In Classical Marxism the enemy is the Bourgeoisie because owning the means of production they are the oppressor class to the oppressed proletariat. As such the workers of the world must unite to throw off the economically forged chains of the bourgeoisie. Said action, if successful, brings in Utopia where all are economically equal.

In Gramscian Marxism (Cultural Marxism) the enemy is not only the bourgeoisie but is also inclusive of those who are cultural creators or gatekeepers as together they own not only the means of production but also they have the hegemonic power to create and sustain the narrative that keeps the oppressed, oppressed. In Gramscian Marxism hegemony is gained and maintained primarily, not by the bourgeoisie using violence or even economic pressure. For Gramsci hegemony is maintained by the creating and securing of a subjective ideological transcendence which in turns creates culture. This is what Christianity, as carried by the White European, had achieved and if the human race was to enjoy Marxist Utopian-ism, then the hegemony of ideological transcendence as defined by Christianity must be scrubbed clean off the mind of the Western proletariat. To do this required then the now famous long march through the Western Institutions, stripping them of their former subjective ideological transcendence as created by the Christianity of the White European Christian. We might say it this way; ” Gramscian Marxism holds that Christianity is the enemy of Gramsci’s utopian new world order.”

In Gramscian Marxism the proletariat is comprised of all those who, not only are deprived the means of production, but also of all those who are in rebellion to the narrative that the oppressors use to oppress them in their defiance. We might style this new proletariat as “the grievance class.” These are those who have comprised the counter-cultural flotsam and jetsam who have lived in defiance of the culture created by the largely (though not exhaustively) Christian, White, Patriarchal, and morally traditional, cultural creators and gatekeepers.

Classical Marxism and Gramscian Marxism both attacked the foundation of Christianity as the cornerstone problem they believed they needed to rid themselves of. Classical Marxism focused on economic Christianity as its enemy. Gramscian Marxism’s assault was and is much broader, much more inclusive compared to the much narrower proletariat in Classical Marxism, and much more comprehensive in terms of all it stands opposed.

Gramscian Marxism is, by all accounts of Classical Marxism, contradictory because Gramscian Marxism (Cultural Marxism) holds that which is not material to be the chief problem. Classical Marxism, being materialistic, believed that everything was to be understood by the very material economic means of production. However, the Gramscians come along and now appeal to a thing called “culture” as the chief problem that must be conquered. However, culture is the product of man’s spiritual non-material existence. To concede that culture must be the primary obstacle is to concede that the cornerstone of Classical Marxism — dialectical materialism — was an error. Gramsci believed that the dialectical materialism was really positing a god inasmuch as it held to a objective universe outside human history was in point of fact serving as a belief in god. Gramsci exchanged this idea of a transcendent objective universe outside human history for inter-subjective Historicism where truth and meaning are shaped and formed by a history that is self-originating and self-defining that has become absolutized.

This give explanatory power then to who comprises the new proletariat. The new proletariat is comprised of minorities who have been convinced that the European Christian White who uniquely oppressed them in their origins, the pervert who has been convinced that sexuality is not a matter of the structure of the Cosmos, and the female who has been convinced likewise that gender is not a matter of the structure of the Cosmos, together with the remaining Classical Marxist economic proletariat. Throw in the guilt ridden white man and woman conditioned by the cultural zeitgeist, Academia which seems to believe that there is forgiveness to be found for the past in fanning the flames of envy, and now Corporate America which sees dollar weight shifting in favor of the triumph of Gramscian Marxism and one discovers that the new proletariat is the voting base of the Democratic party.

“Democrats, in the Georgia Senatorial race to replace retiring Republican Senator Johnny Isaacson are trying to build a rainbow coalition of African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, and suburban women that is much easier to envision in theory than in practice.”

Online Article

In this one sentence we see that all our politics have become racial. This has actually been this way for quite some time though main stream media refuses to report on it, or if they do report on it they do so with crocodile tears lamenting that the Republican party is so “waycist.” This racial dynamic of our politics is one reason why the Democrats so earnestly desire more immigrants (legal or illegal). Democrats understand that their political future depends upon the voting prowess of the immigrant nation. When they open the borders they are building up their voting base. (Republicans cooperate with the Democrats on this issue because Republican donors desire cheap labor — see below.)

The coalition that the Dems are seeking to build in Georgia is the same coalition that they used for the election of Obama and the same coalition they have as their base going into the future. With the exception of white suburban women who are feminists the entire coalition of the Dems is non-Caucasian. Both Obama and Hillary completely wrote off the White Middle class traditional voting block in their campaigns and both of them won the popular vote in the three elections they represent.

This means that the only constituency that is left to wise Republicans is the Middle class White traditionalist vote. Republicans must seek to garner larger percentages of the White middle class traditionalist vote. To be successful Republicans must become comfortable with the reality that they need to be the party of the White Middle class traditional American. This means several things,

1.) Republicans, if they want to survive, need to understand that the immigration issue is the only issue. If Republicans fail to halt the swamping of America with the stranger and the alien, Republicans will no longer exist as an alternative party. They will have to become a “me too” party to survive.

2.) Republicans seeking to expand their constituency to include large swaths of the minority vote will lose since moving in that direction, politically speaking, will mean the loss of their base.

3.) Republican candidates have to decide at some point between their Wall Street / Corporatist donors or votes. The Republican Wall Street Corporatist donors don’t care about the White middle class traditionalist voters because said donors can retreat into their gated communities, sending their children to posh private schools where there are no minorities. All the while increasing their profit margin by hiring Juan and Pablo do to their cheap labor in their factories.

We are, demographically speaking, already at a tipping point. Some would say we are already over the falls and that it is just a matter of time before the demographics make us a majority minority nation.

This reality, is what Trump tapped into in election 2016. However, to date Trump has been largely all words and little action. Trump continues to sign huge budgets which represent a continual transfer of wealth from White middle class traditional Americans to the Democrat constituency. Trump continues to drag his heels on seriously dealing with the border / immigration issue. (Why hasn’t he sent the “Dreamers” packing?) Trump continues to surround himself with Wall-Street Corporatist advisers. If only Trump really were the President that the media hyperventilates about.

So, there is a divide between White middle class traditionalist America and the minority community. However, the divide is not only racial or ethnic but it is also between competing theologies, ideologies, and axiologies.

Unless a political party arises to serve as a carrier for the interests of the White middle class traditionalist voter, this country will become even more balkanized than it already is.

Pastor Bret

Could you tease out why it is that you connect synergism with Baptist expressions of Christianity?

Thank you,

EP in Ann Arbor

Dear EP

Thank you for the question.

If you want to skip to the money part of your question being answered skim down to the italicized paragraph.

The answer comes down to the issue of Baptism. All Baptists, of course, refuse to Baptize infants insisting that they must have a confession of faith from the child before the child is to be baptized. This, of course, is the legacy of their Anabaptist heritage which broke with the Magisterial Reformers on the issue of Infant Baptism.

So, we see, that with Reformed Baptists at least, they have tried to slam together the ecclesiology of the Anabaptists with the soteriology of the Reformed. I have always said this tertium quid makes for some unstable and contradictory theology.

This unstable and contradictory theology is seen no more starkly than on the issue of infant Baptism. On one hand the Reformed Baptists avers that we are saved by Grace Alone (soteriology) but on the other hand membership in the Church can only be extended to people who reached some kind of age of accountability so can articulate a confession of faith (ecclesiology). Without that confession of faith articulated children, while perhaps being saved, should not be received into the Church as saved.

The synergism in the Baptist “thinking” I see is that whatever the adult can bring in order to be baptized and so received as a covenant member in good standing in the Church that an infant cannot bring in order to be Baptized is some kind of work that needs to be exchanged (traded in) for salvation. Baptists, in my estimation, when it comes to infant baptism insist on looking for the subjective response to God’s grace (the giving of some kind of confession) as opposed to just looking to God’s grace found in the promises and commands that God gives. However, just as the children of Israel didn’t have to wait for circumcision before they made a subjective response to grace so our children are covenant members from birth.

The upshot of this Baptist thinking is that when Baptism does finally occur in the Baptist church, the emphasis seems to fall on the decision made as opposed to the God who called and who made promises to us and to our children. Baptism communicates that God does all the saving. Baptism does not communicate the wonder of our decision.

The Baptist seems to assume that the infant of Christian parents isn’t saved until the child opts in, whereupon the child, upon opting in by confession is granted Baptism. To the contrary the paedo-Reformed, believing God includes in the covenant both Christian parent(s) and their seed by virtue of God’s promises brings their children to the Baptismal fount to be showered with the blessing of Christ. The paedo-Reformed extends the judgment of charity to their seed and believes God faithfulness until such a time, God forbid, the child has repudiated the blessings of the covenant. At that point we begin to treat them as rebels against God who need to be evangelized.

This is serious serious error that ought not to be lightly glided over. Yet, we realize how patient God has been and continues to be with us so we embrace Reformed Baptists as brothers in Christ and pray that God would open their eyes to a more Biblical Christianity.

May God be pleased to make the faith of both our families truly generational.

” For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the LORD our God shall call. ” Acts 2:39

Ten “Woke Social Justice” Highlights of 2019. This isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list but rather a kind of “best of.” Keep in mind that when we talk about “Woke Social Justice” we are using a more memorable synonym for “Cultural Marxism.” The below are examples of the inroads that Cultural Marxism is making in the Reformed church (Generously granting that Baptist can be considered “Reformed.”)

What the below represents is the #1 challenge in terms of competing worldviews to Biblical Christianity. The chief danger of this worldview is that it is being adopted as if it is the very essence of Christianity when in point of fact it is the antithesis of Christianity. In other words Christianity is now being reinterpreted through the grid of Cultural Marxism.

As a quick aside notice the participation of Dr. Michael Horton in this list. His “White Horse Inn” blog, has contributed several articles that could be included in this list but have not been. (Horton didn’t write those articles in question but they are under the umbrella of the White Horse Inn organization.)

If the Church Militant doesn’t arise to beat this “Woke” (Cultural Marxism) movement back it will be the case that the modern Church will remain just as dead as it was before Luther marched on the scene.

This list was compiled by Mark Van Der Molen. A friend and Elder who cares about this issue as much as I do.

January: PCA “worship director” Michelle Higgins invites lesbian, transgender affirming speaker to a “social justice” event at her PCA church which is pastored by her father, Mike Higgins. After internet uproar, event not cancelled, but moved to a PCUSA church down the road.

March: Ekemeni Uwan speaks at Sparrow Conference. Tells white people they need to “divest of their whiteness”. Some in audience walk out. Internet pushback results in Uwan video being removed. Uwan plays victim, hires lawyer and demands video be turned over to her. Sparrow organizers comply with Uwan’s demand.

March: OPC minister Mika Edmondson (speaker from MLK #50 event) invited to give 2 lectures at Westminster Seminary California. Talked about the “risk” Christ took in going to the cross as a model for the risk we should take in pursuit of social justice. Suggests that folks not voting in a way that supports critical race theorist’s interest is akin to giving Jews bread during the Holocaust while politically supporting Hitler. Public and private pushback ensues. Videos of his speeches initially taken down, but later re-posted on WSCAL’s facebook page.

March: Westminster Seminary California professor Michael Horton publishes two articles arguing for “social justice” as fulfilling the command to love neighbor.

March: Christina Edmonsdon speaks at Dordt College. Says “racism bankrolled the U.S.” and in America, “one can be a good white Christian and hate your neighbor”.

April: Jemar Tisby invited to speak at Dordt College. Concerned folks ask the College to disinvite Tisby due to his neo-marxist views. College president does not disinvite, but says the college professors can answer student questions if Tisby delivers unorthodox content. Tisby delivers address on how the evangelical church is built upon white racism.

May: PCA Pastor Greg Johnson publishes article revealing that he is a homosexual. Promotes Side B view that his homosexual attraction isn’t sinful in itself.

June: PCA Pastor Greg Johnson speaks at PCA General Assembly against endorsing the Nashville Statement’s on same-sex attraction. Receives applause by delegates. Later states that demographics and time are on his side for the future direction of the PCA.

June: Southern Baptist Convention adopts Resolution #9, endorsing Critical Race Theory as an acceptable “analytical tool”.

September: Rachel Green-Miller’s “Beyond Authority and Submission” published, which argues complementarian views are unbiblical products of Victorian age. Claims she is no longer complementarian. Her book is endorsed and promoted by OPC minister Carl Trueman. Many negative reviews point out the biblical and historical flaws of the book. Green-Miller and her supporters reply by attacking the reviewers as “misogynistic”.

“The pluralism of the Noahic covenant requires members of the human community, Christians included, to cultivate the virtue of tolerance. Tolerance is a proper feature of justice in our fallen but pressured world.”

David VanDrunen
Politics After Christendom

The above quote was posted as a tweet on twitter by a clergy member who has a Ph.D from the vaunted London School of Economics and is reputed to be an intellectual pillar of the Church. Said minister is quoting this in an approving manner. Apparently it is from a new book that is to be released in April by Van Drunnen on a Reformed Church already punch drunk from his theology of contradictions.

I post this post, first, in order to shred this quote and secondly to demonstrate again how torpid our current clergy corps is. This quote and the mindset that developed it (Van Drunen) as well as the mindset that embraces it is reflective of how far the modern Reformed church has fallen if only because such a “theology” as this represents is completely innovative and has never been held by any Reformed clergy at any time or in any place. In other words the idea that Christians are not supposed to rule in the public square and that it is wrong for Christians to advocate that Christian magistrates rule consistently with God’s Word (as opposed to ruling by the invocation of Natural Law) is an innovation that has zero historical legs prior to the last fifty years. It is complete balderdash.

So, let us examine, first what this quote means in language that isn’t technical. In R2K “theology” (we only call it theology by way of courtesy) the Noahic covenant was a covenant that applied to all mankind and not merely the redemptive line. As such it was a common grace covenant. The implications of this therefore are that in the public square we must realize that God does not rule by His Law-Word as expressed in Scripture but rather rules by Natural Law. Further, because the public square is the space of common grace where all men interact, therefore the public square must be characterized by tolerance (principled pluralism — so called). This means that no one God should be uniquely God of the public square since the God of the Bible, via the Noahaic covenant has ordained that the public square is a realm of common grace and not saving grace and therefore it is to be legislated by a judicial framework that is NOT uniquely Christian but rather one that can be common to all men; to wit, Natural law.

Therefore tolerance is the virtue of all virtues as it relates to the public square. The Noahic covenant included all mankind and therefore is the basis of a required tolerance in and for the public square.

Now, of course what this theory must embrace for the common square is the idea that neutrality obtains in the common square. All men, regardless of their religion, can come into the common square and because they all have access (despite the contested presuppositions of their various religions) to a Natural law that they each and all share. The great premise of this haberdash theology is that the presuppositions of the various religions as owned by various men does not impact the way that they each and all interpret Natural law. In R2K “theology” common grace gives to all men the ability to agree on how natural law should be interpreted and understood. On a prima facie basis this should be instantly recognized to be thorough-going fantasy theology.

Now, as to the Noahic covenant let us note a few matters in order to eliminate the idea that it was a common grace covenant made with all men through Noah.

1.) The Noahic covenant, contra Van Drunen is thoroughly redemptive, both in looking back to creation and looking forward to Christ. Consider that the whole scenic panorama of Noah hearkens back to Adam. Noah is a second Adam who has, by God’s grace, been placed in a garden type setting after God conquers chaos (cmp. Gen. 1:2). Noah, like the first Adam is commissioned to be fruitful and multiply like Adam. All of this is a kind of repristination of the creation account and the Noahic covenant, as part of the covenant of grace, finds Noah as the representative Adam standing in for all mankind. As such it points us back to creation and yet forward to Christ because this new Adam (Noah) falls thus communicating there is a champion seed of the woman yet to come. This is about as redemptive as it gets.

2.) The Noahic covenant comes immediately after the flood which is in I Peter likened unto a Baptism. That is redemptive language. Now, combine this 2nd Adam, who has gone through the flood waters of Baptism, immediately offers sacrifice to God upon landing and it beggars the mind to suggest the Noahic covenant is not a redemptive covenant.

3.) The Noahic covenant is redemptive because inasmuch as the Noahic covenant promises continued life for mankind, in that much there will be those elect within all mankind who will be called and placed in the covenant of Grace. In other words, the general or common aspect of the Noahic covenant serves the larger purpose of maintaining a population out of which the Redeemed will be plucked.

The idea that the Noahic covenant is a common grace covenant related to creation and not redemption does not withstand sustained examination.