Is Cultural Marxism Compatible with Christianity?
By Scott Jones
I previously posted a blog on the Christians Engaged website that looked at the question “Is Socialism Biblical?” This post shows the difference between the socialist worldview and the Biblical worldview and concludes that they are incompatible. Given the rise of what I will call “Cultural Marxism” in recent years, I felt it was time to expand on the previous blog.
My interest in Cultural Marxism is not political, it is a worldview issue. Nevertheless, it is pretty much impossible to discuss Marxism without politics being involved, since Marxism sees everything as politics.
Two Different Worldviews
I will start by asserting that the Marxist worldview is incompatible with a Biblical worldview. Worldview scholar Nancy Pearcy states that a worldview must answer the major worldview questions thus:
CREATION: How did it all begin?
FALL: What went wrong?
REDEMPTION: How can the world be set right again? (Pearcey, 2005)
A Biblical worldview holds, briefly, that God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1, Romans 1:20) and that He specifically created men and women in His image. (Genesis 1:26-27). The problem is that Adam sinned imputing sin to all of humanity. (Genesis 3; Romans 3:23) and bringing death into the world. (Romans 6:23a). Thus mankind, while bearing the imago dei, is totally depraved and unable to live up to God’s holy standards. Jesus Christ is the only answer to the problem of the Fall, through His atonement for all of the sins of mankind. To be clear, although Jesus died for all of the sins of the world, redemption is only imputed by a voluntary submission in which a person acknowledges he is a sinner deserving death, repents of his sin, and accepts the atonement accomplished through Jesus’ death on the cross. (John 14:6, Romans 6:23b, Romans 5:1, 5:8, Ephesians 2:1-10, etc.) This is the wonderful message of the Bible.
Marxism on the other hand sprang from philosophical materialism. It holds that the world was created by the dynamic motion of the universe. The universe, thus is a “self-originating, self-operating machine, moving inexorably toward its final goal of the classless society.” (Pearcey, 2005) Originally the world was primitive communism, but the Marxist Fall occurred when private property appeared. The Marxist views private property as the source of all evil. Marx and Engels wrote: “In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” (Marx & Engels, 1888)
Redemption comes when the savior proletariat overthrows private ownership. (Pearcey, 2005) Marxism also believes man is basically good, and therefore perfectible. In classical Marxism, the distinction between classes is economic, but in Cultural Marxism, it is based on race, gender, gender orientation, i.e. intersectionality.
Marx and Engels thought that a revolution of the workers would bring about a Utopia without capitalism through revolution. “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution.” (Marx & Engels, 1888)
Cultural Marxists, as best as I can tell, are fomenting a revolution to bring about an “antiracist” Utopia in which the systemic racism invented by white heterosexual males is eliminated. Clearly this worldview is incompatible with the Biblical worldview. Marx and Engels dismiss any objections to their system from a Christian perspective as “not deserving of serious examination” because “Christian views succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas.” (Marx & Engels, 1888)
Roots of Cultural Marxism
Cultural Marxism has its roots in the Frankfurt School. Attorney Mark Levin writes: “Herbert Marcuse [of the Frankfurt School] is credited with hatching the Critical Theory ideology from which the racial, gender, and other Critical Theory-based movements were launched in America.” (Levin, 2021) Author Brian Godawa adds: “The “creators of the movement, the Frankfurt School, wanted to undo civilization by denying all its definitional distinctions…” (Godawa, 2024)
They recognized that economic Marxism did not work in Europe or in the United States. This is mainly because capitalism results in a dynamic workforce – that is people do not remain in one class but have the liberty to elevate themselves. Thus, people tend to prioritize class mobility over the class struggle. Marxists needed something else to divide people and came up with Critical Theory to separate people into groups of oppressors and oppressed.
“… woke, which I would be happy to define as a sort of cultural Marxism capture of the university. It’s a worldview that basically reduces the world into two classes of people, the oppressed and the oppressor.” (Godawa, 2024)
This spawned Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, etc. using distinctions like race, gender, gender orientation and the like to separate people into groups. “... like Marx, the CRT proponents deal in group stereotypes and prejudices, whether talking about perpetrators or victims, based on race, etc.” (Levin, 2021) Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote “The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.” (Pearcey, 2005) This is the Biblical view of fallen man. Theologian Owen Strachan describes the purpose of Critical Theory: “Critical Theory, the basis of Critical Race Theory, Critical Gender Theory, intersectionality, etc. is the social philosophy of Critical Theory developed at the Frankfurt School. It seeks to define and dismantle power imbalances that reside in situations and structures of society.” (Strachan, 2005) To this end advocates divide society into groups of oppressors and oppressed. The overarching oppressor group is white heterosexual men, of course. Ironically, the advocates of Critical Race Theory would conclude that William Wilberforce, who probably did more to end slavery than any man of the last millennium, was a systemic racist.
A Clash of Worldviews
Western civilization is based on the Biblical worldview, that is why cultural Marxists must destroy it.
“Western civilization is under fire. That’s the ultimate enemy of the wokeness, of post-modernity, of cultural Marxism, of leftism, of all that stuff. The ultimate enemy is western civilization. They’re trying to deconstruct it. And western civilization is rooted in a foundation of the Judeo-Christian worldview.” (Godawa, 2024)
So, the cultural Marxists are on a path to deconstruct western civilization in general and the United States in particular. They seem to me to find it especially egregious that the Declaration of Independence invokes a Biblical worldview, i.e. the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God and that it declares that the rights of man come from God, not from the State. When pastors and politicians embrace Wokeness or Cultural Marxism, they betray both the Bible and the American Republic.
Conclusion
Strachan lays out in detail 13 reasons why “Wokeness”, i.e. Cultural Marxism, is an ungodly system. He devotes two full chapters to expounding on these reasons. I shall summarize them briefly.
Theological Issues. Wokeness:
Does not recognize the image of God as humanity’s identity.
Places people in groups according to “whiteness”.
Foments racism.
Treats people as “oppressors” and “oppressed”, based on skin color and power dynamics.
Traps us in a cycle of anger and victimhood.
Gives approval to evil by rejecting God’s design for the sexes.
Overturns the Gospel’s promise of “no condemnation in Christ”.
Cultural Issues. Wokeness:
Corrupts justice by making it distributive and not retributive.
Complicates interracial adoption, marriage, and even friendship.
Destabilizes truth, making it narrative-driven, rather than absolute.
Sees societal disparities as injustice.
Reads cultural events in search of its own dominant narrative, omitting all nuances and counter-truths.
Destabilizes the free market and attacks limited government. (Strachan, 2005)
Cultural Marxism is a derivative of Marx’s economic system. Both suffer from the same contradictions with a Biblical worldview. Accordingly, Cultural Marxism has no place in the Church, nor in a Constitutional Republic based on the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.
Works Cited
Godawa, B. (2024). Notes from the Christian Underground. Warrior Poet Publishing.
Levin, M. (2021). American Marxism. New York: Threshold Editions.
Marx, K., & Engels, F. (1888). The Communist Manifesto. Kindle Edition.
Pearcey, N. R. (2005). Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study Guide Edition). Wheaton, IL, USA: Crossway Books. Kindle Edition.
Strachan, O. (2005). Christianity and Wokeness. Washington, DC: Salem Books.
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