Beware Christian Marxism 

Over the past week we have watched the shocking killings of Daunte Wright and Adam Toledo, even as a trial is in progress in Minnesota on the question of the murder of George Floyd last year. And, as is the case virtually every day, I have heard from pastors and Sunday School teachers and others, who wonder why even praying one sentence of lament and desire for justice in situations like this ends up with some people calling them “cultural Marxists” or “critical race theorists” or “social justice warriors.” In any sane reality, the proper response to such accusations—against these stalwartly biblically conservative men and women—would elicit nothing more than laughter. But we do not live in sane times. 

Still, let me concede: a Christian capitulation to Marxism is indeed happening—just not in the way that those bandying such accusations believe. Marxism, with its reduction of the universe to the material and history to the class struggle, is, of course, inconsistent at its core with biblical revelation and gospel Christianity. And the fruit of Marxism ought to be as obvious to us as the fruit of fascism and authoritarianism—bloodthirsty violence and one reign of terror after another. Some forms of liberation theology did indeed seek to syncretize the Bible with a Marxist vision of reality—and thus surrendered the ground of orthodoxy to disastrous ends. 

Is such syncretism to be opposed? Yes. Antinomianism (the idea that the gospel makes one free from moral obligation) is also to be opposed. Antinomianism, after all, not only shatters the witness of the church but also is a “gospel” that sends people to hell. That’s why Jesus (Matt. 5:17-20), Paul (1 Tim. 1:8-11), Peter (2 Pet. 1:3-2:22), James (Jas. 1:19-27), and John (1 Jn. 3:1-24) all explicitly repudiate it. But it’s also true that the actual gospel—as preached by the Apostle Paul—was labeled antinomian by those who sought to discredit it. Paul wrote to the church at Rome that the admonition—“Let us do evil that good may come” is what “some people slanderously charge us with saying.” His conclusion, “Their condemnation is just” (Rom. 3:8). 

Paul’s teaching—that we are “not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 2:16)—was easily twisted into “Paul is saying that obedience to God’s law is optional” by those who wanted to discredit the gospel of grace. 

In a church where antinomianism was rampant—say, some parts of Corinth and Pergamum and Thyatira—a mere condemnation of antinomianism (using an anachronistic term, just for the sake of argument) might suffice. 

But what about in places where grace itself was called antinomian? If, after Paul opposed Simon Peter to his face for conduct that was “not in step with the truth of the gospel” (Gal. 2:11-14), Peter and the apostles had said “Beware the antinomians” to those who thought Paul was an antinomian, such a word against antinomianism actually would have been a betrayal of the gospel. Though those very same words could have been legitimately used in places where their hearers would understand the difference between grace and license, this was not that place.

In the early part of the twentieth century, the so-called “social gospel” movement emerged from within modernist sectors of American Protestantism. This movement downgraded—or even denied altogether—the need for personal conversion and re-defined the kingdom of God as a renovated society brought about by activism. Such notions were rightly rejected by small “o” orthodox Christians, including those who agreed with the “social gospel” advocates on the issues (child labor laws or even Prohibition). 

But, soon, the term “social gospel” was applied to those orthodox, evangelical Christians who believed in the new birth and a supernatural kingdom of God but also who—on the basis of Scripture itself—wanted laws against the lynching of African-Americans or the exploitation of children. In that case, no distinction was made between a “social gospel” in the actual meaning of the words and those who—as the biblical canon and the church throughout the ages has always taught—a gospel with both personal and social implications and imperatives. 

None of this was new. In the century before that one, Christians—even biblically orthodox, faithfully evangelical Christians—were labeled as liberals or Unitarians by those who defended human slavery—since Unitarians and liberals were also opposed to slavery. At the time, the words “spirituality of the church,”—perfectly defensible biblical language, if one means that the church is created and sustained by spiritual, not carnal means— were actually an unspoken code meaning “People who kidnap and enslave other human beings should have preaching that tells them they’re right.” A word of judgment on slavery was derided as “political” and “a distraction from the gospel.” 

And, of course, during the Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century, virtually everyone who opposed Jim Crow was labeled a “Communist.” This was directed not only to leaders such as Martin Luther King or John Lewis, but even to the (very few) white southern pastors who would say anything about the moral wrong of segregation and institutionalized white supremacy. In some cases, even lamenting the murder of King was enough to bring the specter of “Communism.” Did some people believe the charges they were making? I’m sure they did, especially at the grassroots level. Did those leading the way actually believe it: probably not anymore than Robert Welch really believed that Dwight D. Eisenhower was an active Communist agent. So why did they say it? 

They said it because they knew that the American people rightly opposed Communism. They opposed a Communist bloc that was enslaving people around the world, destroying free governments, slaughtering its own people and arming itself to annihilate the United States and its allies. By calling something “Communist” and by making every connection possible between those who believed in civil rights and those who had been Communists, those who supported Jim Crow could claim to be the “real Americans.” Of course, the slander wasn’t true. Most of those in the mainstream of the civil rights movement were motivated precisely by the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble of the Constitution. They opposed white supremacy not because they wanted to bury America, but because they wanted to save it. 

And, of course, the charge of Communism against fiercely anti-Communist people who supported justice for their African-American neighbors, was in many contexts “successful.” Many pastors were fired or yielded to exhaustion (either back into silence or out of the ministry) as a result. And the people who cried “Communist!” falsely about those who simply supported justice for their oppressed neighbors played right into the hands of actual Communist propaganda. After all, if support for basic civil rights is “Communist,” they argued, then who is on the moral side of this conflict? 

Of course, such was nonsense, both in the accusations of the Citizens’ Councils and in the rhetoric of the Soviets and their supporters. Communism was never supportive of actual civil rights of any kind. Ask the dissenters from Stalinism in the old USSR or those murdered by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia or the Uyghur people in China right now. But the white supremacist game of crying “Communist!” about basic principles of Christian ethics and American ideals would cause many people to assume that other—very real—warnings about Communism were just more of the same. The “boy who cried wolf” is a cliché for a reason. Anti-communism was necessary to defeat Communism. But fake anti-communism actually fueled communism by making the evil propaganda seem plausible. 

And, as Walker Percy warned us, the status quo defender of Jim Crow never lived consistently with his rhetoric. He was all for the church speaking about sexual matters or gambling or drinking but was outraged when the church applied a justice perspective to race. “It is as if a gentlemen’s agreement had been broken,” Percy wrote. “He does not want the argument on these grounds, but prefers to talk about a ‘way of life,’ ‘states’ rights’ and legal precedents, or to murmur about Communism, left-wing elements, and infiltration.” Percy concluded: “Yet, eventually, he must come to terms with his own Christian heritage.” 

The supporters of Jim Crow indeed wanted to shift the argument to these grounds because they knew that if they dealt with the real issue at hand, they would, sooner or later, be speaking to consciences that just might hear what the Bible has to say about the image of God, about the love of neighbor, about the oppression of the vulnerable. 

John Stott warned in the 1980s that there was more than one way for a Christian to empower anti-Christian Marxism. One was, of course, to adopt Marxism itself (as many liberation theologians of various traditions did). But the other was to suggest that the Bible does not address issues of so-called “social justice” at all, and those who do are suspect. This is because, Stott contended, in so doing we “justify Marx’s well-known criticism that religion is an opiate which drugs people into acquiescing in the status quo; and we confirm non-Christians in their sneaking suspicion that Christianity is irrelevant.” 

That could happen because Marx was—like every false prophet—partly right. A claim that is not parasitic off something at least partially true, after all, has no power. Even the Serpent of Eden had to mix in a little truth (“God knows when you eat of it your eyes will be opened…knowing good and evil”) within the deadly lie. Marx was right that religion can be used to manipulate people, in order to provide wealth or power to those who want to exploit them. If you doubt that, read the account of Jeroboam and his golden calves or, even easier, turn on Christian television and see the prosperity gospel evangelists marketing their doomsday-survival food kits. Marx was wrong, though, that this is what the gospel of Jesus Christ is about. 

And that’s why the antidote to Marxism—and every other “gospel” that exalts itself against the gospel of Christ—is not to become the caricature of the other side’s propaganda but instead to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, who has sworn obedience to the whole counsel of God. The Bible speaks of the free grace of God in the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ, received by faith. The Bible tells us we must, personally, appropriate such faith: you must be born again. And the Bible tells us that genuine faith has implications for how one lives one’s life, lives within a family, lives within a community, lives within a workplace, or as a citizen of a nation. 

The Bible tells us that we are to work against sin and injustice whether that is on the small scale (moving a widow’s boundary marker) or on a larger systemic scale (a court system that justifies the wicked or condemns the righteous, for instance). The Bible does not hold powerless subjects of Rome accountable for the Caesarian system’s predatory tax collection or military extortion of those subjects, but does indeed hold accountable those who have the power over such things (Lk. 3:10-14; 18:8-9). In those cases, one cannot say, “This is a system, and the Bible doesn’t speak to systemic injustice, just to personal sin.” 

And the Bible speaks, repeatedly and emphatically in the Old and New Testament, against the sin of partiality, against the exploitation of the oppressed, and calls a church—reconciled as one people in Jesus Christ—to bear one another’s burdens. Does that mean that we are always going to agree on how best to do that? No. We don’t always agree on how to pursue personal holiness, either. But where the Bible speaks, the Bible speaks. 

When professing Christians seek to justify sexual expression outside of marriage by saying that the “red letters” have nothing to say about such things, even those in the secular world who agree can see the game being played. First of all, the red letters do speak to such things, but even if they didn’t, only the smallest amount of cynicism is needed to do the mental experiment of asking what would happen if the Gospels spoke directly to whatever sexual issue is in question, and the Apostle Paul did not. In that case, at least some of those who now privilege the Gospels over Paul would do the reverse making different arguments (“The Epistles were actually written earlier…”). In such cases, the authority is not the text, one might conclude, but the text behind the text: “Don’t tell me what I can do with my body!” 

Likewise, when those who argue away a central theme of the Law, the Prophets, the wisdom literature, the teachings of Jesus and the epistles of the apostles--the duty to do justice and to love mercy--by calling those motivated by the authority of Scripture “Marxists/postmodern race theorists/social justice warriors,” don’t be surprised when people conclude that the authority for such religion is not Jesus, but a view of racial superiority that the Bible condemns as satanic. 

And that’s even more true when some of those shifting those arguments have for a long time “made space” for literal neo-Confederates and those involved in virulent nativist arguments but are more than ready to “excommunicate” as heretics those who not only believe the Bible just as much as they say they do but believe all of it—even the parts that are deemed divisive and disruptive to the status quo. 

Such sinful activity can easily cause people to conclude—as many did, when they saw Bible-motivated, gospel-focused people called “Communists” because they believed black people are people—that the gospel is just a means to the end of racial identity and superiority. Does that make the charge against authentic Christianity true? No. And the religious people who said they abhorred idols but robbed temples, who preached against adultery and then committed adultery didn’t either. But, it is written, “The name of God is blasphemed among the nations because of you” (Rom. 2:24). The living God is the Judge of people and nations. His standards—including the Ephesians 3 standard of a racially equal and reconciled people—are not dismissible whenever they don’t fit someone’s politics of the moment. 

Marxists are wrong that religion is an “opiate for the people.” The best way to prove them right is to blame our religion when we sanctify the sins we want to commit. Those postmodern critical theories are wrong that say that everything is about power dynamics. The best way to prove them right is to show a religion that harasses and bullies and exiles black Christians who point out, because of the Bible, the systemic nature of some injustices, all because those who want racism left alone have more power than those who agree with Jesus that it’s wrong. 

My grandmother used to say, “Nobody preaches more about adultery than adulterers.” Sometimes the accidental Marxists turn out to be those who scream “Marxist!” at those who believe in what God revealed in the Bible. Sometimes the accidental “liberals” are those who think “liberalism” is seen in biblically orthodox evangelicals singing “Rescue the Perishing, Care for the Dying”—and then trying to do it. And sometimes the accidental postmodernists are those accusing people of postmodernism because they believe in objective truth. 

Reader Letter: On the Church and the Next Generation 

Lots of mail this week on last week’s newsletter on plunging levels of church membership. Much of this I plan to interact with in a much larger project (stay tuned), so if you have thoughts, keep sending them to me. One I wanted to interact with today, though, is from one of my favorite living novelists, Leif Enger. I asked his permission to include it here—and even offered to give him the pseudonym of “Virgil Wander”—but he graciously agreed to let me share it with you, and with his real name too. 

Leif writes: 

Hi Russell,

Thanks for a terrific & thoughtful newsletter.  

If I may offer a perspective on the church 'losing a generation,' it's worth considering that widespread disillusionment with evangelicalism is largely a positive development. I can't speak for a soul outside my experience, but as the product of Midwestern charismatics who subscribed early to Fox News and never looked back, I suspect the progression from Falwell Sr. to Falwell Jr. applies more broadly than any of us care to imagine. A teen who sees through the rot and 'falls away' remains as available to the Creator as any prodigal in history; those who remain despite the rot will learn to tolerate it, follow it, and finally exalt it. This is predictable and proven before our eyes. At this fraught moment it's the non-skeptics I dread.

Onward,

Leif Enger

Duluth, Minnesota 

 Leif’s question for me is not about the reality on the ground, but on whether or not we should see it, as I do, as a tragedy. I suppose that depends on what one means by disillusionment. If one means by this simply the “losing of illusions” and seeing that the church should be “re-formed and always re-forming, according to the Word of God,” then I agree. Martin Luther King was right to say that a certain form of “creative maladjustment” is necessary, unless people assume that the way things are is the only way they can be. That’s true. Jesus said, after all, that the problem with the Pharisees was not that they were blind but that they thought, in their blindness, that they could see (Jn. 8:40-41). As Wendell Berry reminded us, rightly, that one who doesn’t know that he lacks a truth will never go in search of that truth. 

Without the right kind of disillusionment, the Inquisitors would be what the world now thinks of as Christianity. Martin Luther would have sold indulgences. Karl Barth would have been a Nazi. And the examples could be multiplied almost infinitely. 

It’s good, for instance, that people see the scandals of sexual abuse that have happened so frequently in church circles. An “illusion” that denies such things are happening imperils even more generations of children and other vulnerable people. That should lead, in my view, to a new generation determined to never allow people to be harmed this way, to never see the name of Jesus blasphemed this way. That sort of disillusionment—which leads people to love the Lord and the church and their neighbors better—is indeed good news. 

But, of course, what we are talking about here is not that, but those who are walking away from the Church, broadly speaking, altogether. 

That’s because I believe not only that the gospel is actually true, but that the church is indeed what Jesus claimed it to be: the Body of Christ. A particular church can become toxic or abusive or, to go back to Paul with Peter, “out of step with the gospel.” In that case, one should leave that church. A family can also be toxic or abusive, and one should leave then too. But the future for those people isn’t isolation but relationships—healthy, non-abusive relationships. 

One who leaves an abusive family should find, at least in the long term, a safe and good family—maybe of friends and often a church. And one who finds something other than the gospel in the church should, in my view, recognize that the problem is not with the gospel, or with the Church (defined as the Body united to Christ Jesus in heaven), but with those who used those concepts in the very ways Jesus warned us some would. 

To come back to Walker Percy, writing about a name that most of our Millennial and Generation Z readers will not recognize: “Just because Jimmy Swaggart believes in God is no sign that God does not exist.” And I would say the same about the church. Just because a particular church has lost its lampstand, that’s no sign that the church does not exist. 

You are right that loyalty to the wrong thing is dangerous. But, in my view, the right response to a wrong loyalty is not a cynicism toward loyalty, but instead a church that shows genuine and congruent loyalty to the risen Lord (always imperfectly, to be sure). As the church, we have a responsibility not to be a scandal to the gospel of truth. But, when speaking not to the church but to those disillusioned with the church, we should say something along the lines of what J.R.R. Tolkien wrote to his disillusioned-with-the-church son. Speaking of Jesus, Tolkien wrote: 

If He is a fraud and the Gospels fraudulent—that is: garbled accounts of a demented megalomaniac (which is the only alternative), then of course the spectacle exhibited by the Church (in the sense of clergy) in history and today is simply evidence of a gigantic fraud. If not, however, then this spectacle is, alas!, only what was to be expected: it began before the first Easter.

This sounds more resigned than it actually was. Tolkien told his son of his own disillusionment with people he had previously respected. But, he wrote, “The greater part of truth is always hidden, in regions out of the reach of cynicism.” And while, obviously, I don’t accept Catholic Tolkien’s belief in the authority of the Pope, there’s much evangelicals can learn from the Maker of Middle-Earth’s counsel here: 

I know quite well that, to you as to me, the Church which once felt like a refuge, now often feels like a trap. There is nowhere else to go! I wonder if this desperate feeling, the last state of loyalty hanging on, was not, even more often than is actually recorded in the Gospels, felt by Our Lord’s followers in His earthly lifetime? I think there is nothing to do but to pray, for the Church, the Vicar of Christ, and for ourselves; and meanwhile to exercise the virtue of loyalty, which indeed only becomes a virtue when one is under pressure to desert it.

The answer to an eclipsed gospel is an authentic gospel. The answer to a compromised church is a faithful church. The answer to means-to-an-end Christianity is The Way-the Truth-and-the-Life Christianity. The answer to the idols of nationalism and power cannot be the idols of nothingness and someone else’s power, but instead must be turning from idols to a living God who sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. If the present moment causes us not to move from disillusionment to secularism but from grief to repentance and renewal, then, yes, that can be a tragedy averted, and a reminder of grace. 

Desert Island Bookshelf

Every week I post a photo here sent in by one of you with your bookshelf that you would take to a desert island. To celebrate the one year-anniversary of the newsletter, I thought I would include my shelf today. 

I’m reluctant to do so because these are just what immediately came to mind and I have no doubt that as soon as this goes out I will think of volumes that should be on it that I forgot. 

The mangled looking color where the title is washed out on the spine is a copy of the 1975 Baptist Hymnal. This copy was given to me by my home church when they updated their hymnals—and I wouldn’t take anything for it. The fading is from the sun shining through the stained glass windows for years and years, in a place that, flawed like all of us, introduced me to Jesus of Nazareth. 

What do you think? If you could have one bookshelf with you to last you the rest of your life, what volumes would you choose? Send a picture to me with as much or as little explanation of your choices as you would like. 

Quote of the Moment

“Jesus loves me; this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” 

— Baptist Hymnal (1975) 

The Courage to Stand 

You can order a copy of my newest book, The Courage to Stand: Facing Your Fear Without Losing Your Soul (B&H) here (or wherever you buy books). 

Questions and Ethics 

I have re-launched the “Questions and Ethics” part of my podcast. You can subscribe here. Please send me your moral dilemmas—about life, school, work, spirituality, family, whatever—and I’ll do my best to answer (and I’ll never, of course, use your name, unless you ask me to do so). You can send your questions to questions@russellmoore.com. 

Say Hello 

And, of course, I would love to hear from you. Send me an email if you have any questions or comments about this newsletter, other things you would like to see discussed here, or if you would just like to say hello! 

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Onward, 

Russell Moore