|
From Robespierre to Stalin, Leftists were traditionally opposed to all religion, viewing it as a threat to their own claims on political and social influence. But in recent decades -- in fulfillment of the Marxist theorist Gramsci's prediction that Leftism would gradually make a "long march through the institutions" -- churches throughout the developed world have evolved into mouthpieces of Leftist doctrines.
The late 1960s saw the full-blown appearance of religious Leftism in the form of liberation theology, a movement that sprang from a perversion of Roman Catholicism. It was founded on the belief that God makes Himself known particularly through the poor, and that the Bible can be fully understood only when interpreted from the perspective of the impoverished. Centered in Latin America, liberation theology advocated political and civic activism as a means of applying the tenets of Christian faith. So long as socialism and communism had been seen as essentially godless, they had enjoyed only limited appeal among a traditionally religious population. But now, newly baptized, socialist theory had considerable potential for political and popular success. Liberation theologians focused on transforming what they viewed as the socioeconomic structures -- generally meaning capitalism -- that caused social inequities around the world.
Since then, the religious Left has expanded its reach to embrace the tenets of Leftist doctrine in a host of spheres, including: radical environmentalism (depicting capitalism and industry as inherently destructive to the natural environment, just as they are allegedly exploitative of the oppressed working classes); feminism (supporting universal access to taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, largely in rebellion against a capitalist structure where economic inequalities may render some women less able than others to pay for such services); gay rights (supporting homosexual marriage and adoption privileges, and a radical redefinition of the "family"); anti-war movements (viewing the United States as the chief cause of international strife and thus as an unjustified aggressor in all its conflicts abroad, which are, by logical extension, immoral); open borders (supporting amnesty and expanded rights for illegal immigrants -- on the theory that "no human being is illegal," a notion founded on the premise that all people are God's beloved children); human rights (classifying the United States and Israel as the world's foremost human rights violators, and thus casting the enemies of those two nations as persecuted victims whose every grievance is of unquestioned merit); civil rights (characterizing the U.S. as an irredeemably racist nation where race- and ethnicity-based preferential policies are needed to counterbalance white Americans' allegedly inherent desire to resurrect the days of Jim Crow); criminal justice (viewing human beings as inherently good creatures that are led astray only by corrupt social institutions like capitalism, and by repugnant social ills like racism - and thus advocating the rehabilitation rather than the punishment of criminals); and economics (again, depicting capitalism as an exploitative system that harms the vast majority of the world's population for the benefit of a small, powerful elite).
Many Christian churches seek to justify the foregoing views by asserting that Jesus Christ himself, were he alive today, would have adopted these same positions. Thus religious Leftists propose to combine the teachings of Jesus with the teachings of Marx as a way of justifying a socialist revolution designed to overthrow the economics of capitalism and greed. They re-render the Gospels not as doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical dialectic of class struggle. They see every biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to exact retribution on the expropriating owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers. To buttress their arguments, they cite Jesus' assertion that it was as difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven as it was for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle (Matthew 19:24). They note that Jesus instructed a would-be follower to first sell all his worldly goods (Matthew 19:21); that he advocated "giving freely" and advised against accumulating wealth (Matthew, 10: 9,10; 6:19 and 6:31-34); that he upheld the concept of equality among the faithful (Matthew 20:25-28); and that he was an unabashed pacifist (Matthew 5:39). In short, they view Christ's spiritual teachings as a template for organizing the affairs of the world in a manner that will bring about a socialist Utopia.
In the religious Left's ideal, the Marxist State serves as a substitute for Christ, offering a theory of sin (private property) and salvation (collective ownership), a church that dispenses grace (the State, as administered by the vanguard of the proletariat), and a litany of saints and sinners. And the eagerly anticipated Marxist "revolution" takes the form of redistribution; the focus is on popular control of industry and welfare measures rather than on wholesale looting.
This section of DiscoverTheNetworks examines the worldviews and activities of individuals who seek to advance the doctrines of the religious Left. Most notably, it examines their inclination toward anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, and collectivism, as well as their propensity to ally themselves with the ideological enemies of the United States (and of Israel).
|
|
|
