In 1939, George Orwell coined the phrase “Judeo-Christian ethic” to include the values that formed the moral foundation of Western civilization.
This ethic influenced the American founders and helped shape their views on liberty, rights, and law. Post-Enlightenment philosophers have criticized the irrational aspects of religion and its role in the politics of state, but most have acknowledged the role that the Judeo-Christian ethic has served in preserving the fabric of society.
The idea that secular humanism is salvific for the individual or for society at large has been repeatedly discredited when Marxist ideology has been put into practice.
“Progressivism,” on the other hand, is a political philosophy focused on social progress through systemic reforms. It demands a strong central government dedicated to countering societal inequality and injustice. The progressive movement historically shares roots in Christianity and secular humanism, although in recent decades it has emphasized a reliance on science and technology and antipathy toward any expression of religion in the public square.
Left-leaning since its inception in the 19th century, progressivism has, since the 1960s, adopted misotheistic Marxist ideology. Its proponents have focused primarily on discrediting Christian religious practice.
In the Biden administration, for example, both public and private expressions of Christianity came under attack by federal agencies despite First Amendment guarantees that Americans can practice their religion without government interference. These government transgressions are currently being reversed by the new faith-friendly Trump administration.
The big question
So why does progressivism target Christianity specifically?
The obvious answer is that Christianity has been the dominant religion in America since its founding, and at least until recently, most Americans continued to engage with its practice. But religious affiliation constitutes a challenge to the progressive secular state, as this state insists that there can be no greater authority than itself.
The emphasis on freedom of individual within Christianity also tends to resist the enforced conformity that is central to neo-Marxist ideology and identity politics. Progressivism is best viewed as a secular humanist civic religion that is engaged in a religious war with monotheistic faith.
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As Bertrand Russell opined, Marxism is in many respects an atheistic restatement of Christianity, but unlike the Christian “kingdom of God,” its utopian goals can only be realized through the authority of the state.
For this reason, all Marxist states are openly antagonistic to theistic religion.
Cultural infiltration
Since the 1960s, Marxist ideologues, many having fled Nazi fascism in Europe, recognized that a revolution to install socialist and communist values was unlikely to succeed in America. Instead, they envisioned a less radical evolutionary strategy aimed at infiltrating the institutions that define American culture — including its educational systems, news media, entertainment industry, and corporations — with Marxist ideas.
But for this strategy to succeed, it would first have to transform the values of the Judeo-Christian ethic in the direction of Marxism.
A document in the 1963 “Congressional Record” outlines the plan of Marxists to undermine America by targeting the family unit, promoting deviant sexualities, and fostering criminal behavior. This strategy was aligned with neo-Marxist postmodern philosophies being taught in universities that questioned the possibility of objective truth and viewed virtually all societal transactions through the post-colonial polarized lens of “oppressors” and “oppressed.”
But in order to succeed, this strategy could not break radically with the past. Rather, it was necessary to retain those aspects of the Judeo-Christian ethic that had been established as part of the American “social imaginary.”
To this end, neo-Marxism adopts Judeo-Christian concerns with “social justice” but ignores its focus on law. This has allowed progressivism, in its current neo-Marxist “woke” avatar, to “stand for social justice” while simultaneously attacking white privilege, normative sexuality, law and order, and religion.
Although Christianity has been the primary focus of progressive vitriol, it stands to reason that the other source of the Judeo-Christian ethic would also be a target for hostility.
Following the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, anti-Israel protests led by progressives erupted on America’s college campuses and streets. Jews represent a small minority of Americans and, as such, do not represent a numerical challenge to progressive goals.
However, loyalty to religion and the state of Israel, as well as Judaism’s focus on law, elicited the age-old criticisms of Jewish particularism by Marxists.
Why not Islam?
Why, then, has Islam, a monotheistic religion, been spared the wrath of progressives? There are several likely reasons.
First, Islam is a newcomer to the American scene and, until recently, had little political influence and did not constitute a noticeable resistance to progressive goals.
Second, “woke” progressives imagine all Muslims as oppressed peoples of color who have suffered at the hands of imperial governments. Moreover, radical Islam, like Marxism, seeks to undermine the Judeo-Christian traditions of the West.
Radical Islam, like Marxism, seeks to undermine the Judeo-Christian traditions of the West.
Jihad against the West with the goal of restoring a theocratic caliphate has been a goal of fundamentalist Islam since its inception. Indeed, nowhere in Islamic countries have Christians or Jews ever enjoyed equitable freedom with Muslims, nor are women or the LGBTQ+ afforded equal freedoms with Muslim men, a fact that progressives assiduously avoid admitting.
Although Marxists and Islamists have banded together to undermine Judeo-Christian values in the West, theirs is an uncomfortable alliance, as the atheistic Marxist state is ultimately incompatible with an Islamic caliphate. Only in Muslim countries governed by secular strongmen has an alliance with Marxism achieved even a modicum of success.
Finally, one must always “follow the money.” And in recent years, Islamic governments have provided substantial financial resources to progressive causes because they share in common the goal of “transforming” America.
Faithful resistance
If the right to practice the Judeo-Christian traditions is to be preserved, it is incumbent upon America’s religious leaders to recognize that the goals of progressivism are antithetical to faith, and they must resist being co-opted by misotheistic ideology out of fear or ignorance.
The idea that secular humanism is salvific for the individual or for society at large has been repeatedly discredited when Marxist ideology has been put into practice.
Marxist ideology, therefore, should be seen in its true light, which is as the product of a destructive impulse within the human psyche that will only be fully extinguished in the messianic future.
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