They are committing the sin of idolatry and building Uriah’s altar
This is the 3rd article in a series on the Social Justice Gospel
Perhaps you’ve heard this before: “Politics is downstream from culture”. It’s called the Breitbart Doctrine, named after the late journalist, Andrew Breitbart. One lesson from Breitbart’s point was that if you want to change a society’s politics then focus on culture.
The Breitbart Doctrine could just as easily be called the Frankfurt Doctrine. During the 1930’s a group of Marxist scholars from Frankfurt Germany fled Hitler’s Nazism and landed in the U.S. These scholars and their ideas would become known as the Frankfurt School. Guys such as Max Horkheimer, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, George Lukacs and more became the Marxist gurus for American leftists. Dedicated Communists, their vision was the same as all dedicated Communists: a Communist Revolution that would topple a Capitalist system. For these Marxist ambassadors however, the way to go about making the Revolution happen in America was different than that of their ideological father, Karl Marx. Marx saw a violent clash of the classes with the worker class overthrowing the Capitalists. The “dictatorship of the Proletariat”, as Vladimir Lenin called it, could only be birthed in Capitalist blood,
“The substitution of the proletarian (oppressed workers) for the bourgeois (oppressive capitalists) state is impossible without a violent revolution.”[1]
Yet, these Frankfurt scholars saw a different path toward a Communist America: through culture. They understood the Breitbart Doctrine before Breitbart did. They understood that to change American government they needed to wade further upstream and focus instead on American culture.
In order to effectively change culture it needs to be criticized. Thus, the Frankfurt School began developing something called “Critical Theory” (“CT”). Max Horkheimer, the director of the Institute of Social Research (the school in Frankfurt Germany where these scholars were previously employed) is essentially the “father” of CT. Any theory was a critical theory, Horkheimer said, if it “seeks to liberate humans from the circumstances that enslave them.”[2] Can you hear the Marxist motif in those words? Those enslaving are the oppressors and those liberating are the oppressed.
But what is CT? Well, it’s criticism. Criticism of the way things are. Criticism of the way everything is. Critical Theory is a relentless campaign to delegitimize, deconstruct, and ultimately destroy the cultural norms of a society. It’s not simply an attempt to understand society, it is an attempt to change it. Here I recall the words of Proverbs“Through the mouth of the wicked [the city] is destroyed”[3]
One of these CT swammies, Wilhelm Reich, saw that if a Communist Revolution depended on a Cultural Revolution, then the Cultural Revolution required a Sexual Revolution. Reich worked for Sigmund Freud, was a member of the Communist Party, and wrote his bestseller “The Sexual Revolution”. You could say he was the minister that married Freud to Marx – a marriage that birthed a sexualized Marxism, or what has been called “Freudo-Marxism”. You could say Reich took Marxism to the bedroom so that oppressed sexual perversion and revolution could become “one flesh”. If you’re asking what all that means, it’s this: all Western sexual norms, based on Judeo-Christian principles, must be overthrown in order to normalize any and all sexual activity.
I would have you pause a minute, re-read that sentence, and think about what that means. Reich, and the Frankfurt School, did not see two “norms” co-existing in society – one religious and the other Marxist. Neither could tolerate the other. You cannot miss the implication: a Sexual Revolution would necessarily destroy marriage and the family:
Reich saw the family, with its inevitable patriarchal authority, as the chief source of repression. Therefore, the family had to be dismantled.”[4]
These are two mutually exclusive “norms” for society. It will be either one or the other. The Frankfurt School, and their followers ever since have worked relentlessly to achieve their norm. Ask yourself how much Hollywood, public school, colleges, and media help to nurture Biblical morals. You know the answer. They undermine everything you believe in as a Christian and an American. The reason is because these cultural institutions are on the side of the Frankfurt School, and thus, they are dedicated to achieving a new norm for our society. Personally we have to ask whether we are willing to fight for our Judeo-Christian norm. Ronald Reagan’s famous quote regarding freedom could also be said of our increasingly despised Judeo-Christian views:
“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”[5]
Sobering. Juxtapose his quote with that of Lenin, the brutal Marxist leader of the Bolshevik Revolution:
“Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I shall have sown will never be uprooted.”[6]
Reich’s fellow comrade in the Frankfurt School , Herbert Marcuse, who is regarded as the Father of the New Left, and who authored such books as “Eros And Civilization” and “The One Dimensional Man”, called this idea of unrestricted sexuality Polymorphous Perversion. In Marcuse’s mind the homosexual was the ultimate rebel. Though not one himself, Marcuse saw homosexuality was more than mere orientation – he saw it as a philosophical rejection of the heterosexual norm of society. His point is that sexual perversion is a strategy to dismantle prevailing Biblical sexual morals. You can see how knowing the Frankfurt School will go a long way for us to understand why we see such a modern day kinship between Marxism and people in the LGBTQ movement. [7]
As a matter of strategy the Frankfurt School utilized the idea of “infiltration.” Transforming culture would mean getting a hold of those institutions in society that were most influential on the culture: public education, universities, Hollywood, media and so on. Marcuse believed they had to work within the institutions in order to work against them. [8] This coincided with Rudy Dutschke’s summarization of Antonio Gramsci’s strategy that the Marxists must be dedicated to a “long, slow march through the institutions.”[9] Think of it like a cancer infecting the body and metastasizing.
Antonio Gramsci was a fellow Communist, though not associated with the Frankfurt School. Italian, Gramsci was a threat to Mussolini’s Fascism so he found himself imprisoned for the last 12 years of his life. Unfortunately, Il Duce could not incarcerate Gramsci’s ideas, and his highly popular prison writings earned him reputations like “the father of cultural Marxism” and “The Most Dangerous Socialist in History”. [10]
Gramsci made famous the idea of “hegemony”. Hegemony refers to the ruling class’s ability to enforce their worldview by cultural dominance. [11] In other words, what everyone in society thinks is “normal” and “right” and “real” is dictated by the ruling class. These ideas serve to maintain the status quo of society, which basically means its how the oppressor class uses culture to keep its power over the oppressed classes. According to Gramsci a new “hegemony” was needed, a new “normal”, one dictated by and for the oppressed group. Gramsci taught that the oppressed class needed to take over the “cultural means of production” (e.g. universities, public education, the arts, media, etc.) to change what people thought was “normal”.
Take a moment and reflect on their success. How fast has our society moved into normalizing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender lifestyles? Yet these were preceded by other diversions from Biblical norms: cohabitating, babies born out of wedlock, divorce on demand and more. There is no stagnancy. Once they have achieved one mile they keep pressing for the next. The long, slow march keeps marching on – from an imprisoned Italian Communist these ideas are still running free nearly a century later.
We can go on with more characters from the Frankfurt School, but, I think we’re getting the gist. Communist Revolution comes by Cultural Revolution, and the Cultural Revolution comes through Critical Theory and Sexual Revolution.
Commenting on the not-so-beautiful women she hosted, Abigail Adams once said “Candlelight is a great improver of beauty”. Darkness is a friend to the ugly. Critical Theory looks better in candlelight as well. As Christians, therefore, we have to consider the Frankfurt School’s ideas in light of Scripture. The Frankfurt School’s sole purpose, as a Communist movement, is a society that has eliminated all such Western and Judeo-Christian elements as marriage, family, parenting, morals, law, reasoning, individualism, hierarchy and private property. You don’t have to have a degree in Theology to see right away how antithetical to Biblical Christianity this is.
As we saw in our previous article, as a development of Marxism, the Frankfurt School bears the fruit of an ungodly root. If we are going to be committed to our Lord Jesus Christ and His teachings, then we must contend with worldviews and ideologies that “set themselves up against the knowledge of God.”
Of great concern, therefore, is that many Evangelicals are trying to borrow from Marx in how they see the world, thinking they can pick and choose a la carte from his ideas. One example is the Southern Baptist Convention’s decision to formally adopt Critical Race Theory (CRT) as an “analytical tool”. [12] Critical Race Theory is Critical Theory applied to race relations. I find it odd (or suspicious?) to adopt CRT as merely an analytical tool when, if you remember from above, its purpose to Marxists is to change society.
Another example is when Mika Edmondson spoke at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (EFCA’s seminary) to the Gospel Coalition’s leadership in May of 2016. In his speech, titled Is Black Lives Matter The New Civil Rights Movement he said,
“I strongly recommend full engagement with the concept and critical engagement with the movement, especially since there’s no evangelical alternative to Black Lives Matter.”[13]
Not only are his arguments regarding race issues factually deficient, but, here he says the Marxist organization of Black Lives Matter is the evangelical Church’s only option for battling these alleged race issues.
Now, if this is the first time you’re hearing that BLM is a Marxist organization I would credit the media and churches for their failure to inform you. (Since you can find out about BLM online in a matter of seconds I would even ask why you never looked them up). Black Lives Matter co-founder, Patrisse Cullors explicitly stated she and fellow BLM founder Alicia Garza are “trained Marxists” who are “superversed on an ideological framework” (referring to Marxism)[14] The reason they started BLM was to advance Marxism in the context of race in America. What that means is the Marxist lens of oppressors and oppressed needs to become the template for seeing black and white relations in America. Ultimately, it’s not about black lives mattering, it’s Marx’s ideas that matter. Until recently the BLM website had a page publishing its beliefs – much like churches do. [15] In addition to repeated Communist jargon like “comrade” the BLM belief statement articulates things like:
We make space for transgender brothers and sisters to participate and lead.
We…. do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk, especially Black trans women
We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure
We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking, or rather, the belief that all in the world are heterosexual
You will have successfully “squared the circle” if you can reconcile such statements with the Bible. You can see how consistent with the Frankfurt School’s ideas of normalizing all sexual behavior, ending families, and upending the whole oppressive system bleeds through BLM’s agenda. We will explore BLM more in a coming article, but for now, understand that anyone who says the Church must pair up with this organization needs to be cautiously avoided. Wittingly or unwittingly, they are committing the sin of syncretism and building Uriah’s Altar.[16] They are pairing up the table of Christ with the table of demons. [17]A faster way of arousing the Lord’s jealousy I can’t think of.
While the Marxists are going upstream the Church needs to stay focused on fishing for men.[18] Nor should we forget that further upstream something more foreboding awaits. A trembling dam sits counting down the days. At some point it is going to break loose and come downriver like a tidal wave destroying everything in its path. Let us not waste time purifying dirty water while we ought to be pulling drowning men out with the Gospel.
REFERENCES
- P131, Safire, William. Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches In History. New York & London, W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory#:~:text=Critical%20theory%20(German%3A%20Kritische%20Theorie,contrast%20to%20traditional%20theory%20oriented
- Proverbs 11:11
- Kengor, Paul. The Politically Incorrect Guide To Communism. Page 228
- https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/speech/january-5-1967-inaugural-address-public-ceremony
- Commonly attributed to Vladimir Lenin
- https://www.marxist.com/lgbt.htm
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_institutions
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_long_march_through_the_institutions
- https://stream.org/dangerous-marxist
- ttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony#21st_century
- https://www.sbc.net/resource-library/resolutions/on-critical-race-theory-and-intersectionality/
- https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/tgc-podcast/is-black-lives-matter-the-new-civil-rights-movement/
- https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-co-founder-describes-herself-as-trained-marxist/
- Probably due to the enormous criticism of the page and the recently sharp decline in support they took it down. One has to ask why they would “hide” their beliefs – they certainly have not changed them.
- In 2 Kings 16:10-16, at the king’s direction, Uriah the priest built a pagan altar next to the Bronze altar
- 1 Cor 7
- Mark 1:17