I cannot stress enough how important this article is. It should be read by anyone in a Christian leadership position. It is the finest article on the background to the takeover of the America university system by Marxists and radicals that has occurred in the past decades.

The Rev “Rob” Smith is an Anglican priest and lecturer of theology and ethics at Sydney Missionary Bible College, and a book review editor for the e-journal Themelios. It is published for the Evangelical English-speaking world, with contributors from this country, the UK and “down under.”

In his article, Rob Smith sets out to examine the concept of “Cultural Marxism” and determine if the term is useful, if it pertains to a real ideology, or if it is merely a myth invented by conservative activists to negatively broad brush the Left.

He goes about this principally from a historian’s perspective, and rightly affirms that intellectual history is especially difficult, though it is important:

The development of ideas and their links to the movements they generate or justify is often a messy process. It can be notoriously difficult to identify the precise relationship between this school of thought and that social phenomenon or to quantify the impact of particular individuals on larger social changes.

Rob begins his analysis by examining the main components of Karl Marx’s theories (especially useful for those who have not majored in economics or history in college). Rob points out that Marx came from a nominal Christian family and became an atheist as a boy, and never looked back. Not surprisingly, the salient feature of Marx’s theories was his hatred of the bourgeois (the economic middle class). He also developed a reliance on, and then reversed, the philosophy of Hegel. Marx believed that history was driven by materialists factors, not spirit as Hegel believed, and primarily driven by the struggle of the underclasses. Marx believed this would eventually end in a classless Utopia after the bourgeois were violently overthrown. He predicted that communist revolutions would first take place in Europe led by awakened industrial workers. Of course, this did not happen. In Russia and China, the Communist revolution was led by intellectuals and supported mostly by peasants.

Kentaro Toma

Marxist followers tried to make sense of why the industrial workers did not succeed in bringing revolution in Europe and America, and why only a minority were truly radicalized. The answers were worked out by an Italian Communist Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) who died young but left an extremely influential set of writings. These were done while he was in one of Mussolini’s prison – He had actually supported the fascist Mussolini earlier. Reflecting on his Catholic youth, Gramsci concluded that the reason that prevented workers from becoming communist as Marx had predicted was that the culture was Christian and held on to Judeo-Christian values and ethics. This would always impede and stop the spread of communism. His solution was not a frontal attack on the church, as was happening in Russia, but rather a slow takeover of church institutions and government agencies.

Gramsci’s work was not edited and published in English until 1970, but it circulated among the radical youths of the 1960s and continues to be vastly influential today among radicals and Marxists. The Rev. Smith affirms that after Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci is the most influential Communist writer of all time. What he advocated has become fact in the American University system, many NGOs, and through “liberation theology” in many parts of the Catholic Church.

This continued advancement of Marxism in the universities and other institutions of America was fueled by a group of Marxist intellectuals that came together at a Communist think-tank in Frankfort, Germany after World War I. They were independent of Stalin’s control, unlike the official Communist parties of the time, and developed different ideas about how to bring about the promised Communist Utopia. The Frankfort group, including Theodore Adorno, Eric Fromm and Herbert Marcuse, fled Germany after the Nazis won power (1933). For a time, they gathered in Columbia University and established the influential Marxist journal, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. They were careful to be discrete and not overtly call for revolution or cite Karl Marx directly. What they did was develop critical theories of the important institutions of the West, with the intension that if they collapsed internally, or lost authority, the Communist revolution would succeed naturally, and utopia could be gained.

A salient quality of their writings was that they said nothing about the coming Utopia, assuming it would naturally fall into place. Several, including Eric Fromm, attempted to unite Marxist theory with Freudian psychoanalysis. Marcuse did this also, and in his Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (1955) went to the extreme of suggesting the capitalist bourgeois restrictions on sexuality were what made people unhappy. The liberated person should have no restrictions on sexual expression, including doing what some children do, playing with their own poop. He called this “polymorphous perversity” – a truly demonic idea which invites the spread many parasitic and bacterial diseases. In spite of this, Eros and Civilization became one of the foundations of the sexual liberation movement.

The writings of Gransci and the Frankfort group permeated American and European universities and blended with ecological, feminist, and LGBQ agendas to produce the political correctness movement – which is destroying freedom of speech in the universities. In this regard, Marcuse’s essay, “Repressive Tolerance” (1965) is key, as he suggested there that free speech can be oppressive to the underclasses of society and must be restricted.

The Rev. Smith concludes by identifying Cultural Communism as a real, strong, and active ideology. It is not a myth invented by right-wing activists, nor is it a Jewish plot as some have suggested. Although many in the Frankfort group were indeed Jews, it also had non-Jews. Rather, Cultural Marxism is Marxism elaborated and gone to seed while the West snoozed.

This is a masterful article, concise and insightful. Readers need not have a degree in philosophy or history to understand, though it might be difficult to follow for someone without a college education.

I find the only weak point in his article is the Rev. Smith’s section on how to reverse the present, awful situation in our universities. He advocates pursuing standard evangelistic techniques of conversations and evangelization with the radicals, as in, being polite and listening, and then giving the Gospel. Unfortunately, that has not worked very well. There have been Evangelical groups and clubs at universities for decades, and they have not stopped the universities’ march to radicalization. Traditional evangelism and apologetics has had relatively little impact on non-believers who are saturated with the ideas and myths of Marxism, while the writings of the New Atheists, have widely broadcast distorted and deformed views of Christianity.[1]

What the Rev. Smith is lacking is any understanding in the development that has occurred in recent decades in the area of spiritual warfare. He hints that some of the success of the Cultural Marxism may be due to demonic influences, but does not elaborate on this.

In this regard, I am preparing an essay which suggests that to counter Cultural Marxism it is necessary to massively employ spiritual warfare techniques and strategies, as in “concerts of prayer” that war against the territorial “principalities and powers” that reign over universities. Decades ago, the missiologist Peter Wagner showed this could be done to bind the demonic spirits that held back effective evangelization in the areas that resisted the Gospel.[2] To this type of spiritual warfare[3] should be added the “power evangelism” technique for individual evangelization made popular by John Wimber.[4] Indeed, radicalized individuals will not be swayed by evangelistic tracts or Billy Graham type crusades. Their deep contempt for Christianity makes them resistant to those forms of evangelization. But they will respond to the Gospel if it is presented, as scripturally mandated, with “signs and wonders,” as in their own healings (Heb 2:1-4). Power evangelism might best be brought to the universities through the “public prayer stations” where intercessors are posted on the streets to offer prayer to pedestrians. Even radicals have personal needs (“I’m sick,” “My girlfriend left me,” etc.) and are often willing to try prayer.[5]

Reviewed by William De Arteaga

Notes

[1] Siniscalchi, Glenn B., “Evangelization and the New Atheism,” American Theological Inquiry, 2 no 2 Jul 15 2009, p 29-41

[2] Peter Wagner has written many books and articles, but perhaps the two most pertinent in praying for the universities and colleges are: C. Peter Wagner, ed., Territorial Spirits: How to Crush the Enemy Through Spiritual Warfare (Shippensbury: Destiny Image, 2012) and Confronting the Powers (Regal, 1996)

[3] [Editor’s note: For a counter-point to the discussion of strategic level spiritual warfare, please see Larry Taylor, “Worldviews in Conflict: Christian Cosmology and the Recent Doctrine of Spiritual Mapping” Pneuma Review (Part 1 in Fall 2001 and Part 2 in Winter 2002).]

[4] John Wimber and Keven Springer, Power Evangelism (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1987).

[5] William L. De Arteaga, The Public Prayer Station: Taking Healing Prayer to the Streets and Evangelizing the Nones (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2018). Note the rapid conversion of a dedicated atheist during a prayer station healing, p. 62.

Dr. R. T. Kendall has been preaching for over sixty years. He has also personally experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. For twenty-five years he served as the pastor of Westminster Chapel in London. He is the author of many books and now ministers internationally. He is a strong advocate for bringing together in the church the exposition of the Word and the power of the Spirit.
An updated version of his book, Word and Spirit: Truth, Power, and the Next Great Move of God was released in October 2019.

PneumaReview.com: In Word & Spirit you have written about a great divorce in the church. Please tell our readers what you mean by that.

R. T. Kendall: I call it a silent divorce because nobody knows precisely when it occurred nor has it been officially announced – except that I have been saying it for nearly thirty years. That said, it is obvious that the evangelical wing of the church has been divided into two emphases – those who stress the Word – sound doctrine, historical Protestant theology and expository preaching, and those whose emphasis has been the gifts of the Spirit, signs and wonders and the need to be as the church was in the book of Acts. Both are exactly right. But it seems that nearly wherever I go in the world it is either one or the other. In the book of Acts they had both. But to find a church where both are truly carried out is exceedingly rare.

PneumaReview.com: What are some of the key factors that have contributed to this divorce?

R. T. Kendall: I don’t know for sure, but possibly because those who have assumed that signs and wonders ceased way back in the early church have espoused cessationism and have turned it into a dogma. If you believe in the gifts of the Spirit you are not very welcome in some churches. They are suspicious of those who uphold the possibility of signs and wonders today. I will say that this is not everywhere. In England the Charismatic Movement is mainstream; in America it is often regarded as the lunatic fringe. Cessationism has helped polarize these two movements. There should not be a divide, but there is. The word churches think they believe in the Holy Spirit because they are Trinitarian. The truth is, they believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Bible. Many are fearful of the Holy Spirit. At the same time many (thankfully not all) have little or no deep theology. For example, a robust view of the sovereignty of God is largely absent.

PneumaReview.com: You have said that there is a lot of biblical illiteracy in the church, even among Evangelical and Charismatic Christians. What are some of the main reasons for this?

This book takes an in-depth look at the resurrection of Jesus, as it figures in the writings of the New Testament and in the Church’s subsequent use of the resurrection as an idea. Alkier begins by taking a close look at the resurrection in Paul’s writings, and he shows, at every turn, that Paul’s gospel was contingent upon the “reality” of the resurrection. The connection between the resurrection and the saving power of the gospel can also be gleaned from the remaining books, although it is laid out in a less direct way.

After five chapters of exegesis on Paul, Hebrews, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, the Johannine Writings, and the Catholic Letters, Alkier presents four chapters of “systematic interpretations”. Here the book takes a rather odd turn, as Alkier calls on the semiotic theory of Charles S. Peirce to examine the phenomenology of the resurrection in terms of “firstness”, “secondness”, and “thirdness”. It is not altogether clear what is to be gained by this. Perhaps if Alkier had spent more time selling the reader on Peirce’s ideas, and on explaining their value, there might be more to say in their behalf.

In connection with this use of Peirce, there arises a significant concern in the guise of Alkier’s continual attempt to sideline the importance of the “empty tomb”. At this point, we are led to wonder whether “reality”, as it appears in the book’s title, really means reality (The knowing reader cannot help but recall Luke Timothy Johnson’s ill-fated attempt to redefine the word “real” in relation to “the real Jesus”). There is a foreshadowing of Alkier’s misgivings already on page 1, where the posing of questions about the emptiness of Jesus’ tomb and the objectivity of the resurrection appearances is said to amount to an “extensive reduction of the discussion”. As we see later on, these historical questions are, for Alkier, not merely the pincers of a reducing movement, but wholly dispensable aspects. Naturally, this is a disappointment for those who might want to believe that “reality” means reality.

In the third and final section of the book, Alkier discusses the resurrection in relation to “ecclesial and educational praxis”, including its role as a theme in the funeral service, in “religious school instruction”, and in the Lord’s Supper. From Alkier’s point of view, it makes sense that the discussion of Peirce should intervene between the exegetical chapters and the application of the resurrection as an idea within the church. The semiotic analysis, in a way, “processes” the resurrection for its use in the church.

Those interested primarily in learning what the New Testament says about the resurrection can profit from reading the first five chapters. That, after all, is what the book’s subtitle suggests the book is about. Beyond that, it’s difficult to say what one might find of value. Without more explanation of why Peirce’s ideas move us forward, it’s difficult to see what they add.

Reviewed by John Poirier

Publisher’s page: http://www.baylorpress.com/Book/387/The_Reality_of_the_Resurrection.html

In this intriguing book, Samuel Adams tries to figure out what it means to do history about the Bible if we assume that God actually exists. The proposition is an interesting and important one: biblical studies has a legacy of being forced to decide whether to approach its object of study either theologically or historically, with the implication that historical approaches are not intended to reckon with the reality of God. In this revision of his PhD thesis, completed under the supervision of Alan Torrance at the University of St. Andrews, Adams picks at the historical method of popular biblical scholar N.T. Wright to ask whether his account of history can cope with a God who is more than simply an element in the worldviews of the biblical authors. Ultimately, Adams believes that Wright’s Critical Realist approach to history is insufficient when applied to knowing God as it does not take account of the implications of making God the object of knowledge. Having diagnosed the problem Adams sets out to offer a solution, situating himself as a theologian who is attempting to resolve a problem built into Wright’s method by drawing on the resources of apocalyptic theology (181-2). This is a bold claim, considering the status of Wright.

Adams begins by describing Wright’s approach to history. He is particularly interested in what the former Bishop of Durham has to say about how we come to know things. Wright argues that knowledge is gained when we come into contact with things outside ourselves, and Adams rightly diagnoses here the epistemological underpinning of Wright’s project. Although Adams does not dispute that Wright’s approach helps him understand what the biblical writers intended to say, he does not think it can address the ‘reality’ which they were writing about: it addresses their worldviews, rather than the subject matter of the text.

Following Torrance, Adams sees this as ‘God-talk-talk’ (talk about what people have said about God) rather than ‘God-talk’ (talk about God). For example, Adams accepts that Wright can understand the apocalyptic worldview of the writer of revelation, but argues that this is completely different from understanding the revelation (‘apocalypse’) of God in Christ. Although Wright wants to move from the history of Jesus to talk about his status as Christ, Adams argues that his theological comments are actually only comments about the worldviews of the biblical authors (56) and never quite manage to become truly theological statements. Wright describes descriptions of God, not God – despite his claims to the contrary.

Here, Adams comes to his main criticism: Wright’s method is naturalist because “the knowledge of God is treated no differently than the knowledge of reality external to the knower in general” (74-5). Rather than allowing God – as a unique object of knowledge – to shape the way he is known, Adams sees Wright as imposing an inappropriate way of knowing onto God. Because of the importance of ‘contact’ to Wright’s own account of knowledge, Adams goes on to argue that this is actually self-contradictory: Wright has previously argued that we come to know things through contact with external reality, so surely such a different reality should be known differently?

Pastor John Lathrop talks about the inescapable reality of conflict in the body of Christ.

Image: Iren Petrova

The apostle Paul, writing to Timothy, said “If anyone sets his heart on being an overseer, he desires a noble task” (1 Tim. 3:1, NIV). The work is definitely noble but the task is not always easy. Timothy knew that because he was in the troubled church of Ephesus at the time when Paul wrote to him. Paul also knew that the ministry is difficult. Conflict is all too often a part of Christian ministry. In this brief article, we explore three kinds of conflict that a minister may encounter in the church. Paul was experienced in all of them and so I will focus our attention on his experience.

Introduction

Conflict. It seems to be found in almost every area of life in our world; it is even found in the church. The presence of conflict among the people of God is confirmed by both Scripture and experience. A simple reading of the New Testament will show that the early church experienced conflicts of different kinds among its own members. In addition, if you have been a Christian for any length of time, and especially if you have been involved in Christian leadership in any capacity, then you know that conflict is still very much with us today. In his book Body Life pastor Ray Stedman includes a humorous little rhyme that is descriptive of this challenging aspect of church life.

To dwell above with saints we love,
Oh that will be glory.
But to live below, with saints we know;
Well, that’s a different story!¹

In my book, Answer the Prayer of Jesus: A Call for Biblical Unity, I say that this rhyme “may be closer to home than we would like to admit.”²

Conflict in the church is almost inevitable and it exists for a variety of reasons. In many cases it can be counterproductive and very painful; it saps our strength, troubles our emotions, and strains our relationships. At other times conflict, though painful, may be necessary for the health and wellbeing of the church. In this brief article we will survey texts that set forth three different types of conflict that the early church experienced. All of the examples that I will cite involve the apostle Paul. That being said, one need not be an apostle to encounter conflict in the church. Pastors, teachers, evangelists, deacons and others can also experience it. In fact, anyone serving in Christian ministry can find themselves involved in conflict. All of the texts that we will look at concern disputes between believers. I will not address the believer’s conflict with evil spirits (Eph. 6:10-12) or with unbelievers (Mark 13:13; John 17:14). The three areas of conflict I will focus on are: those between spiritual leaders, between church members, and between a spiritual leader and a congregation. The purpose of this brief study is to acquaint the reader with the types of conflict that one can encounter in the church, help him or her identify the issues involved, and help prepare them to handle these conflicts when they arise.

The Pneuma Review: As a New Testament scholar you have a great interest in the meaning of the biblical text but you also seem to have a great interest in miracles. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Craig Keener: Some estimate that 31 percent of Mark’s Gospel, or roughly 40 percent of his narrative, addresses miracles. To ignore the question of miracles is to ignore a hefty portion of the biblical text. Perhaps one-fifth of the Book of Acts addresses miracles, almost as much as the speeches, yet scholars often comment on the topic of the “speeches in Acts” while comparatively ignoring the miracles. I think this is a blind spot in our Western readings of the text since David Hume. Since Hume, scholars have often treated the miracle accounts in the Gospels as an embarrassment, neglecting them, explaining them away, allegorizing them in ways we wouldn’t do with most other narratives. Those are culturally circumscribed readings: when someone in the first century heard a healing report of Asclepius, for example, they understood that it was meant to invite faith in Asclepius’s power to help supplicants. Reports that the New Testament writers expected to generate faith are often treated very differently by scholars today, who are often captive to a very different worldview.

PR: How have the arguments of David Hume contributed to anti-supernatural thinking in the West?

David Hume (1711-1776), a historian and philosopher known for his skepticism and empiricism.

Keener: Hume borrowed arguments of some earlier Deists against miracles, and some of the apparent gaps in his arguments are because he is taking some conventional Deist arguments for granted. In his own day, his essay about miracles was overshadowed by other works, especially one by Conyers Middleton. Deism eventually faded from fashion, but Hume’s prestige, based on his other essays, led to his miracles essay being widely influential. Many today do not realize the historic pedigree of their views, but their ready dismissal of the plausibility of miracles simply repeats Hume’s claim.

PR: What is the fallacy in Hume’s thinking?

Keener: There is more than one. Foundational is his argument from uniform human experience. The first part of Hume’s essay appeals to laws of nature, presumably extrapolated from human experience, in a prescriptive way that does not fit current understandings of laws of nature. In Hume’s own era, in fact, most English scientists speaking about laws of nature affirmed the reality of biblical miracles; it was not scientific evidence but Hume’s philosophic argument that eventually led much of culture to reject miracles, often (wrongly) in the name of science.