In the article being reviewed, Anyabwile reviews the claims of Tom Ascol as he sounds a red alert alarm on what he sees the new threat/new gospel to be for the Church (click here to here his presentation). Ascol emphatically states that the new threat to and the new gospel for the church is social justice especially as it is taught in cultural Marxism. Ascol makes it sound like this threat is both wide if not deep. He makes it sound like social justice is invading most of our neighborhood churches.
To be specific, Ascol says that the influence of social justice and cultural Marxism is introducing godless ideologies that are dictating to us how we should view reality. From Marxism comes the notion that we divide the world into the oppressor groups and oppressed groups. Cultural Marxism redefines these groups from economic classes to marginalized groups of people. Thus, this new teaching is telling us to discard the old ways of ordering society. And it is teaching us to see the oppressor, straight white males who are cisgendered as the enemy who, along with his view of reality and authority structures, must be overthrown. And all of that is done in the name of equality according to social justice teachings
And though Anyabwile's response is accurate, it is shallow. Anyabwile answers Ascol's concerns by saying that there is a larger and more organized anti-social justice movement in the conservative churches than a social justice movement. In fact, Anyabwile states that there is no social justice movement in the conservative churches. There might be some individuals who are involved, but there is certainly no organized movement in the conservative churches toward social justice. And from my experiences and observations, he right.
Thus, Ascol is crying wolf on whether the conservative churches are being threatened with social justice especially as it is approached from the cultural Marxist perspective. But such a response does little to review the claims made and perspective held by Ascol. That is what makes Anyabwile's response shallow.
What would be a better response to Ascol's alarm? First, we should look at what Ascol seems to be so scared of. His complaint is not just that there is some secular invasion of ideas into the Church, but how we look at reality from a Western Civilization point of view is being challenged. That means old ways of ordering societies, old authority structures, the place of white men as being oppressors, and Judeo-Christian values must be recognized and changed. The last item seems to be out of place because Judaism rejects the most basic of Christian values: the status of Jesus as being both God and man who came to save His people from their sins. So what Ascol must mean by Judeo-Christian values is God's law and how society must be ruled by that.
Second, what we see in Ascol's perspective is a canonization of the old status quo in which he grew up and a demonization of a possibly emerging status quo. Canonizing the way one grew up and demonizing the new that challenges much of what one grew up with is as old as the hills. But that itself does not really say what needs to be said about Ascol's views here. For what Ascol does is to approach both the old status quo and the new challenge from social justice from a cultural Marxist perspective in all-or-nothing way of thinking. That is what produces Ascol's canonization of the old status quo with its regard for Western Civilization and his demonization of challenges of the old status quo by social justice from a cultural Marxism perspective.
Thus, it is Ascol's all-or-nothing approach to both the old status quo and the new social justice view that is the problem. And if we compare Ascol's approach to the old status quo and to cultural Marxism with Martin Luther King Jr.'s approach to Marxism, we easily see why Anyabwile's review of Ascol is shallow and why Ascol overstates his case.
When King compared Marxism with the then status quo, he said the following: 'Historically capitalism failed to see the truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see truth in individual enterprise.' In other words, King does not take a black-white approach to either the then status quo or the challenge of Marxism. And citing William Temple, a former archbishop of Canterbury, King repeated his observation that Marxism is a 'Christian Heresy.' By that he meant that Marx had combined some essential truths of Christianity with beliefs that must be rejected by every Christian. But again, King is avoiding this all-or-nothing approach to either the then status quo or the Marxism of his day as exemplified in the communism of the Soviet Union (click here for the source).
Another way of approaching Ascol's point of view is to modify a statement King said while opposing the Vietnam War (click here for the source):
The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.If we replace the word 'Western' with a fill-in-the-black, can we not see the fault of Ascol's line of thought here. Certainly social justice and cultural Marxism has much to learn from Christianity. But are we daring to deny that that we religiously conservative Christians have things to learn from social justice and cultural Marxism? Or are we assuming, despite Church history and the problems that were so much a part of Western Civilization, that our knowledge of the Bible as well as our embracing of Western Civilization means that we have nothing to learn from social justice and cultural Marxism? Again, that question challenges us to not approach either the old status quo and cultural Marxism in an all-or-nothing manner.
Generally I like what Anyabwile writes. But his response to Ascol lacked depth and dependence on how others have responded to similar challenges. And just because Ascol has well overstated his case, that doesn't mean that we should ignore all of his warnings. But what we should challenge him to do is to look out for competing and threatening ideologies that come not from the new, but from the old status quo in which he grew up.
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