Would Jesus identify with Cultural Marxism (wokeness)?
Cultural Marxists claim biblical Christians lack love and tolerance. They often profess to be more Christlike than their Christian critics.
Some Cultural Marxists are members of mainline Christian denominations who have departed from the Christian worldview. These are amongst the first to accuse biblical Christians for a lack of love and tolerance.
Cultural Marxists don’t call themselves Cultural Marxists. They use sanitized descriptors like progressive, anti-racist, diverse, affirming, and inclusive. Similarly, their programs are labeled with noble-sounding names like racial reconciliation and social justice. Their sinister nature is concealed beneath such deceptive labels.
Cultural Marxists who profess Christianity (the “woke church”) commonly deny essential Christian doctrines, especially the inerrancy, infallibility and sufficiency of Scripture. Non-biblical sexual behaviors and ideologies are often affirmed.
The woke church has been conformed to the world rather than Christ. In fact, they are embarrassed by biblical Christianity.
They crave friendship with the world. Friendship with the world makes one an enemy of God (Colossians 2:8, James 4:4, I John 2:15).
Biblical Christianity affirms the Law and the Gospel.
The Law identifies all men as sinners. It is a mirror that exposes the unsaved man to his sin. This exposure prepares the man to understand his need for forgiveness.
The Gospel informs the man that forgiveness for his sin is available through the work of Jesus on the Cross, and encourages him to grasp the provision that Christ has made for him.
The believer responds in faith and repentance and experiences a new birth. The life produced by this new birth manifests itself in new behavior. The regenerate man seeks to please God in all arenas of life, including sexual behavior.
Exclusion of unbiblical sexual behaviors and ideologies from the preaching of the Law means that the man cannot fully understand his sin and his need for the Gospel.
Woke Christians choose to adopt the standards of the world. The woke understanding of love and tolerance demands affirmation of unbiblical sexual behaviors, supporting the delusions of unstable or mentally ill individuals, and submission of children to the State for indoctrination.
Cultural Marxism, whether it possesses a Christian veneer or not, is fundamentally anti-Christian.
Woke Christians are not loving and tolerant despite the deceptive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” credo of Cultural Marxism. Cultural Marxism is very intolerant and unloving, particularly towards those who challenge their worldview. The inclusiveness of the Cultural Marxist does not allow for inclusion of those that reject their wordview.
Here are some fundamental differences between biblical Christianity and Cultural Marxism:
- Christianity upholds God’s moral law as revealed in Scripture as the standard of behavior. God’s moral law exposes man’s sin and the need for forgiveness and spiritual cleansing. Cultural Marxism denies God’s moral law and the authority of Scripture. It applauds sinful behavior.
- Christianity values facts, including biblical revelation, over emotion. Christians realize feelings are unreliable measures of truth, as the human heart of each man is deceptively wicked (Jeremiah 17:9, Romans 8:7). The deceptive nature of the human heart seeks to justify sinful behavior. Cultural Marxists are less concerned with facts and more concerned with emotions. This tendency contributes to their concept of lived experience as a source of knowledge about themselves.
- Christianity reveals men as image-bearers of God whose life purpose is to be conformed to the image of Christ. Cultural Marxists claim men define their own identities through their individual interpretation of their lived experiences.
- Christianity teaches radical corruption occurred in the Fall. Man is unwilling and morally unable to liberate himself from spiritual bondage to sin due to this corruption. Liberation from this corruption requires intervention by God. Cultural Marxists believe oppression of the hegemonic system 1 enslaves humanity. Achieving critical consciousness (wokeness)2 through exposure to their ideology provides liberation.
- Christianity teaches true liberty is found in the pursuit of virtue by the regenerate man in union with Christ. Sin enslaves the unregenerate man. Cultural Marxism promotes autonomous freedom, which includes the freedom to pursue evil.
- Christianity views favoritism and abuse based upon ethnicity and skin tone as sin. Cultural Marxism views favoritism toward the oppressed class and abuse toward the oppressor class, each of which are mainly defined by ethnicity and skin tone, as virtuous.
- Christianity upholds individual property rights and values diligence and wise stewardship. Responsible generosity is encouraged. Cultural Marxists demand forced redistribution of property, power and privilege by the State utilizing its defective morality system to achieve equity (equal outcomes) between woke-defined identity groups.
- Christianity views men as individuals. Cultural Marxists assign men to either woke-defined oppressor or oppressed classes based upon immutable characteristics like skin tone and ethnicity.
- Christianity teaches universal corruption by sin through the Fall. This corruption manifests itself in each person through acts of malice and evil. Cultural Marxism assigns those deemed as oppressors (white, heterosexual, non-transgender, Christian males) as uniquely evil and those deemed as oppressed as uniquely virtuous. Assignment of these classes is not necessarily intuitive. For example, Israelis are deemed to be oppressors due to their Western democracy even though they are surrounded by Muslims who often display extreme hostility towards them.
- Christianity teaches alienation from God, other men, nature, and the body occurred at the Fall. Cultural Marxism claims alienation is due to deprivation of wealth, power, and privilege by the Western, colonizing hegemonic system1 .
- Christianity teaches male family leadership (patriarchy) and gender roles within the family that are biologically grounded. Cultural Marxism rejects male family leadership and the respectable, nourishing role of the mother as primary caregiver of their offspring, and undermines the natural family, the bedrock of society.
- Christianity values children as gifts from the Lord and views abortion as murder of a fellow image-bearer of God. Cultural Marxism views children as burdensome, especially to women. Cultural Marxists considers abortion as reproductive justice.
- Christianity acknowledges biology as a revelation of God’s will for the individual, with the bodies of male and female designed to interact with one another sexually and uniquely equipped to care for their offspring in their respective manner. Cultural Marxists reject the biologically grounded roles of the mother and father. Their rejection of biology as a reflection of God’s will is reflected in practices like so-called gender affirmation procedures conforming the appearance of the person’s body to their delusion, and the promotion of male breastfeeding.3
- Christianity trusts God for guidance, provision and protection. Cultural Marxists trust the State and the elite class for guidance, provision and protection. The State is their functional god.
- Christianity maintains an eternal perspective of justice. Cultural Marxists maintain a temporal perspective of justice. This perspective justifies vengeful acts of violence to achieve equity between oppressors and the oppressed as defined by Cultural Marxism and its intersectionality matrix.
- Christianity maintains that the individual is culpable for his own sins. Cultural Marxism maintains that the individual is culpable for historical injustices perpetrated by those sharing the same skin tone and ethnicity. In particular, those with white skin tone are culpable for the injustices perpetrated by others sharing the same skin tone in the distant past. Cultural Marxists are not consistent and deny that men of all skin tones and ethnicities have been both victims and villains towards others of different skin tones and ethnicities throughout all of human history. For instance, white slaves were enslaved by Muslims in previous eras.
I have been criticized by those on the left for speaking against Cultural Marxism. One particularly surly atheist locally told me to mind my own business concerning my comments on these issues. He has expressed very anti-Christian views towards others on several occasions.
This isn’t surprising. I would be disappointed if I didn’t receive criticism from the left. Hit dogs holler. Cultural Marxists want to intimidate and silence those who disagree with their worldview and promote the biblical standard.
Should Christians remain silent about the infiltration of our nation by Cultural Marxists? Is the sexual revolution something we should express our concerns about?
Cultural Marxists demand universal affirmation of their ideology across the nation. They demand the right to indoctrinate all children into wokeness and gender ideology through the public school system. Non-affirming parents are threatened with removal of children in some states. Pastors face the possibility of criminal charges related to hate speech for counseling members against unbiblical sexual behaviors and ideologies. Christians who consider adoption or foster care of children may find themselves ineligible due to their faith.
The Biden administration and the Democrat Party have allied with the left in moving our nation towards a totalitarian government demanding affirmation of wokeness and gender ideology, with social, economic and criminal repercussions for those who resist.
Christians are affected by their society. The Christian has the same Constitutional rights as any American citizen to express their concerns about the direction of society. Christians should resist the efforts of Cultural Marxists through any means afforded by the Constitution. This resistance includes speaking against Cultural Marxism and promoting the Christian worldview in the public square.
And, quite frankly, this resistance includes voting against the compromised Democrat party. The Democrat party has a vested interest in maintaining control of our nation through their alliance with Cultural Marxists.
What about the professing Christian denominations holding some or all of the core beliefs associated with Cultural Marxism?
Several mainline Christian denominations have rejected the orthodox teachings of their founders long ago and embraced secularism while maintaining a surface-level appearance of Christianity. These denominations profess Christianity while adopting the ungodly values and ideologies of the secular culture.
These denominations are particularly susceptible to the ideology of wokeness. After the word of God is abandoned, secular ideas fill the vacuum. I maintain that Cultural Marxism is the current evolutionary stage of their compromised secularized worldview.
Secularized mainline Christian denominations include United Church of Christ (UCC), Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA), Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), the Episcopal Church (TEC), United Methodist Church (UMC), American Baptist Churches USA (ABC-USA), Christian Churches/Disciples of Christ (DOC), Church of the Brethren (COB), Mennonite Church USA (MCUSA) and several other smaller denominations and individual churches.
Their pastors are the types that secular institutions use to staff chaplaincy positions. Newspapers use them to write articles for the Sunday religion section. They are masterful at crafting vacuous messages that do not offend anyone because they do not challenge their secular worldview.
Their portrayal of God is a caricature that does not reflect his true nature. Their inclusive platitudes lack spiritual substance. The holiness of God is sacrificed to accentuate love and tolerance as defined by our society.
You will rarely hear them discussing God’s wrath and condemnation towards sin, the coming judgment and eternal punishment of the unrighteous (Romans 1, 1 Corinthians 6, 1 Timothy 1). Their caricature of God is a Play-doh version that does not reflect reality… a distortion similar to those experienced in funhouse mirrors. Their god is an idol.
JI Packer authored a book titled Knowing God that explores God’s nature through a holistic study of Scripture. Reading this book would be very valuable in exposing the counterfeit, tamed god of secular Christianity. This counterfeit god is the one that many professing Christians are worshiping.
Satan attacked God’s word in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3). Things haven’t changed much. Many pastors of the aforementioned denominations deny the inerrancy, infallibility and sufficiency of Scripture. Some claim Christianity has progressed past the biblical culture, and prohibitions against unbiblical sexual practices no longer apply. This should cause grave concern amongst the membership.
Don’t be fooled by the progressive teaching that mankind has progressed past the need for guidance from God. They often claim that man is now free to form his own standards that contradict Scriptural principles. The pastors who proclaim such falsehoods are imposters. They are wolves in sheep clothing.
Some few individual pastors, congregations and members associated with the aforementioned denominations remain faithful. They seek restoration of their denomination to the principles of their founders.
Operation Reconquista is an association of individuals that work towards the objective of reforming their corrupt denominations.
The anonymous content creator of the Redeemed Zoomer Youtube channel is one such individual. Bruce Gore, a teacher in a PCUSA congregation with a Youtube channel, labors towards this end, too. These men are not compromised. They endeavor to influence their denominations to return to the orthodox positions of the founders.
Other faithful believers and congregations separated from these corrupt denominations. The United Methodist Church is currently experiencing a mass exodus related to the moral corruption of the denomination.
I admire those who resist the corruption of their denominations and remain faithful to God. Some remain in the denomination and seek to reform it, while others leave the denomination and find suitable fellowship elsewhere.
Personally, I would depart from a congregation compromised with wokeness after a reasonable attempt to influence a return to biblical Christianity. I hope that Operation Reconquista’s efforts will bear fruit, though.
The corruption of mainline denominations reminds me of an incident from young adulthood.
I visited an older man in my church congregation named Patrick. Patrick was blind and had difficulty walking. He was separated from his wife during this season of his life and was living alone.
His house smelled strongly of dog urine due to an aging, incontinent, blind poodle. This poodle stood in the living room, staring at the wall, silent and shaking. He didn’t seem to possess personality or awareness anymore.
I considered telling Patrick that he should consider euthanizing the dog. The acrid urine smell didn’t create the most hygienic environment for Patrick and didn’t made it easy for others to visit him.
I decided to refrain from expressing my opinion on the matter.
Since Patrick was blind, the suggestion of euthanasia may have implied that I consider blind men to be disposable. Humans are created in the image of God, and their life is invaluable from conception to the grave.
I am more utilitarian about aged, incontinent indoor pets that cannot control their waste elimination, though.
Later, I discovered the backstory from a church friend. The dog belonged to Patrick’s estranged wife. The continued presence of the pet prompted her occasional visits and kindled his hope of reconciliation. Years later, I heard that Patrick and his wife were ultimately reconciled.
Perhaps those involved with Operation Reconquista share motivations like Patrick and his desire for reconciliation with his wife. They possess emotional connections with their corrupt denomination. They are willing to endure the unpleasantness of a compromised pastor and unorthodox teachings in the hope of eventual reconciliation.
Cultural Marxist pastors, like Patrick’s dog, are worse than useless, though. They have lost touch with the biblical worldview and remained silent in the face of a decaying civilization. Worse, they affirm the sinful lifestyles and ideologies contributing to the decay.
They have ceased to be salt and light and have conformed themselves to the world and its ideologies. They are sowing chaos and confusion amongst the congregants due to their fornication with the world.
Their departure from biblical Christianity is reminiscent of the German church during the Third Reich. The German church became an appendage of the Nazi party and adopted a baptized version of Aryan ideology, unlike the faithful confessing church, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who resisted Hitler and the Nazis unto his death.
Should Christians relate to repentant brothers and sisters with sexual issues with compassion, respect, patience and acceptance? Of course. Christians struggle with all kinds of sin issues. Deliverance from sinful behaviors and thoughts in all areas of our lives does not occur at the moment of conversion. Sanctification is a lifelong process.
Repentance accompanies the new birth, though. Repentance means a change in thinking producing a change of direction. The repentant, regenerate man seeks to please God in all things, including his sexual behavior.
A Christian should not affirm sinful lifestyles and false ideologies, though. He realizes Scripture is his guide for godly living, not the world and its principles.
Don’t allow compromised, secularized professing Christians to judge your faith as unloving and intolerant if you are bold enough to speak against the spirit of this age. Cultural Marxists are unloving and intolerant towards those who acknowledge God’s authority over their sexuality.
It is not unloving to warn others about this perverse generation and the coming judgment. If a man’s home is burning down, it is loving to scream at him to wake up and to flee the burning home. Shattering windows or breaking doors down may be necessary to save him.
In fact, it is unloving to remain silent and watch the fire burn, or, worse yet, to throw gasoline on the fire to hasten the destruction of the home and its inhabitants.
Don’t allow Cultural Marxists or compromised Christians to accuse you of self-righteousness. If your standard for righteousness is God’s moral law, even if you fall short of this standard while still pursuing obedience, you are not self-righteous. True Christians seek to honor God in their behavior. However, they realize their ultimate righteousness is the gift of Jesus Christ and his righteousness bestowed upon him at the new birth. Christ’s righteousness belongs to the believer through their union with him.
The Cultural Marxist, pursuing the values of this culture, is the self-righteous one. He follows a false ideology that, in many cases, aligns with his own lusts. He seeks the approval of men and fears the loss of societal status.
Believers don’t seek to please the world and its minions. They strive to please God.
Cultural Marxists are experts at manipulating others through real or imagined guilt and shame. This is one of their control techniques. Don’t allow them to silence you through accusations concerning forgiven sins from your past.
Protestant reformer Martin Luther said “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: ‘I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!'”
Comments? Email me at [email protected] or leave a reply below. Respectful comments and questions without expletives and personal attacks will be posted and I will respond to them.
Robert Sparkman
1 The hegemonic system is the system that the hegemony (white, heterosexual, cisgender, Western, male, Christian, colonizing oppressors) created to keep the rest of society under their control, according to the lore of Cultural Marxists. The hegemonic system is one of the key elements of their conspiratorial worldview. Systemic racism and oppression comes from this system. Systemic oppression has existed in the past, but the claims of contemporary systemic oppression are false. The goal of the Cultural Marxists is to “burn down” or deconstruct society to eradicate systemic oppression through whatever means are necessary. Many Cultural Marxists are violent revolutionaries that are willing to use violence to accomplish this liberation..
2 Critical consciousness means that the person has become converted to Cultural Marxism and believes that systemic oppression is endemic within contemporary Western culture. It is analogous to the term “class consciousness” in Classical Marxism. As a convert, the Cultural Marxist begins to proselytize others to join him in the Cultural Marxist revolution. This proselytization is called “doing the work”. The goal of their revolution is to “burn down” our culture. Possessing critical consciousness is the same as being “woke”. There are parallels between Cultural Marxism and Gnosticism. Cultural Marxists claim to be the enlightened (woke) ones in society….the ones who understand how things really work in terms of power dynamics. Gnostic cultists made similar claims to superior knowledge about the nature of reality.
3 Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a federal agency compromised by woke activist leadership, endorses the practice of so-called trans women (actual men) nursing infants with non-nourishing bodily fluids secreted from their nipples through means of pharmaceuticals. See video in related content section below.
RELATED CONTENT
Owen Strachan is a seminary professor. He delivered a six-lecture series on wokeness and Christianity, and wrote a book on the same topic. This series is an excellent introduction to the topic of Christianity and wokeness.
This is an informative video relating to the Cultural Marxist claim that men can breastfeed. This practice is supported by the federal agency, Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Federal agencies like CDC have been compromised with Cultural Marxists filling key positions over time through Democrat appointments. This Cultural Marxist infiltration is part of the “long march through the institutions” strategy of activist Rudi Dutschke.
Voddie Baucham delivered two fine messages that relate to this topic….one on Cultural Marxism and the other on Ethnic Gnosticism.
Ready to Harvest channel on Youtube has a lot of great videos on denominations and movements. Joshua, the content creator, is one of the best sources of information on denominations within Christianity.
Redeemed Zoomer is a great example of a Christian who associates with Operation Reconquista. Operation Reconquista seeks to restore mainline denominations back to the orthodox beliefs of their founders. He is a young man who is a former Cultural Marxist. He converted to Christianity in high school, and his family has followed since. I don’t agree with his youthful opinions on some peripheral issues, but he has an amenable personality and a lot of good insight to offer. He has extensive experience with the progressive worldview. It was the air that he breathed.
Paul Washer is an evangelist that warns about friendship with the world in this sermon. Many professing Christians seek friendship with the world rather than faithfulness to God.
Jon Harris of Conversations that Matter has many episodes focusing on Cultural Marxism and its effect upon the American church. I recommend his channel, although some guests on his episodes can make assumptions that the listener is acquainted with the detailed language relating to their specific topic. This can be overwhelming for the uninitiated person. Some conversations are geared towards specific audiences too.
Alistair Begg is one of my favorite pastors and Bible teachers. He speaks on the topic of the Gospel in this message. His ministry is called Truth for Life and is very recommended for those interested in sound Christian teaching. He is originally from Scotland and has a very good sense of humor. He pastors a large church called Parkside Church in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. His messages are simple to understand.
Christianity and Wokeness: How the Social Justice Movement Is Hijacking the Gospel – and the Way to Stop It by Owen Strachan is one of my favorite books on wokeness.
Jared Longshore discusses the biblical standard of God’s word in this book, By What Standard? God’s World…God’s Rules. The authority of the Bible is very important in relation to the topic of wokeness. Cultural Marxists deny the authority of Scripture implicitly and/or explicitly.
Voddie Baucham, a black Reformed Baptist pastor, was raised in a family which included family members with Cultural Marxist convictions. His book, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, is excellent with regards to this topic.
JI Packer authored this classic Christian book, Knowing God. It reveals the true God from a biblical perspective to the reader, and provides a much more satisfying and biblical view of God than the secularized version of contemporary mainline churches.
Woke Jesus: The False Messiah Destroying Christianity by Lucas Miles is a clearly written book exposing of the effects of Cultural Marxism upon Christianity.
J. Gresham Machen was caught up in the conflict between mainline denominations and their descent into secularism in the early twentieth century. He stood for biblical Christianity. This book, Christianity and Liberalism, presents the secular nature of these denominations. I think a more appropriate title would be “Christianity and Secularism” because mainline denominations are essentially secularized caricatures of Christianity.
I composed a letter to the editor to the local newspaper related to this topic. The letter to the editor is very abbreviated due to the 600 word limit, which is very generous for newspaper submissions. Below is the letter in pdf form if you would like to download it.