We are living in a time when the implications of the worldview shift  from modernism to postmodernism are becoming evident in daily life.

What are the ideological roots driving postmodernism?

Judeo-Christian Theism replaced ancient pagan ideologies and led to the rise of Western civilization. This was the premodern era; people recognized that the universe, created by the trinitarian God, was an integrated material and spiritual reality. We can know from the comprehensive sources of divine revelation, science, and reason. Man is an individual living in community. Human beings were made to be self-governing within the framework of a moral universe.

Modernism, the worldview of naturalism or atheism, denies God and begins with nature. “In the beginning, nature …” In this framework, there is no transcendent or spiritual reality. We know strictly by science and reason. Because God does not exist, there is no reality or revelation outside nature. Man becomes the center of the universe, individualism—absolute autonomy—becomes the accepted religion. Living outside the framework of a moral universe, the individual has license to do whatever he pleases.

In reaction to the barrenness of the atheistic and materialistic worldview that increasingly stresses consumerism and the melding of human beings with machines, postmoderns have abandoned the naturalistic framework of matter for that of mind, or even the “spiritual.” Reason and material reality are no longer relevant, argue the postmoderns. Reality is no longer a given but fungible, formed by linguistic, social construction and narrative. The concept of the autonomous individual is replaced by egalitarianism and solidarity of offended social groups.

As we have written elsewhere, a new ideology, Cultural Marxism, was born through a collaboration of Jewish intellectuals at the Frankfurt School in Germany, between the first and second World Wars. With the rise of the Third Reich, these Jewish scholars took refuge in the United States where their ideas were seeded into Western Universities.

Cultural Marxism intends to overthrow Western Civilization

The goal of Cultural Marxism was nothing less than the overthrow of Western Civilization. The major tool was Critical Theory, a technique to deconstruct the ideas and underpinnings of the West. Max Horkheimer, one of the researchers at the Frankfurt School, describes Critical Theory as a tool “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.” In their view, Western culture and the civilization it birthed has enslaved the masses. For the victimized to be set free, Western Civilization needs to be dismantled.

Traditional Marxists saw the struggle as material: the capitalists vs. the exploited, the haves vs. the have nots, the powerful vs. the powerless.

Cultural Marxism redefined the struggle as social and cultural: majority vs. minority, white European males vs. the exploited, white privileged vs. the underprivileged—blacks, Hispanics, women, and LGBT.

When scholars from the Frankfurt School moved to the USA, American universities became the incubators of this new ideology. Cultural Marxism permeated multiple academic departments: the Humanities, Social Sciences, Anthropology, Women’s studies, Black studies, LGBT studies, et al.

From the universities these ideas spread into society. Artists began to propagate the ideas through music, film, TV and other art forms. The ideas took root in the culture, influencing the creators of institutions, structures and laws. Without recognizing what was happening, lawyers, politicians, and entrepreneurs entrenched the ideas in the structures of the nation.

Cultural Marxism has been the driver of identity politics, the division of  fellow human beings along lines of race, tribe, sexual orientation, religion. The point was to create “minorities” who, by virtue of their minority status, are thereby oppressed.

The church must stand against Cultural Marxism

The latest iteration seeks to break up the family and destroy the fundamental concept of binary human sexuality. We witness this in the redefinition of marriage, and the propagation of laws intended to reinvent human sexuality. Birth certificates suppress the sex of newborns. People are legally required to call others by their preferred gender identity rather than their actual, biological nature.

Where is the church in all this? Very often we have closed our eyes, ears and mouths to the encroaching storm, hoping these things will simply blow over.

Charles Chaput, Archbishop of Philadelphia, writes:

We’ve lost our courage: Apostasy is an interesting word. It comes from the Greek verb apostanai – which means to revolt or desert; literally ‘to stand away from.’ [Christians] … don’t need to publicly renounce their baptism [faith] to be apostates. They simply need to be silent when their … faith demands that they speak out; to be cowards when Jesus asks them to have courage; to ‘stand away’ from the truth when they need to work for it and fight for it” (emphasis added).

What is required is a new generation of young Christians willing to train the crosshairs of truth and love on these issues in the society.

• Darrow Miller

Print this page