July 29, 2023

Liberalism is a false and counterfeit religion that is incompatible with the Judeo-Christian worldview that built the United States and much of the western world. 

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The year 2023 is the 100-year anniversary of J. Gresham Machen’s prophetic book Christianity and Liberalism. This book is just as accurate today as it was prophetic when he wrote it. His central thesis 100 years ago was that liberalism is its own religion, distinct and incompatible with Christianity. It acts as a parasite on Christianity, and can only be accurately understood as a separate and false religion.

Machen was right, of course, and the past 100 years of decline in American life bear him witness. Search the past century across the globe and you will find scores of previously Christian nations that adopted liberalism, declined every meaningful way, and lost their faith. Most of these Judeo-Christian nations have attempted to accommodate it rather than defeat it.

Different From the Start

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Liberalism — whether it is Marxist class conflict, Critical Race Theory, feminism, or any other manifestation — has its own creation myth to contradict the Judeo-Christian creation events. The modern era founder of this myth is probably Jean Jacques Rousseau, who taught his theory of the “state of nature.” In the state of nature, children are born in innocence as a blank slate. This is a rip-off of the Biblical Garden of Eden. In Eden, everyone was innocent and peaceful, but they reported to God. In Rousseau’s state of nature, humankind emerged innocently out of their own essence and God is irrelevant.

This origin story for the human race explains much of the modern world. The modern world worships nature. If something comes “naturally” to a person, the modern psychologist assumes the thing must be inherently good for that person. If a child wants to “identify” as the opposite sex, then that innocent child must be correct, and adults ought to comply. The Judeo-Christian worldview believes it is the task of adults to correct, discipline, and train children, while the naturalist liberal view teaches the opposite. The result is millions of adults who reject all responsibility and act like children, and fail to parent their children in any meaningful way.

Original Sin

Every religion follows the creation narrative with an explanation for how things went bad. The Christian and Jewish faiths regard Adam and Eve’s rebellion against God as the starting point for all sin and corruption. This is called “original sin,” and everyone has it. The secular leftist says social conditions destroyed the innocent “blank slate.” In this theory, children are born innocent, but social pressures push them toward greed, selfishness, and cruelty. The original sin in liberalism is social conflict, not individuals.

The Biblical explanation for sin says human societies are bad because human individuals are bad. Liberalism teaches the opposite. Liberalism teaches that sin is the result of society. Human individuals are innocent, but human societies cause all the sin. This is why liberals are always blaming things like systemic racism, class conflict, and other forms of structural inequalities or invisible boogeymen. There is no personal justice in liberalism, only social justice. They do not believe sin is anybody’s fault, it is always society’s fault. Naturally their solutions always point toward deconstructing society.

Redemption