Liberty Alert: The Effort To Liquidate The Christian Worldview In America

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Welcome to the Liberty alert with Gregory results. Sponsored by our friends at the Lutheran center for religious Liberty here in Washington, DC, a program that cuts through the chaos and confusion in the culture today by talking to kingdom, citizenship, old biblical principles for a robust public Christian life. And now your host, Dr. Gregory Seltz

Good day, good day, Washington DC, and friends of the program all around the country. I'm Gregory Russel. Welcome to the Liberty alert where every week we try to cut through the noise and take on the issues, especially the public issues that matter to people of faith today on the Liberty alert, we're privileged again to have with us writer, professor, uh, director of chronic Institute, Dr. Gene V. It's great to be with you. Good to

Be with you. Yeah.

A lot of the books that you have written have been very helpful in the work that I do. And now, you know, I'm, I'm in Washington defending our church for the sake of, of the culture and for the sake of the mission of the church. And a lot of what you're writing is just giving information about what some of the challenges are. And that's what I want to talk about today. You, you wrote a book back in 93 and it was called modern fascism, and then the liquidating of the Christian worldview. And I want you to unpack that, especially the subtitle, cuz we'll get to the whole thing about fascism and what it communicates in our culture. But I still run into people in our church who don't see this movement. They don't see this movement that that really has the Christian worldview in its crosshairs and thinks of us as a nefarious entity that needs to be put not only in the basement, but maybe just put away for good. So unpack that for us. Why did you choose that title? What, what was the thesis of the book?

Well, most people know what communism is and what they right. What communism believe. But very few people seem to believe what the fascists believed, what the, the Nazis believed mm-hmm and they characterize it as conservatism, which is not, it's almost the opposite, right? Anybody that in a small government, personal liberties, uh, constitutional rights, traditional religion tradition, more values. That's the opposite of what the fascists were all about in the early 20th century. Yeah.

That's would be anti-fascist

Yeah.

Right.

Okay, great. And so I I'd studied, uh, I'd studied that and seen it in my university education and then as in grad school, uh, so, so I, I was trying to get to the bottom of this and then grad school and studying English that there were several things that happened. Uh, there was a book about, uh, Martin Heiddeger mm-hmm great. Existentials philosopher, who's the foundation of so much contemporary thought that he and showing that he was not only a Nazi, he was one of the most radical Nazis, uh, of them all. Then there was one about Paul deman, the father of deconstruction, which was a big part of postmodern thought. He was a Nazi. And uh, so I wanted to put it together and, uh, CPH had a monograph series, asked me to contribute something. So I did fascism was a modernist movement. More specifically, it was, it's a postmodernist movement because the, the elements of postmodern thought the, to blossom today basis of that can be found in the Nazis of the, and fascist of the early 20th century.

I called it liquidating the Judeo Christian worldview, because here's the best way to understand fascism. And a lot of what we're seeing today, the Nazis wanted to eradicate the Jews, but it wasn't just a matter of race or bigotry. What they wanted to get at was the, what they considered the Jewish influences on Western thought, right? Such as the value of the individual, the notion of a transcendent objective, moral truth, the concept of a God above nature, you know, the rule of reason, an objective thought the, uh, these are all Jewish ideas that they believe led to, uh, modern alienation and our destruction of the environment and all these other things. Now the source of those quote Jewish ideas is the Bible,

Right?

And interestingly enough, as I show in that book, a number of the liberal theologians, the higher biblical critics, those historical critics were pro-Nazi.

Yeah. I find it amazing that some of the intellectuals of the day were actually very comfortable with the ideological foundations of fascism. And that should scare us all because ideas have consequences.

Yeah. And you know, one of the things that I run into today, and this is why, you know, modern fascism was like, Ugh, because if you actually, you had already pointed this out. You said, if you say the word fascism today, most people think, oh, you're talking about conservatives or conservative Christians. I mean, that's what they that's, that's what people think it means. And I'm sitting there going my gosh, we've gotta communicate what you're talking about. So that people here, we're talking about the liquidating of the Judeo Christian worldview. And we're talking about the liquidating of views that are fundamental to our society. I mean, the declaration of independence is built on these Juda, Christian worldviews about transcendence. And so I love that quote that you have by sulty where he says, uh, fascism is a practical and violent resistance to the transcendent and I call it secular stateism. And, and so again, how do we, first of all, how did we get to the point where they were, that the fascists themselves labeled us when we're the anti-fascist truly, how do we actually communicate the situation we're really in,

Well, partly it was due to Marxist. Now fascism is arrival, socialist ideology, right? Word not say means national socialism right now, Marxist socialism believed in class struggle. Whereas the fascist just like the critical race theorist of today said, no, it's not just a struggle between classes. It's a struggle between races. They had had a rival system of fascism, uh, Marxist fascism wants the state to own the means of production fascist socialism or national socialism allows private property, but it's in the hands of corporations, which actually takes it out of the individual realm, right? And the economy is completely controlled by the central state. So the arrival views of socialism. So the Marxist condemned them. And, uh, with, through world war II, they tried to associate the fascist with capitalist. The fascist are the most vicious critics of capitalism, but anyway, that has shaped the vocabulary and the way people think.

So we say, well, uh, the Marxists are extreme liberals. The fascists are extreme conserv, but fascism is a totalitarian system, correct where the state controls everything, but any conservative who believes in limited government, who believes in the rights of the individual who believes in freedom, uh, these whole categories are condemned completely by the fascist. But what they're calling for is something that we're seeing actually in, uh, in China today that blend of some private property in corporations that make a lot of money. Mm-hmm under a totalitarian system. Okay. China basically has a fascist economy. And when we hear today's woke corporations also going on about racial identity and corporate responsibility for the good of the whole and all the rest and stamping out capitalist ideas, such as competition, free markets and the, like we're seeing something very similar to a revival of fascist economic.

Yeah. And, and let me just, because I think, again, we have to say this to the mom and pops on the street. When you have these fascist ideas and you have these command control, uh, economies, what you destroy is the middle class and people who are free to do and to raise their own families and to own their own businesses and to be, you know, actually living a life of virtuous freedom, which is what our founding fathers thought was gonna be the antidote to tyranny. And I think that's what, what troubles me is that we have people even within the Christian Church who understand the blessings of freedom, the freedom that comes by faith in Christ, but then also the freedoms that God has given us in this culture. And they don't understand, we're giving them away. You're saying that it's even being liquidated. And I think that's what I'm struggling with too, is that we've gotta push back, not just have conversations about this, but we've gotta make sure that, that the political realm, the cultural realm, the media realm, that we have alternative voices there because, uh, our voice could be shut down pretty quickly.

Uh, if they owned all the control, uh, the levers of control, well,

It can, and it is right it's fault on freedom, not just religious freedom, but things that, you know, had been taken, uh, for granted, by Americans of all political convictions, things like freedom of speech, the, the cancel culture, CS that, right. And, and it's for the same reason that the fascist did. Um, in fact, it's almost even worse. One of the elements of fascist ethics is the idea of the will, right? The triumph of the will. That was the name of Hitler's, uh, famous propaganda film contrasting to Hitler, to, uh, uh, Luther's of the will. I know that just in rereading book, after many years, I said this, those who descended with the regime were seen not as people who disagreed right. Ly philosophically, but as people with hostile wills in rejecting the common will, the fascist wanted all people to join in this common will. But the people who oppose that were guilty of not belonging mm-hmm , this is whether Nazi apparatus was so thorough in its interrogations, but it was one of was not so much conformity, but ascent

Mm-hmm yeah. You can't

To the common will.

Yeah. You can't, it's not live and let live it's you will, you will say what we're saying is very, very, very good. Or you will be put out of society.

Yeah.

And we're starting to see, we're starting to see many of the, in fact, that's one of the reasons why this effort in, in DC is so important because we're, we're fighting to make sure that the church's public voice is protected. So you can proclaim the whole council of God, because it is a blessing, uh, to proclaim the whole council of God, even to non-believers. Yeah. And I think that's where the church, let me ask you this question, just your personal opinion, cuz I really think that people cuz a lot of Christians have what I call evangelistic hearts. They, they, you know, they know they're just as sinful as everybody else. And so we don't, if sometimes God's law where he says, no, sounds very harsh at first, we want to just make sure people know, we love them. And, and, and, and these kind of things, they don't understand that it's God's law, that's under attack in our culture and we're, and that's being reclassified as hate speech. You won't even be allowed to talk about Jesus eventually because you know, it starts with God's law, God's law and his gospels about God's grace for all people ultimately, and we're gonna cut it off right. At the very, uh, root you can't even preach that God created in order to the world, let alone saved it. Yeah. And that's where we're at.

Even if you say that, that God saves it, that the salvation through Christ, even the gospel, well, that implies that there's something wrong with every other belief. That's right. For lack of belief. Right. But the means, say I haven't done anything wrong. Uh, one of the attacks on the, the law and the gospel really is this idea of, of relativism that ultimately it's a kind of self righteousness. It isn't that. Yes. I, I disobey the law, but, and I don't, and I don't care it's I didn't do anything wrong. Correct. There's nothing wrong with the things that I do. And for you to say there is, you're trying to impose your power on me. And so when you think in these terms, you're eliminating the very ability to even think in anything like biblical terms.

Yeah. They won't even understand the gospel. The gospel won't gospel is forgiveness of sin, uh, you know, deserved, uh, earned by Christ alone through the cross and the resurrection life, death and resurrection of Jesus. None of that makes sense. If you, if you gut the foundations of truth, you gut the foundations of reality, which is what we're seeing. I mean, we're now even debating whether men and women are men and women in, and we have biological definitive, you know, uh, science, scientific research there and that's now being cast aside too. So how do you finally get to a salvation for sure.

Yeah. Behind all that is constructivism. Right? We construct reality. There is no objective truth. Even the body, the objectivity of the body mm-hmm , that's rejected. And uh, we still talk about science, but really science itself is at risk, right? By this extreme subjectivist constructivist rejection of anything that's objective. And that's what we're up against. And that can be traced right back to the early the fascism.

Now we'll get to some, some of the things that have changed since your book. And I think the racialization of all, this is part of that. Um, but one of the things that I've noticed among all the, the intellectuals and the elites and the college students and all that, they love deconstructionism. They love to deconstruct everything, you know, and they get it to the point where they, they, they think they've got everybody in this kind of box of, we don't really know what is true period. They are, but they never, and I, I will go on record. There is, they don't ever really construct anything better. They, they, because deconstructionism in and of itself feels great, cuz we destroyed something. But I've yet to read a book called Constructionism where they actually provide something that's more positive and better and more loving than what we already have. And, and so, and that's yeah,

The problem with deconstruct it, it applies againsts everything. Anything you could construct yeah. Is also be deconstructed. And here's, here's the issue. Here's the difference between the left today and fascism, they say that everything is just power and laws and morality and government. It just, we need to deconstruct it. But today they use, they say everything is just power and they try to use that in a liberating way. They're trying to free the oppressed. Okay, good. But if everything is just power

Yeah.

Logical thing is then exercise power against everyone. And that's what the fascists believe. And today the people, those college students are so naive. Another quote for the book today's humane seeming left us work with unexamined, moral assumptions, overlooking the way they've demolished the basis of those assumptions. Right? So if you've got, if everything can be deconstructed and you're left with nihilism, right? Everything is rub, including your kind feelings towards others, desired, not to oppress people. All that's left is power and it follows that. Then you should get power and you impose it on others. And the, the, the fact they Nazis, at least they took that very seriously. And that's what we're headed to next. And it's an inescapable conclusion from those, uh, premises,

Right? You, and that's what I love about what you're saying. The, the Christian worldview stands against whether you'd call it national socialism, which is fascism or whether you call it, um, Marxist socialism, which is a class version of the same thing, or you call black liberation theology, which is the racialization of all that stuff. All of it is about power. And the thing that stands against all that is the notion that there's a God in heaven, there's objective reality. We're all gonna be held accountable to that. And we all seek to, we strive then to live virtuous lives for the sake of others, because there's a God in heaven who holds all this accountable to him and that's the antidote to all of this stuff. And, and so folks out there, you've got to start realizing that, that all this stuff is meant to undermine your ability to proclaim the good news of the gospel. I call it secular stateism cuz it undermines the family. It undermines the police, it undermines morality and everything goes back to the state and whoever's in charge then gets to tell you what to do. That's where we're heading. Unless we push back on that. Would you, would you go with me on that?

Well, absolutely. I would.

What I love about your book is you lay out the, the, the educational foundations, the philosophical foundations in my work, I saw it operating in the city and in politics. And I've said, we gotta push back on some of these things for the sake of the very people we're trying to serve. And it's not a matter of self-service we're not serving ourselves in this way. We care about our neighborhoods. I don't care. I don't care. Who's in our neighborhood ethnically or whatever. We care about the individual, the families, the children, and secular stateism doesn't. And it's gonna eventually, uh, take away the freedoms of all people. And I think our job is to be, uh, useful in God's hands, both in the culture and for the sake of the mission of the church. All right. Final thoughts. I mean, what are some things, you know, if you were talking to some people right now and they just read your book and they went, whoa, I didn't know. It was like this. And you even said, you, the difference between your book then and now is that you may have underestimated. where a lot of this was going that I didn't like reading that.

Yeah. It was kinda painful to see, see I'm somebody who most people want to be proven that they're right. I like to be proven that I'm wrong. Cause sometimes the things I'm predicting, I hope that happen. Yeah. But, uh, that there are some differences. One thing, the rise of technology, uh, in the book, back in the early nineties, I was talking about television, right? Uh, uh, now, uh, uh, Herman go's the propaganda, uh, uh, chief of the Nazis he's film and radio. The goal is to create a mass mind mm-hmm mass mind. Uh, and so I talked about, uh, I wonder what he could have done with television. You know, now I'd say, I wonder where he could have done with the internet. Now that mass mind is feasible in a way it wasn't even in the nineties or certainly not in the thirties.

Yeah. And it's important that Christians not slip in unintentionally to these same ways of thinking and the solution to this liquidating, this Jewish element that is the Bible. The Bible is to return to the Bible, return to the authority of the Bible and to see how the Bible can inform the way we think, the way we view the world. Uh, and certainly our faith. Again, many Christians, many of our mainline friends have liquidated the Bible and, uh, we can't let ourselves do that. Right. And, um, in the meantime, you know, we can maybe present an alternative to people who are burnt out or persecuted or casualties of the dominant ways of thinking, and we can be there for them. And, uh, maybe things will get so bad that that people will start waking up and react against what's happening now to something far better. And we need to be there to present what that looks like.

Well, I appreciate again, Jean, you get you, if you read this book folks, um, um, modern fascism, the liquidating of the Christian worldview, you're gonna see what we're talking about in ways he's laid out the he's laid out the, um, intellectual movements, the foundational movements that, that came to fruition in the libertinism of the sixties, the God is dead movement in NCHE all of these different things in such a way where you're going, oh wow, that's what's happening. That's why our schools teach this. Now. That's why our universities teach that. Now what I would also add to this, uh, gene two is that their foundations are not as solid. Everyone thinks that Darwinism is this solid foundation. It's pseudoscience. Like you point out in the book and it's the foundation of racism. It's the re you know, the, the only difference today between the, the white supremacist enlightenment Darwinism of the last century is now it's multicultural, but it's still supremacist.

It's still atheistic. And it still actually says, some people are, are on the top and others aren't that that's the Al ours is the alternative to that, which is that God creates all people and all people have dignity and worth. So you can, their foundations are not as solid, but you know, again, you as Christians have all this at your disposal. And if you really understand that God's Christian, the, the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview is a blessing to people have at it, jump in because people's lives are at stake. And gene, I just wanna say thank you for giving us even more data to help us in creating that, that dialogue.

Well, thanks. Enjoyed our visit.

Well, let me ask one last question. Are you rewriting that book? I know you revisited it with some of the, or is, is that something where you just don't have time to, to go back at it again?

No, it's, it's so daunting and it's such an unpleasant ask. So depressing to write that book. I don't feel up to it. Uh, it does need to be updated. Hey, maybe you could help

Me. Maybe we just gotta, we gotta take the latest machination of it and kind of come after it, but your book has done a great job doing that.

Well, appreciate

That. Thanks for tuning in today to get to know our LCR L DC work better. Check out our website@lclfreedom.org till next time. God bless you. Always I'm Greg Rez have a great week.

You've been listening to Liberty alert with Dr. Gregory Seltz executive director of the Lutheran center for religious Liberty in Washington, DC. This program has been brought to you by the Lutheran center for religious Liberty.