agrees that the problem is within us.

But our culture does not agree with this assessment. Contrary to Biblical Christianity we are constantly inundated with messages that the environment is the problem.

2.) Man’s environment accounts for evil

Psychologist Abraham Maslow has directly said,

“Sick people are made by a sick culture, healthy people are made possible by a healthy culture.”

This means that if man is to discover his goodness, what needs to happen is a change of environment. This accounts for the belief in social engineering. Because this is true, man’s lack of goodness is explained in terms of his family, culture, or social environment. If man is to be changed, man’s environment must be changed.

Anti-Christian doctrine teaches that if man is to be saved, man’s environment must be changed. Change comes from the outside in. Christian doctrine teaches that if man’s environment is to be changed, man must be changed. Change comes from the inside and radiates outward as we are renewed by the Spirit of the living God because of the finished work of Christ on the Cross for His people.

The idea that sick people are made by a sick culture has been around forever. Writing in 1908 Dutch Theologian Herman Bavinck could complain about this kind of thinking,

“Under the influence of the supposition that at this point human beings have already traveled wonderfully far along the path of evolution, people surrender to the illusion that human being can still do infinitely more, and that we can make human beings into whatever we want. If only full use were made of the results that have been and will be obtained by scientific investigation, then nurture would not only furnish outward formation and intellectual development, but it would also improve the human person morally, eliminating the brutish inclinations still at work internally, renewing his heart, and bringing sin and crime to an end, not all at once but gradually.

Complaining about the same tendency in another area Bavinck could say again, “They all suffer from the illusion that by means of external measures, by means of abolishing old laws and implementing new laws, they can change human nature or convert the wicked heart.”

Before Bavinck in the 1840’s the founders of the common school movement were inspiringly optimistic about the power of education. These common-school reformers, beginning with Horace Mann, saw universal public education as a solution to a host of social problems. In their view, public schools would transform children into moral, literate, and productive citizens; and eliminate poverty and crime.

And this form of thought is still with us today as the coin of the realm. I stumbled across this comment about the recent incident where a NBA team owner was caught talking about black people,

“Many Americans were in love with Nazism, one popular example is the architect Phillip Johnson. So the idea of Nazism permeated American society and in 1933 it was current and relevant, one would not be unreasonable in assuming that the parents of Sterling caressed the idea and whispered to little Sterling. That is my point, we cannot rule out the possibility that Sterling’s most impressionable years were in a time of Nazism.”

You see … Sterling’s problem with his words is not because of a sinful nature but because of his environment.

Of course this is in contrast to Biblical Christianity which teaches that man’s sin nature accounts for man’s evil institutions.

And we know that only the Gospel of Jesus Christ crucified for sinners in the context of Union with Christ is the solution for Man’s sin nature.

This is why you hear me constantly say that the cure for what is wrong with us as a people is not more and better programs. The cure for what is wrong with us is the preaching of Christ Crucified followed by the discipling of the nations.

Of course in St. Paul’s statement we find that the agency by which men learn their sin nature is by the trumpeting of that Word in the context of the Gospel in the ark of the Church. Those who oppose this message have their own delivery system in order to evangelize. We talk about the necessity of Word and Sacrament. Word and Sacrament is to repeatedly point us to Christ to remind us of that only Christ can heal us via the forgiveness held out in Word and Sacrament.

However those who hold to the idea that man is basically good have their own agencies whereby they proclaim the inherent goodness of man.

3.) The agency whereby man discovers his goodness is Church & State

Just three quotes in order to support the claim that the agencies that hold to a different anthropology then Christians do — who hold that man is basically good — is mediated by agencies of Church and State

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being… The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing the classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level – preschool day care or large state universities.”

John Dunphy on the purpose of humanist education.

“Education is thus a most powerful ally of humanism, and every American school is a school of humanism. What can a theistic Sunday school’s meeting for an hour once a week and teaching only a fraction of the children do to stem the tide of the five-day program of humanistic teaching?”

Charles F. Potter, “Humanism: A New Religion” 1930

So, in Churches that practice Biblical Christianity every week, just by the liturgy we teach people that they have a sin nature that only Christ can heal and every week the State teaches that men are basically good and merely need to be educated and informed of their goodness.

The church in Revolutionary Humanism is the government school as controlled by the State. Of course over time the “Christian” church begins to reflect the Government schools as Government school graduates bring their humanism into the Church. Church and State teach basically good man that it is his role to use any means necessary to change the environment in order to serve the “good.”

4.) The abstraction of mathematical equality is applied to men in their social relations.

Revolutionary Humanism leads to egalitarianism and the egalitarianism here is defined in such a way so that no man is allowed to excel above another. All men being equal results in “all men being the same.” So, whether it is 700 million Chinese wearing the Maoist suit or whether it is men and women sharing public bathrooms, equality is now the order of the day.

5.) Man, being absolutized, is his own God

And man being God there is a movement towards Social Order uniformitarianism. All gods have unity in the godhood and so as collective man is god collective man builds social order where there is very little margin for differentiation among the particular men.

6.) All other mediating Institutions (Family, Church, School, Guild, etc.) are eliminated.

Humanism does not allow for pluralistic jurisdictions (See #5). Everything is for the State and nothing is outside the State. We are seeing this increasingly in our culture. Teachers have long been agents for the State. Soon Doctors will be agents for the State with Obamacare. Ministers, are often Defacto ministers of the State.

7.) The insistence that man, via a reason that is untouched by evil, can ascertain “self-evident” truths so as to construct a world apart from any need of Supernatural Revelation.

Man starting from the autonomous self can answer the question, “How Shall We Then Live,” and so build, a better if not indeed, perfect world. This garnering of “self-evident” truths is commonly pursued by means of legal positivism which reduces to “might makes right.” Oliver Wendell Holmes gives us this in microcosm when he said,

“I used to say when I was young, that truth was the majority vote of that nation that could lick all others…. and I think that the statement was correct insofar as it implied that our test of truth is a reference to either a present or an imagined future majority in favor of our view.

In this view of truth reason has no transcendence reference point to which appeal can be made. It is simply a matter of “licking all others.”

8.) Man’s Teleology (end) is the Kingdom of Man as expressed in some kind of paradise.

All legislation that is pursued it pursued in the name of a Utopian world where man is set free from all constraints.

9.) Man as God, thus can be assured of the inevitability of progress

Since God can not fail, Man as God calls whatever is, “progress.”

Alexander Pope gets at this in his poem, “An Essay On Man.”

All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony, not understood;
All partial evil, universal good:
And, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.