Cultural Marxism

Thank you to Gottesdienst reader “Taylor” for writing to us about Cultural Marxism and providing a helpful link that digs deeper than my latest interview on The Gottesdiest Crowd on this very topic.

I had earlier written about the return of Marxism as a Red Trojan Horse which linked to a helpful talk by a Christian scholar that addresses Marxism’s resurgence in the west thanks to the influence of Antonio Gramsci.

Of course, there are one or two readers loaded for bear at this very moment asking why a journal of Lutheran liturgy is writing such stuff, sitting poised at their keyboards to express their outrage. Even though I don’t have to justify what I write on this blog, I will take the two preemptive minutes necessary to pop your bubble:

Liturgical Lutherans are Christians. Especially we of a theologically conservative bent who actually believe the Bible is true. Traditionalist Christians of every stripe are under attack for believing that Scripture teaches that marriage is a sacred bond between one man and one woman, and that this is a matter of biology, ontology, revelation, and natural law. We believe that God creates all persons to be either male or female. Our worldview is shaped by our Biblical theology, and our liturgy is rooted in the Holy Scriptures.

Our theology of the Church is grounded in the Biblical model that the Church is the Bride of Christ, and marriage is indeed an object lesson of the relationship of our Lord to His Church (Eph 5:32).

We also confess original sin, the eschatological reality that there will be no Utopia on this side of glory, that in this fallen world, private property is an ordinance of God, and that Christ is the only way to salvation. These and other doctrines that we believe, teach, and confess are repugnant to Marxism and to those who hold the Cultural Marxist worldview.

Those Christians who believe we can “baptize” Marx and confess a chimeric worldview of “Christian Socialism” are simply wrong. We saw the destruction of Christianity in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc - not to mention in North Korea and China. We continue to see the horrific economic oppression in Venezuela that no compassionate human being could defend.

I have been teaching Marxism to high school youth at Wittenberg Academy since 2014 - both as a worldview that is antithetical to the Christian worldview, and as an economic system that is doomed to fail because of both its inability to grasp the laws of Economics and its anthropological basis outside of reality (not to mention being contrary to the revelation of Scripture).

If you’re not interested in this topic, perhaps you should be. Your children and grandchildren are being inundated with it in their schools and universities (including those run by Christians), and in their reading, music, friendships, and entertainment. This form of Socialism transcends the old abstract arguments about the means of production and the bourgeoisie - now cutting to the very heart of what it means to be a man or a woman, and whether or not Christian people have the right to confess the truth as it has been revealed in Scripture. And in case you have not noticed, there are increasingly fewer young people confessing the Christian faith with us - and it is not because of our refusal to promote rock music and dancing girls at Divine Service.

And it you’re still not interested, I will personally refund every penny you paid to read Gottesblog. ;-)

In all seriousness, if you care about young people in our church growing up into a culture far different than you probably did, facing worldview challenges to the faith, perhaps even being led astray - you might want to get up to speed on this topic.