https://familyliferadio.blubrry.net/2021/10/21/faith-under-fire-ep-74-marxism-in-america-part-1/
George Barna is best known for his fusion of ecclesiology
with market analysis. He and those associated with him have pursued models of
church growth rooted in surveying and in shaping practice on the basis of the
results. His name is usually associated with the Seeker Sensitive Movement
because its leaders (men like Bill Hybels and Rick Warren) have integrated the
market strategy popularised by figures like Barna into their models for Church
growth.
To put it bluntly for the Seeker Movement, the Church isn't
built by following the outmoded and antiquated Scriptural model, or through the
foolishness of preaching. Rather, they customize the experience to the tastes
and wants of the lost in their modern consumer-technological context. They
market the message to appeal to the inclinations of lost people – producing
churches filled with people, resulting in numbers without substance.
Barna's affiliations fill a fairly broad spectrum, he's even
been known to collaborate with the likes of Right-wing activist and
propagandist David Barton. I don't follow Barna too closely but it does seem
like he's moving farther to the Right. I could be mistaken but his recent
appearance on the Family Life Network (FLN) supports this notion. And for that
matter Family Life has (with the advent of Trump) itself shifted significantly
to the Right and now regularly incorporates Right-wing talk-radio quotes and
clips into its news coverage. Mostly driven by something akin to morbid
curiosity, I've listened to the teaching programmes on Family Life on and off
for over twenty years. The music is awful and has only gotten worse over the
past decade. Following the pattern of mainstream Evangelicalism, the network has
always been a terrible testimony to the Christian faith and the teaching of
Scripture – which it purports to follow, but does not. In fact its whole model
is built on a rejection of the Sufficiency of Scripture.
But now, bad music, sacrilegious programming, sloppy
amateurish news coverage, and watered down teaching has been augmented by
increasingly hard-right political discourse and episodes of blatant propaganda
and disinformation. And their influence is growing across the Twin-Tiers region
and beyond – into the Wyoming Valley, the Western Reserve of Ohio, Western New
York, and both Western and Central Pennsylvania. I count it a tragedy.
I happened to turn on FLN during a recent lunch break and
caught this Barna segment. Given the unfortunate reality of Family Life's
ever-growing regional footprint I thought it warranted some kind of response.
As usual, Family Life's interviews are less than impressive.
The questions are not intelligent and given the format and style of the radio
station – nothing ever gets very deep, and thus what you get is a superficial
treatment of the subject, even lighter and thus more misleading than what one
might find watching something like a PragerU video. It's not meant to stimulate
serious thought. It's meant to communicate a couple of points. For those who
drink deeply from the network's well, the strategy (if there is one) is more in
terms of changing people's minds by the sheer quantity of data bits, a kind of
drip feed, rather than any kind of serious qualitative epistemological change.
Whether in ignorance or in an attempt to deliberately
mislead, Barna fails to contextualise the rise of Marx. If you don't understand
the nineteenth century and the political upheaval which developed alongside the
economic changes surrounding the Industrial Revolution – and their moral and
social components, then you're not going to be able to interact with Marx.
Opposition to the era's unrestrained Capitalism and the social transformation
represented by the Industrial Revolution wasn't just about economics or even
oppression. There was a moral component to what was happening. In other words
many people felt a sense of moral outrage – many of these oppositional feelings
were actually conservative in nature, something few Right-wing people seem to
understand. Industrial Capitalism was novelty and shattered tradition.
Marx had moved past any kind of nostalgia and as a
historicist he saw the need for a new system and viewed it is inevitable. As I
and many others have noted, his criticism and acumen are fairly impressive. His
solutions were terrible and naive. I do not wish to defend him but I take
umbrage at Right-wing Libertarian-style Capitalists engaged in caricature,
especially as their system is neither Christian nor moral, and it has also
produced a great deal of suffering.
Barna also confuses theories of revolution, the role of the
vanguard and the like with some kind of tyrannical oligarchic centralisation of
power by design – something Marx did not envision. Though Right-wing people
cannot understand this point, socialism was actually viewed as a true
expression and evolution of democracy, not its eradication.
Additionally if one wants to seriously engage this topic you
must discuss the nature of movements like Stalinism and Maoism vis-à-vis actual
or Classical Marxism. Yes, they are related, derivative forms and yet to
ideological Marxists these deviationist spin-offs were at key points
repudiations of the system, and instead were simply class-oriented dictatorships
utilising a Marxist veneer to retain a narrative of legitimacy.
Maybe that kind of degeneration is what Marxism will always
end up producing – as it is a failed system in the end. Maybe, but not
necessarily. And yet on some level it's also disingenuous to always project (or
read back into) these extreme derivatives onto the basic theory itself. It's
dishonest in the same way people make connections between Nazism and the
earlier ideas of Hegel or Nietzsche. Lexical and ideological overlap may exist
but it's sloppy and misleading to draw unqualified direct analogies and apply
guilt retroactively. It's valid to tie them together in a larger discussion and
in terms of historical development, but to present them as seamless or a
monolith is neither honest nor accurate. It would be more honest to say that
much of what historically developed under the moniker of 'communism' had little
to do with Marx. But this is never said because it would imply that Marx's
ideas may still be viable and thus it's politically convenient to present
communism as an ideological monolith, a package deal that can be dispensed
with. And clearly this tact has worked, as you hear it echoed on the Right-wing
street.
Barna's comments regarding the abolition of marriage are
somewhat misleading. The interpreter must differentiate between Marx's
commentary on the bourgeoisie, its family morality, hypocrisy and its domestic values
vis-à-vis his treatment of the workers. One need not agree with Marx but he
shouldn't be misrepresented and to couch such questions in sweeping or simplistic
terms is once again misleading and less than helpful.
As an aside, there were similar issues raised with Black
Lives Matter – which is (despite Right-wing claims) decidedly non-Marxist. They
had in their platform some statements which seemed to be critical of the traditional
family. Again, one need not agree but at the same time it's necessary to
understand the context of what was being said and why – and that's a story
related to the collapse of the traditional family among American Blacks. This
is due to a host of reasons, some of them rooted in severe social and economic
disadvantage. Practically speaking they have become something of a matriarchal
society. This is not to excuse these realities or vindicate them but they should
be understood before criticism is levied. Caricature helps to whip up your base
but it does nothing to help deal with (let alone understand) the situation.
The FLN host (like Barna) is blind to Capitalism's inherent contempt
for both the working class and the consumers it depends on. One need only turn
on commercial-dominated television and drink in its insulting attempts at
manipulation or spend a little time interacting with factory or retail workers
and the like. Even white collar workers are frequently treated as next to
worthless – paid slaves who are compelled to sell their bodies and souls to the
bottom line. Wall Street and its oligarchic allies seek to manipulate and
control every aspect of life – our capitalist culture in particular is tantamount
to one big advert, or more accurately one big swindle.
Contrary to the FLN interviewer, capitalism does not value a
good work ethic. This is just the echo chamber at work, the propaganda machine
playing its tape (as it were) through an unthinking talking head. The language
of value and dignity are simply masks for what's really happening – the
corporation and finance sectors treating people as commodities which can be
used or dispensed with apart from conscience or morality. The bottom line is
all that matters. It is the determinative ethic.
It was one of the great Satanic swindles of all time – to
convince Christians that a system like Capitalism is what the Bible teaches.
And in terms of the dignity of work, the FLN host may echo what she's been taught, but the Scriptures teach the Fall of man and while work is noble, in this world's context, in this present evil age that groans awaiting redemption – it's cursed, a grief, and in the end vanity. We work because even under curse we must, but the work we will pursue in the Kingdom will be of a different nature – and of a different order. And the Kingdom work we pursue now – laying up treasures in heaven – has nothing to do with worldly profits, amassing treasure, or obsessing over Caesar's coin.