📄The Areopagus Update – Oct/Nov 2024
A Vital Component in the Christian Response to a Changing Society and Culture
“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” – Psalm 11:3
“ I doubt if there has been a period in all of Christian history when so many Christians are so ineffectual in shaping the culturein which they live as is true right now in the United States. ” – R. C. Sproul, Lifeviews
“This is what the Lord said to me: ‘Go, post a watchman and have him report what he sees.’” – Isaiah 21:6
[Excerpts from Chapter 13, “The Ministry of the Watchman,” in American Crisis: Cultural Marxism and the Culture War .]
In ancient and medieval times every walled city and castle, along with many towns and villages, posted a watchman around the clock. Although not a high-status job, everyone recognized the vital role of the watchman. He functioned as the guardian of the community, and the safety and security of all rested on him. The watchman had to be alert, trustworthy, vigilant, loyal, and familiar with the surrounding landscape and ecology so as to read it for signs of imminent danger.
We don’t live in walled cities anymore, nor do we station watchmen in guardhouses at the city limits. Under the Biden/Harris administration, our government doesn’t even attempt to control illegal immigration flooding across our borders. As a result, due to such poor leadership we face a host of threats – both domestically as well as internationally – which render the principle of the watchman as relevant and essential today as ever in the past.
The most alarming threats that America currently faces are internal rather than external, moral rather than military, and spiritual rather than physical. And precisely because they germinate from within, these threats are significantly more insidious than anything we have faced in the past.
In the aftermath of The Great War (i.e., World War I) and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Marxist theoreticians endeavored to spread Communism worldwide. Realizing that most Europeans and Americans were resistant to classical Marxism and its radical revolutionary ideology, some of the more astute Marxist theoreticians sought to redefine Marxism more in synch with the social and cultural trends in Western civilization. Rather than focus exclusively on society’s economic substructure, cultural Marxists such as Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) and Gyorgy Lukacs (1885-1971) advocated a long-term strategy of social transformation based on infiltrating (and infecting) the seven key cultural components of society : the education establishment (including law schools); politics and government; journalism and the media; the family; the business establishment; the entertainment industry; and the religious establishment – beginning with liberal (“progressive”) Christian churches and institutions but more recently infiltrating and compromising even key evangelical institutions as Megan Basham highlights in her recent book, 📕Shepherds for Sale. [For more detail on the insidious and pervasive neo-Marxist infiltration of our society see chapters 3-5 in 📕American Crisis.]
Now for more than 50 years left-wing cultural barbarians have been systematically and methodically besieging one cultural citadel after another, ransacking our city and wreaking havoc. For a civilization as immense and complex as America, it takes a while once the barbarians have gained entry for the whole city to fall. There are countless skirmishes and continuous house-to-house street fighting, and sometimes they are temporarily beaten back. But much of the city has already been overrun.
Over the past 20 years the pace with which these cultural barbarians have accelerated their campaign to “fundamentally transform” America has been astonishing. This was the concern that former U.S. Attorney-General William Barr expressed in November of 2019 in his address at Notre Dame when he warned that America has entered a new stage of public and private decadence from which we may never return.
To change our culture, we must first change the culture in our churches. Every church, regardless of size, should have an organized group whose special calling is to survey the cultural landscape and report regularly on matters of particular relevance to all serious Christians. Like the men of Issachar in I Chron. 12:32 who “under-stood their times,” this requires men and women who are attuned to the great issues of our day and who have the knowledge, communication skills, and the organizational ability to serve as effective leaders in such a crucial area of ministry. This is a vital missing link between what the church currently is and what it is called to be: a source Light and Love and Truth to the surrounding community.
One such vital resource is “The Watchman“, a publication by Millie Atkinson that focuses on some of the most relevant issues and events that well-informed and concerned Christians need to know. If you are not currently a subscriber, contact her at: milliecatkinson@gmail.com
Also in this issue… Six Recommended Books for Serious Christians by Jefrey Breshears
