Between the time of Augustine and the French Revolution, politics in the West was developed within a basically Christian worldview. The Enlightenment and the revolutionary movements that emerged out of it constituted the rise of a new paganism. In part they were a return to pre-Christian paganism but they also constituted a new, distinctively post-Christian form of paganism. Insofar as these intellectual movements denied cardinal Christian doctrines and defined themselves over against Christianity, they are technically heresies. So the 19-20th centuries are the age of political heresies.
The most influential of these political heresies is Marxism. Marxism is best thought of as a Christian heresy in which key Christian doctrines are inverted like some sort of "Satanic Bible." For example, the idea of an eschatological kingdom of God in which heaven comes to earth is part of Marxism, but it happens through human effort according to the "iron laws" of history instead of happening through the great Divine intervention in history that the New Testament calls the Return of Christ.
Marxism views human nature as plastic and malleable and therefore denies the Biblical doctrine of original sin. Rejecting the Genesis accounts of Adam's fall and Paul's theological interpretation of the meaning of that event in Romans, Marxism views evil in the world as arising from inadequate social arrangements. Instead of seeing sin as inherent in us, it sees sin as inherent in social structures of oppression. This view of the problem also changes the nature of the solution. Instead of seeing individual salvation - redemption through the blood of Christ - as the solution, Marxism views social revolution and the common ownership of material goods as the solution.
Marxism is atheistic; it denies the existence of God and blames faith in God for the passivity of the masses who are slow to rise up in revolution at the urging of Marxist agitators. Religion, said Marx, is the opiate of the people.
Marxism urges the breaking of all of the Ten Commandments as part of its system. It urges us to covet our neighbour's goods and to rise up in a redistributive revolution to steal from the rich and give to the less rich. It worships material wealth and substitutes material wealth for God, thus breaking the first two commandments. Marxism despises the family and tradition and wants to see the family dissolved so that nothing remains except the individual and the all-Powerful State. (Even though Marx advocated the abolition of the State the depth of his sincerity can be gauged by the fact that in practice he wanted to use the State to abolish the State!)
By now you might be asking what this revolutionary, atheistic, anti-Christian system of thought could possibly have to do with Tyndale. Well, over the past century or more, Marxist ideas and Marxist apologists have gradually been worming their way into the heart of Christian institutions, churches, colleges and seminaries in order to corrupt pure doctrine and replace Christian thinking with Marxist thinking.
In the 19th century the German influence on North American Protestant theology was pronounced and it included higher criticism, evolution, idealism and socialism of various sorts. The resulting Social Gospel movement secularized Christianity by turning it from a religion that focuses on heaven and hell, sin and salvation, and Christ and the Bible into a religion that focuses on this life only, socialist politics and Marx and politics. The churches became social service agencies, theology was reduced to a vague humanism centered on tolerance and inclusion, pastors became social workers or community organizers and the enemy became big business, capitalism and the rich. The Bible is full of myths, the resurrection never happened, miracles are rejected and the real message of Jesus was simply "Love your neighbour." Since we are all good people there must not be any hell or judgment and salvation means adjusting the living conditions in this world so that there is equality of income.
In reaction to this horrifying perversion of the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ, Christians who wanted to remain connected to the orthodox tradition of the Church took their stand on Scripture and continued to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose again. They were called the Fundamentalists and they were hated, ostracized, mocked, despised and feared by the Social Gospel heretics. Fundamentalism flourished between the last decades of the 19th century and World War II.
After World War II, some Fundamentalist leaders decided to try to break out of their ghetto and re-engage the wider culture. They wanted to get involved in higher education, intellectual debate and socio-political affairs. But they wanted to do so without giving up their orthodox, biblical, fundamentalist theology.
It was at this time that institutions such as The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the National Association of Evangelicals, Christianity Today and Fuller Theological Seminary were founded. Leaders such as Billy Graham, Harold Ockenga, Bill Bright, John R. W. Stott, J. I. Packer, Carl F. H. Henry and Harold Lindsell were prominent.
Over the next 50 years Evangelicalism grew and flourished. Many seminaries, publishing companies, liberal arts colleges and mission agencies were founded and grew rapidly. Evangelical churches grew quickly while liberal Protestant ones emptied out. Evangelicals helped elect the first Evangelical president, Jimmy Carter, and when he disappointed with his liberal policies, they helped elect Ronald Reagan in 1980. Leaders like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell became politically influential as Evangelicals began to join with Catholics to resist the increasingly aggressive secularism being pushed from the Left, exemplified in the demonic practice of abortion.
In some ways, Evangelicalism became a victim of its own success. Its rapid growth in numbers meant that much of the movement was a mile wide and an inch deep. Apologetics was always a big part of Evangelicalism because evangelism was at the center of Evangelical concern. But as Evangelicalism became bigger and more successful, it began to seem to be mainstream. The despised Fundamentalists of yesteryear now had the biggest, newest churches in town and went to nice colleges to become professionals and live an upper middle-class lifestyle.
In this situation, false prophet arose who played on the guilt felt by Evangelicals who were materially well off (or whose parents were) and used this as an opening to insinuate Marxist ideas into the thinking of younger Evangelicals. Like all heresies, Marxism uses a germ of truth as bait. Jesus does call us to love our neighbours and God is concerned for the poor. These two biblical truths, however, do not justify violent revolution, income redistribution by government coercion and class warfare. But they provide an opening for Marxist ideas.
One of the main ways Marxism attempts to beguile Evangelicals is through its critique of capitalism. If they can convince you that capitalism is the problem (rather than sin) then you will be open to focusing your attention on fighting capitalism rather than preaching the Gospel. That is good for Marxism, since its goal is to overthrow the capitalist order, and it distracts Christians from preaching the Gospel.
Once the Marxists have convinced a group of Christians that capitalism is the enemy, they can work to encourage you to become ever more envious and covetous. But the brilliance of their strategy is revealed at this point: they don't get you to covet and envy for yourself, but rather, you do so on behalf of the oppressed poor! That seems unselfish and noble.
Next, the strategy is to get you to slowly but surely forget about evangelism and focus all your attention on "social justice ministry." This is a process in which you gradually get used to neglecting the well-being of the souls of the people you are reaching out to and concentrating on their material well-being in this life only. It begins by an innocent-looking theological move in which you are asked to accept the idea that mission includes both social service and evangelism as co-equal parts of the mission. But in practice one always is more prominent than the other and you will soon be told that to make evangelism the most important is unloving and unjust. Before long, evangelism drops out of sight altogether in many cases and Evangelical mission has been turned into a new, updated version of the Social Gospel.
One thing to remember is that practice precedes theory. The theological changes come later. First, we change the actual, on-the-ground way of doing mission that only later do we revise our theology to go along with the new way of doing it.
By the time the actual theological changes are made, it is almost too late because the whole meaning of Christian mission will have already been secualrized and theology grows out of mission.
Marxism is corrupting Evangelicalism today on many levels and in many ways. Those who have eyes to see and ears to hear must be alert and understand the times.
Credit: crafty-witch.blogspot.com
