The Marxist Origin of Wokism
Political control of behavior and speech (the goal of CRT/Wokism) is a significant stage in the arrival of full-blown cultural Marxism. Though Rufo does not consider religious issues in his book, he states on his substack page that the future of America concerns the rejection of both religion (Christian morals) and of political liberalism (that is, constitutional law): “The problem I see is that abandoning a Christian moral framework and a liberal political framework means abandoning the United States as a whole….[it]would mean that we are in a Weimar scenario, with radical movements across the political spectrum vying for the regime”[20]. In Germany, the Weimar Republic led to the Hitler regime.
The Hideous Face of Revolution
I am picking up a subject about which I have already written in an article entitled “Wokism: The New Pagan Morality.”[1] We now live in an increasingly post-Christian society. Interestingly, 56% of American voters deemed the term “woke” to be positive, associated with being informed and educated, while just 39% deemed it negative, likening it to censorship and being overly politically correct.[2] In his book, America’s Cultural Revolution: How the Left Conquered Everything,[3] Christopher Rufo traces the origins of CRT/Wokism, showing how America has been quietly taken over by the ideological heirs of 1960s radical neo-Marxists.[4] In his ground-breaking research of contemporary Western culture, he discovered a “hideous face of revolution” that is “a rot spreading through American life. The country’s foundations are starting to shake loose”. If this is true, we all need to know about it.
We now live in an increasingly post-Christian society, easily seduced by false notions of reality. One recent study found that the median number of people in a Christian congregation in America in 2023 is 60. That’s less than half of what it was 20 years ago, when the number was 137. This steep decline has been called the “Great De-churching” of America.[5] Any respect for or worship of the Creator/Redeemer God is virtually absent. [6] People cannot live without morals, since God created an ethical universe. Those who do not want to respect God’s morals are busy normalizing the LGBTQ philosophy, eliminating the nuclear family and living according to the moral norms of neo-Marxist Wokism. Marxism is thoroughly anti-Christian, denying the being of God and seeing matter as ultimate. It worships the creature (matter) rather than the Creator (Rom 1:25). Marx had a close friendship with the radical New Testament scholar, Bruno Bauer, who claimed that the Christian gospels were forgeries. Marx himself believed that it was necessary to “recognize as the highest divinity the human self-consciousness itself,”[7] thereby dismissing God. Today’s Critical Race Theory is a modern form of atheism that derives from Marxism, as we shall show. CRT believes in the Postmodern “truth,” which does not come from God but is rather an expression of human power. Many, even Christians,[8] are abandoning their personal faith in the God of Scripture and seeking a new source of morality. Wokism’s false morality plays on the sensitive conscience of young Americans.
White supremacy argues, in Marxist fashion, that society is always divided into oppressors (owners) and the oppressed (workers). In today’s context, whites are the oppressors and minorities are the oppressed (particularly Blacks, women, illegal aliens, and LGBTQ). Biblical morality is seen as oppressive because of its standards of sexual behavior.
As noted in my previous article, Stanley Ridgley has done an excellent job researching the semi-religious movement of Wokism in his book, Brutal Minds (2023).[9] His subtitle describes what he has seen: The Dark World of Left-Wing Brainwashing in Our Universities. He saw the decided intention of university administrators not only to undermine a student’s ability to engage in classical academic thinking but to give them a serious case of “religious” guilt. I have often wondered why the history of the West and of America in particular are not taught in American universities. Jesse Jackson’s 1987 rallying cry at Stanford University springs to mind: “Hey ho, what d’ya know, Western civ has got to go.” We see now that, indeed, it got up and went!
Wokism is a progressive political program that has infiltrated our American culture in its government administrations, its companies and its educational facilities, where “diversity officers” of DEI (“diversity, equity and inclusion”) will “cancel” anyone who does not follow the new rules. This “hideous system,” to use Rufo’s term, is dangerous because it proposes itself as good, seeking social justice and opposing racism.
Authors who seek to understand present-day culture find its roots in the Sixties Cultural Revolution. Rufo points out that in the Sixties, some radical intellectuals turned away from the violent actions of racial groups like the Black Panthers and attempted to change the culture ideologically. They abandoned racist violence in the streets in favor of “a long march through the institutions,” that would make cultural revolution an attractive philosophical novelty, to be developed in the universities and bureaucracies. This was the original work of the Frankfurt School of German Jewish Marxists, who, seeking to escape Hitler’s Germany, moved to Columbia University, where they pursued their study of contemporary neo-Marxism. One of them, Herbert Marcuse, moved to the West Coast, and exercised great influence on the radical students of the Sixties. Marcuse and Marxist radical Rudi Dutschke (who invented that phrase— “the long march through the institutions”) worked together as early as 1966. Marcuse wrote to Dutschke in 1971 agreeing with this strategy: “Let me tell you this: that I regard your notion of the ‘long march through the institutions’ as the only effective way.”[10]
The modern Left is currently fulfilling Marcuse’s prophesy that if Western society could be liberated from capitalist repression, the “oppressive” moral and religious foundations of the West would collapse and the populace would discover true freedom. Rather than proposing a dictatorship of the proletariat (in the old Marxist style), he proposed “a dictatorship of the intellectuals”. This neo-Marxism is the origin of Critical Race Theory.
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The Pro-Child Life
If anyone had good reason to shuffle past the children — “Sorry, kids, not now” — it was Jesus. No one had higher priorities or a loftier mission. No one’s time was more valuable. Yet no one gave his priorities or his time so patiently to those we might see as distractions. On his way to save the world, our Lord paused and “took [the children] in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them” (Mark 10:16). His life and ministry were full, but not too full for children.
Ever since Eden, God has given children a crucial role in the coming of his kingdom. “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring,” God told the serpent (Genesis 3:15). And so, ever since Eden, there has also been a long and desperate war on children.
The biblical story shows us just how ruthless this world’s anti-child forces can become: Pharaoh casting Israel’s sons in the Nile (Exodus 1:22). Demonic “gods” bidding parents to pass their children through fire (Jeremiah 19:4–5). Herod slaughtering Bethlehem’s boys (Matthew 2:16).
Our own society is not above such bloodshed: more than sixty million invisible headstones (from the last fifty years, and still counting) fill America’s fields. Much of the modern West’s aversion to children appears, however, in subtler forms. Today, we are having fewer children than ever, later than ever. We diminish, and sometimes outright despise, stay-at-home motherhood. And too often, we treat children as mere accessories to our individualism: valuable insofar as they buttress our personal identity and further our personal goals — otherwise, inconvenient.
As Christians, we may be tempted to assume that this war on children exists only out there. But even when we turn from the world of secular individualism and carefully consider ourselves — our hearts, our homes, our churches — we may find strange inclinations against children. We may discover that anti-child forces can hide in the most seemingly pro-child places. And we may realize, as Jesus’s disciples once did, that children need a larger place in our lives.
Pro-Child on Paper
As with most Christians today, the disciples of Jesus grew up in a largely pro-child culture. Their views of children may not have been as sentimental as ours sometimes are, but they knew kids played a key role in God’s purposes. They remembered God’s promise to send a serpent-crushing son (Genesis 3:15). They regularly recited the command to teach God’s word “diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:4–9). They cherished God’s faithfulness to a thousand generations (Exodus 34:7).
But then, one day, some actual children approach the disciples. And as Jesus watches how his men respond, he feels an emotion nowhere else attributed to him in the Gospels: indignation.
They were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant. (Mark 10:13–14)
The disciples likely had the best of intentions. To them, these children (or their parents) were acting inappropriately; they were coming at the wrong time or in the wrong way. Not now, children — the Master has business to attend to. They were about to discover, however, that far from distracting the Master from his business, children lay near the heart of the Master’s business.
In the process, they also warn us that claiming a pro-child position does not mean living a pro-child life. You can theoretically value children and practically neglect them. You can say on paper, “Let the children come,” while saying with your posture, “Let the children keep their distance.” You can look with disdain on the anti-child forces in the world and, meanwhile, overlook the precious children in your midst.
We, like the disciples, may hold pro-child positions. Our churches may have pro-child programs. But actually being pro-child requires far more than a position or a program: it requires the very heart and posture of Christ.
Heart of Christ for Children
“Jesus loved children with a grand and profound love,” Herman Bavinck writes (The Christian Family, 43). And do we? Answering that question may require a closer look at our Lord’s response when the little children came to him.
How might we become more like this Man who made his home among the children, this almighty Lord of the little ones? Among the various pro-child postures we see in Mark 10:13–16, consider three.
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Four Men
I want to raise up, more than anything else, men of faith. In Genesis 1, God mandates husbands and wives to be fruitful and multiply (Gen 1:28). In Malachi 3:15, we find that God desires “godly offspring” from the marriage union. This means that God does not merely want more warm bodies, but disciples. He wants image bearers to make more image bearers. In Christ, we, “put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24). So my ultimate trajectory is to see these boys become men of faith. Men who are unreservedly His. Men who use their strength, their intellect, their whole lives to bring glory to the One true God.
I can’t believe that we have four boys,” I said to my wife. She looked at me and corrected, “Lord willing, four men, Jake.” Woah. Four men. I’m training up men. That humbles me and makes me pray. What hallmarks do I want to see in these men? What characteristics do I want to shine out from them? God help me as I train up these men in the way they should go.
Men of Meekness
I want to raise men of meekness. Men of humility. A meek man does not think more highly of himself than he ought, but rather, he counts, “others more significant than [himself]” (Phil 2:3). The man of meekness does not seek to be served, but to serve, just like our Lord (Matt 20:28). The man of meekness is strong and capable, but knows how to restrain and direct that strength for others. A man of meekness is wise and willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits (James 3:13-17). I want these men to be marked by meekness.
Men of Zeal
I want these boys to become men of zeal. I want their meekness to fuel a righteous zeal that is unafraid to stand apart from the world. I want men who are like our Lord, who says “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17), and who wears, “zeal as a cloak” (Isa 59:17). And not zeal without knowledge, but a zeal that is confident in and assured of the Word of God.
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Christian Education in Seven Books (5)—Cultural Literacy
What kind of education would have the audacity to call itself Christian if its graduates have only the faintest grasp of Christian doctrine, history, or worship, and if they feel no loyalty to the civilisation that bequeathed them most of the blessings they now enjoy?
I would not be surprised by the “Huh?” reaction to a number of books on this list. After all, they are not “how-to” manuals on education. Instead, each of them represents one major aspect of what comprises a Christian education. This is why all of the authors or the books could be substituted with similar books or authors saying the same thing. This is the case with the fifth book in our series, Cultural Literacy, by E. D. Hirsch.
For busy homeschooling parents or school administrators, this is not a book you need to plough through from cover to cover, though you’ll likely benefit if you are able to. The first chapter and the appendix will, however, give you the main idea. Hirsch’s thesis is simple: to function in society, people need background knowledge that we absorb from our wider culture. Sayings, mottoes, proverbs, quotes, aphorisms, place names, historical events, abbreviations, prominent people and places and dates, fables, works of art and many other items of knowledge are not learnt alphabetically from an encyclopaedia. They are taught when a culture imparts its traditions to its young over many years.
Without this background knowledge – this literacy in one’s own culture – one is a stranger in your own home, a foreigner in your own country. Educated writing and discourse will go over your head, because you lack the cultural literacy to decipher all the background knowledge that is present in the terms.
Consider this sentence: “Covid has brought about an Orwellian scenario, where the raison d’être of government has devolved from a Jeffersonian ideal to a Machiavellian one”. Background knowledge of Western philosophy, political theory, 20th-century literature, and borrowed phrases from French is necessary to make sense of that sentence. Hirsch argues that this kind of cultural literacy is declining, and with it, much breakdown in communication and mutual understanding.
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