The Call to Spiritual Preparation for the Anti-Christian Age

by Jason Glas

The mixture of emotions regarding the events within our nation over the last year have left many of us politically fatigued.  Regardless of specific politicians and positions now, there is among many conservative evangelical Christians the feeling of dismay, and for some near shock, over the social and political shift in our nation.  Perhaps the shock can even be carried over to how the evangelical community has responded to one another in these last five years with such polarizing and impassioned rhetoric that unfortunately is a reproach to our witness.  Whatever disagreements exist, most Christians in our nation feel disheartened.  This is especially the case for many older Christians of early Gen X’ers, Baby Boomers and beyond who feel like it is a horrible dream they hope to awake.  Some younger Christians can be less sympathetic and even impatient with the attitudes and feelings of older Christians, but we should remember that times were different and such cancel culture hostility did not exist.  As James Hunter points out, the memory of predominant Christian influence in the past is real but so is our society’s loss of Christian consciousness.  There

was a time in America and in Europe when the world more closely reflected the ideals and principles that conservative Christians hold dear. Homosexuality was never mentioned except as a shameful act even if it was practiced most marriages remained intact even if the couple was miserable the nuclear family was culturally and statistically normative, abortion was rare and the threat of euthanasia not even imaginable. There was a time when the Bible and Foxe’s Book of Martyrs were two books that could be found in nearly everyone’s home; a time when the church was held in high regard even if its practices were not observed, and its truths were respected, even if they were not embraced. There was also a time when Christians were open about their faith, the clergy not least, held positions of prominence and influence in the shaping of society. Those times are long past, but the fact that those times existed figures prominently in the collective memory of Christians who are politically conservative.  The nostalgia is palpable.[i]

As Christians, the feelings of defeat and anxiety for what is happening in our society may be understandable but there is a limit to how much it should be tolerated.  At some point Christians must recognize when the ship has sailed, or as Bob Dylan sang, we have to “admit the waters around you have grown…For the times, they are a-changin’.” 

Nostalgia can become idolatry causing us to live in the past desiring corrupt and lesser kingdoms over the kingdom of Christ.  The church needs to come to grips with the fact that our society has changed. We need to think about our faith, our mission, and living in ways that most of us have never been challenged to think about before now.  Below we will explore three things: First we will briefly examine ways our society has changed.  Second, we will use that analysis to show how the trajectory of these changes are trending toward increased Anti-Christian sentiment, and third, we will look at some wisdom from church history and Scripture on how we can spiritually and morally prepare for whatever days come our way.

 

The Changed Landscape of American Culture

For many Christians, concepts such as Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Intersectionality[ii] are newer concepts because of having heard about them over the last five years.  These ideas, however, are not new, they have just been popularized by the propaganda campaigns of wokeness in popular culture, corporations, sports, churches, media, Black Lives Matter, and so forth.  What is important for Christians to understand is that for decades there have been devoted groups of people who have sought to destroy the cultural hegemony of American society, what we have come to know as Cultural Marxists.  The United States of America is a nation formed under the influence of Protestantism.  This influence formed the moral, philosophical, legal, and social norms of our nation.   In the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville attested to the strength of this public theological influence noting that among “the Anglo-Americans, some profess Christian dogmas because they believe them, others because they are afraid of not looking like they believe them.”[iii]  That cultural hegemony remained the general line of thinking well into the twentieth century although forces for undoing this were well underway.  By the time we arrived in the postmodern era “all narratives of religion, patriotism, material progress, scientific objectivity, and gentlemanly virtue were under suspicion”[iv]and now they are under attack. This is because the emergence of Identity Politics was an effort to break up the hemogenic influence through dividing society “into subnational groups along identities that can be based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and even disability status.”[v]  This was accomplished by convincing these groups they are victims when they had not thought of themselves this way before. 

The formation of Identity Politics has deep roots in Marxism.  Anyone who traces the development of this movement will encounter names like Antonio Gramsci, an early twentieth century Italian communist leader, and Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfort School who is very responsible for work in Critical Theory arguing, “no one can be free who does not first understand he is not free.”[vi]  Using the Civil Rights movement of legitimate oppression by whites against blacks, the Cultural Marxist’ influencers hijacked that legitimate movement and used it to create a longer list of victims through convincing groups of people who once generally assimilated into the culture that they were now outcasts.  This ties into the Marxist mindset of creating class warfare except Karl Marx did this in an economic sense between the bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and the proletariat (working class).  Cultural Marxists, however, redefined these terms from being exclusively economic matters to issues of morality.  The bourgeoisie were no longer just those who controlled society economically but was extended to the dominate moral system informed by Protestant Christianity that established the things the culture considered customary as well as conventional norms of behavior (i.e., decorum).  This group now became the privileged of society.  The proletariat became victims of this dominate influence of morality that allegedly oppress groups along the lines of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender, and the like.  Cultural Marxists emerged to take control of institutions that are responsible for forming conventional morality and essentially change what is considered normative in society, particularly institutions like education, arts, entertainment, seminaries, and churches.  Going back to the Civil Rights movement of the twentieth century, Cultural Marxists used it to create other groups of grievances by trying to compare their experience and conditions as the same as descendants of slaves; identity groups with various claims on fabricated victimhood loosely based on ethical, racial, sexual and disability statuses.  These efforts led to things like discouraging immigrants and other groups from assimilating into the nation’s norms “because when they incorporate into their thinking the hegemonic metanarrative of the privileged, they participate in their own oppression.  To even consider assimilation, let alone teach or promote it, is to participate in false consciousness.”[vii]  Of course, the experience of blacks is different than any group in American history and it is deeply offensive to see how identity groups hijacked the Civil Rights movement to advance their causes.  “The point of identity politics was to create a raft of groups under the pretense that their situation resembled the real black-white divide in this country, that their condition was a version of the real suffering of blacks under Jim Crow, and before that, slavery.”[viii] 

As a result, the Protestant influence of America’s founding is viewed as oppressive.  In the eyes of cultural revolutionaries, it is this Protestant, particularly white-Protestant, influence that controls the narrative of history, and now history must be rewritten from the perspective of the oppressed class, hence the 1619 Project.[ix]  It is the influence of Protestantism that established conventional moral norms of acceptable behavior, sexual ethics, and customs of marriage, family, and education, but now all these customs are judged as stemming from the era and perpetrators of oppression.  To the cultural Marxist, all “of culture—the family, social institutions, philosophical systems—is nothing more than one group exercising power over another group (men over women, whites over racial minorities, heterosexuals over homosexuals, humans over animals, etc.,). Thus, every dimension of life is politicized and critiqued as part of a system of oppression.”[x]  For example, when you combine the influence of Karl Marx with someone like Sigmund Freud’s influence on sexuality, “society now intuitively associates sexual freedom with political freedom because the notion that, in a very deep sense, we are defined by our sexual desires is something that has penetrated all levels of our culture.”[xi]  In fact, the followers of Freud and perverts like Alfred Kinsey made sexuality the sum and substance of human identity, hence the reinvigorated policies of protecting gender dysphoria and transgenderism.  Oppression now was not so much to be thought of in economic terms but now along the lines of moral and psychological.  “The psychologizing of oppression and placing of it at the center of the history of human society plays directly to the idea that history is something to overcome.”[xii]  As a result, Protestant influence is considered the oppressor along with its moral code.  For reasons like this, it is doubtful the current outrage against conservatism and orthodox Christianity will diminish because it is the trademark of white privilege oppression. 

 

From Post-Christian to Anti-Christian Society

The trajectory of our current cultural movement is headed toward greater intensity with Christianity in its crosshairs.    It is common to hear this period of Western history referred to as an era of Post-Christianity, but this label seems too charitable considering the forces of our day.  We are more accurately living in an era of Anti-Christianity.   To say we live in a Post-Christian society only tells half the story, which refers to the decline of Christian influence in our society.  Today, the church no longer has the respect of moral authority in our society to shape morality.  Post-Christianity suggests Christianity is an impotent relic of the past that is largely ignored by society, but it is a mistake to assume Christianity is being ignored.  This is the age of Anti-Christianity because historic, orthodox, Protestant Christianity is viewed as an oppressive moral system, so the social and moral revolutionary antagonists will not be satisfied until it is eradicated.  Gene Veith, Jr. reflects back on a major event where this sentiment became popular; 9/11.  Prior to September 11, 2001, the cultural and philosophical agendas of moral relativism and multiculturalism where at work, but that changed after the attacks on our nation.  “Before, all religions, in elite opinion, were considered to be equally good.  Afterward, all religions were considered equally bad.”[xiii]  It made no difference if they were Islamic terrorists, simply they were “Islamic ‘fundamentalists,’ so not Islam but fundamentalism was to blame, with Christian ‘fundamentalists’ being considered, in many circles, as no better.”[xiv]  It is not that all truths are valid today it is no truth is valid except the belief that any attempt to limit or “corral sexual expression is then rendered as an oppressive move designed to make the individual inauthentic… [and] any attempts to set such limits based on the intrinsic nature of certain sexual acts are ultimately arbitrary and politically motivated.”[xv] The convictions of Biblical Christianity not only represent rules from the oppressive class but even worse they presume moral authority that ultimately attempt to destroy a very person’s identity.

Hostility toward Biblical truth is not new for the church, but the forms of hostility that are present and coming are new.  Already we have seen the impact of Woke Capitalism, Surveillance Capitalism, and Cancel Culture in their technological forms that is moving us toward what Rod Dreher calls soft totalitarianism.  Our society is dependent upon the digital age and technological conveniences and we as consumers have accepted these conveniences into our daily lives giving the “technological capability to implement such a system of discipline and control” in the Western world.[xvi] We have witnessed how Big Tech and large corporations can ban accounts and deny services if the tenants of woke social justice are not embraced.  Cultural Marxism has replaced Christianity as the new religion with social justice as its theological system.  “This pseudoreligion appears to meet a need for meaning and moral purpose in a post-Christian society and seeks to build a just society by demonizing, excluding, and even persecuting all who resist its harsh dogmas.”[xvii]  

Before anyone writes this off as some Orwellian conspiracy theory, think about what is happening now to politicians, companies, and individuals who do not support the progressive views of the left regarding social justice, BLM, LGBTQ+, etc.  The progressive left has emerged as a form of new religious extremism that looks to advance its cause “with increasingly authoritarian means seeking to establish a thoroughly dogmatic fundamentalist ideology regarding how society should be ordered.”[xviii]  In this new religion, Big Tech has ordained itself as the official priesthood of the social justice value system and excommunicates anyone not aligning with its doctrine.  For Christians, this kind of authoritarian dogma hits home when you consider how social media accounts are used by employers for jobs and job interviews.  What will “liking” certain posts do for future Christian employment?  Even now, corporations will drop sponsorship and products almost immediately if the leftist mob threatens because most companies are not willing to risk the social capital of being smeared online for not appearing to tote the progressive agendas.  Most companies will not risk the social capital to defend or tolerate an employee who does not appear to support the doctrines of moral anarchy, and we could see a rash of Christians faced with job loss.  What happens when our internet viewing, searches, and purchasing activity is deemed to not be considered “trustworthy” to Big Tech, Big Corporation, banks, and government?   How could our “activities” impact our ability to get a job, get accepted into a school, receive services, get a permit, start a business, buy a home, and so on? 

The forces of soft totalitarianism are already at work through means of technology, institutions, and corporations.  How well is the church in America prepared for such a time of anti-Christian hostility?  “If true Christians do not wake up and realize what is happening, we will be ill-prepared to contend for and defend the gospel in this pivotal, cultural moment.”[xix]   To be at a point where we can defend the truth, however, requires spiritual preparation to develop the character necessary for the mission.  “We cannot hope to resist the coming soft totalitarianism if we do not have our spiritual lives in order.”[xx]  Developing the spiritual and moral fortitude to endure and thrive in such days needs to be our focus.  We must learn to think Biblically and theologically in ways we have not been challenged before so we can live in eschatological hope, display eschatological community, and proclaim the light of the Gospel in the midst of darkness.  

Moral Fortitude in the Anti-Christian Age

Having settled the matter that general hostility against Biblical Christianity will increase and lead to new forms of persecution, it is vital that Christians do not despair.  If history has proven anything it is that Christianity thrives under persecution but dies under prosperity.  “This is also the wellspring behind G. K. Chesterton’s witty hope… ‘At least five times…the Faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs.  In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died.”[xxi]  The spirit of the cancel culture and levels of censorship employed by Big Tech and corporations will only intensify but Christians must learn how to prepare and live for such time in hope, not in despondency.  Perhaps it is time for pastors to revisit in fresh ways what Jesus meant when He told the disciples, "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16).  The parable of the Unrighteous Steward in Luke 16 is also instructive for us as it was a favorite for Christians under the Soviet Union.  The church must always remember that persecution is not the greatest threat to Christianity.  Instead, the lack of persecution and being surround with prosperity, consumerism, and distractions has hurt the church and darkened her eschatological vision.  It seems the average Christian can barely articulate their hope let alone defend it to anyone who asks us to give an account (1 Pet. 3:15).  Perhaps the ancient bishop of Hippo, Augustine, can be instructive here providing some introspective counsel that we must ponder to be prepared for the days ahead. 

Augustine lived and pastored during the fall of Rome.  When the Roman Empire fell, Christianity fell under popular attack because it was blamed for Rome’s decline.  Of course, Augustine proved the empire fell to its own moral failures that hurt it culturally, economically, militarily, and religiously.  Augustine though was not only serving as an apologist to defend Christianity against its critics but also among Christians who wondered how God could let such a defeat and sufferings happen to them.  Augustine was asked things like: “Why did Christians suffer like the pagans?”  “Why were Christian women raped like pagan women?”  Overall, in dealing with the question of societal decline and how we as Christians need to think about living through a period of watching our civilization implode, Augustine is immensely helpful.  “We are at a truly Augustinian moment, for St. Augustine died in north Africa with the Vandals at the gates, and he had lived through the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in A.D. 410.”[xxii]  For Christians in America, we find ourselves living in such a transitional moment where the pastoral wisdom and theological vision articulated by Augustine in his City of God is worth revisiting.  “Augustine’s privilege and challenge was to trust God and live faithfully at such a time of turmoil, breakdown, and distress, and to articulate a vision of the kingdom of God”[xxiii] that would forge a clear Biblical and theological vision for the church in the days ahead; a work that needs to be done again. 

Some examples of Augustine’s pastoral wisdom are found in his teachings on why Christians experience judgments on society by God like the wicked, and he points out how Christians became negligent in their missional work in society.  On the experience of good and evil events in life, Augustine said that God has willed good things in life and its ills to “be common for both [the righteous and the wicked]; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer.”[xxiv] This is the pastoral wisdom we need to be teaching to develop the character necessary for enduring societal decline.  Sufferings in this present life are used by God to protect us from coveting the things of this world and delivering us from the fears of this world.  God uses persecution, diseases, and loss of worldly goods to properly direct our hope and will toward Him and the kingdom of His Son to check our temptation toward hoping too much in the kingdoms, goods, services, and abundance of this world.   

On Christians failing socially in their mission to evangelize, reprimand, and improve society Augustine said Christians withheld this work and went silent in cowardly fear because they did not want to lose the benefits of a good life in their age.  Augustine said Christians neglected opportunities they had to admonish the wicked and wickedness 

…either because we shrink from the labour or are ashamed to offend them [unbelievers], or because we fear to lose good friendships, lest this should stand in the way of our advancement, or injure us in some worldly matter, which either our covetous disposition desires to obtain, or our weakness shrinks from losing.[xxv]

Augustine’s point is that professing Christians had misplaced fear and covetous hearts, which led to their missional negligence of proclaiming the light of the Gospel and rebuking the works of darkness.

They abstain from interference, because they fear that, if it fail of good effect, their own safety or reputation may be damaged or destroyed…because they weakly relish the flattery and respect of men, and fear the judgments of the people, and the pain or death of the body; that is to say their non-intervention is the result of selfishness, and not of love.

Accordingly, this seems to me to be one principal reason why the good are chastised along with the wicked, when God is pleased to visit with temporal punishments the profligate manners of a community.  They are punished together, not because they have spent an equally corrupt life, but because the good as well as the wicked…love this present life, while they ought to hold it cheap, that the wicked, being admonished and reformed by their example might lay hold of eternal life. [xxvi]                                 

Augustine points out that Christian failure in the fifth century was tied to desire for affluence and fear of losing whatever benefits the world had to offer.  As a pastor, Augustine answered the question on why such destruction is happening and why society is collapsing, and he says God uses this as a form of scourging His people to help them understand they love this world too much. 

Perhaps the events unfolding today will urge pastors to preach this kind of boldness.  Perhaps the coming forms of persecution will challenge Christians to search the motives of their heart in ways we have been neglecting?  Perhaps Christians in America will take seriously the Great Commission recognizing it is not just foreign lands that are in great need of the Gospel, but our homeland.  As Christians, “the time for silence is gone. We must be willing to speak what God has said in His Word, and we must do so boldly, clearly, unapologetically, and lovingly.  Our call is not to save America.  We are grateful for our nation and lament to see the trajectory of our civil life. We do not want to see our nation unnecessarily destroyed. But our concerns are much deeper than the fate of a single nation.”[xxvii] Christians have the responsibility to evangelize and reprove society (Ephesians 5:11).  The Bible specifically commands us to not participate in works of darkness and to expose the teachings and deeds of darkness, but many Christians failed in this during the fifth century as they do today through a lack of faith and trust that the Lord has for us a better city prepared.  Consider for a moment the experience of the first century church and their joy in persecution we learn from the book of Hebrews: “But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one” (Hebrews 10:32-34).  What a challenge to our hearts! Would we joyfully accept the seizure of our property?  Do we have such eschatological hope that we could accept theft by authorities of our possessions?  Pondering these things now is vital for the church so we can be spiritually, theologically, and morally prepared for whatever days lie ahead. 

To be clear, in no way are we undermining the privilege and duty that Christians have in our American political system to vote and protest.  This is not a call to simply surrender and just “come what may.”  Using Ephesians 5:11 we are called to “reprove” the works of darkness.  The word expose is the same as reproving and rebuking elsewhere in the Bible.  We must use whatever legal means necessary to rebuke the works of darkness and fight against the growing totalitarian threats.  This is a privilege God provides American Christians and we should defend and protect rights guaranteed by our laws and seek to overturn godlessness in our legal, institutional, and political systems.  Nonetheless, we must always recognize the limits of such actions.  “If we offer our ultimate loyalty to the political community and its goods, we suppress the desire for God that marks the deepest reaches of our humanity.”[xxviii]  We cannot expect too much from the politics of men, especially when the principalities and powers of the air have motivated the anti-Christian forces of darkness in such vastness against us.  Augustine encourages us as Christians that we are after something much larger than the kingdoms of the world.  We must learn as Christians “to acknowledge and cherish the brilliance of this earthly life without ever forgetting that it is ‘the fragile brilliance of glass’, that smoke has no weight’, and that we are on the way toward a city far greater and more worthy of praise than any of the communities to which we give our loyalty here and now.”[xxix]

 

Conclusion

The times, they are a changin’ and Christians must avoid idolatrous nostalgia and fearful paralysis. As the anti-Christian forces grow in hostility, we are comforted to know that we are moving into an era from where the first century church came. The threats of the cancel culture will only increase as corporations, schools, institutions, and government will cower in the face of the mob. Surveillance Capitalism with Woke Capitalism will bring significant challenges to us as our social, economic, and educational choices will fall under increased scrutiny. It is not improbable that Christians could begin feeling the pressure of such hostile forces soon through job loss and job interviews because of social affiliations or positions, or denied services from “woke” corporations, rejected from schools, etc. We have already witnessed the impact of the cancel culture against companies, churches, and individuals who are targeted, smeared, and even harmed by the unaccountable swarming mob of keyboard gangsters and media trolls. The threats are real and growing, but the church must be prepared. Our preparations must be grounded in Biblical and theological realism. A “bug-out-bag” will only get you so far. Supplies will run out, and we cannot live life in a bunker indefinitely. Instead, as new forms of persecution arise and we exhaust our rightful political and legal options to fight back the forces of godlessness, we must train our hearts and minds to live as “aliens and strangers” in this present life knowing that we have “an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven” for us because the church is “protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:3-5).

End Notes 

[i] James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, & Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 112.  

[ii] For a helpful and practical discussion about these concepts I recommend the book: By What Standard, edited by Jared Longshore (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2020).

[iii] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (ed. and trans., Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 279.

[iv] Christopher Caldwell, The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020), 152. 

[v] Mike Gonzalez, The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free (New York: Encounter Books, 2020), 6.

[vi] Ibid., 18.

[vii] Ibid., 175-176

[viii] Ibid., 20.

[ix] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

[x] Gene Edward Veith Jr., Post Christian: A Guide to Contemporary Thought and Culture (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2020), 19.

[xi] Carl R. Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution (Wheaton: Crossway Books, 2020), 263.

[xii] Ibid., 267.

[xiii] Veith, 15.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Trueman, 264.

[xvi] Rod Dreher, Live Not By Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents (New York: Sentinel, 2020), 89.

[xvii] Dreher, 93.

[xviii] Helen Pluckrose & James Lindsay, Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything about Race, Gender, and Identity (Durham, NC: Pitchstone Publishing, 2020), 12.

[xix] Tom Ascol, “White Privilege: The New Original Sin” in By What Standard? edited by Jared Longshore (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2020), 50. 

[xx] Dreher, xiv. 

[xxi] Quoted from: Os Guinness, Renaissance: The Power of the Gospel However Dark the Times (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014), 82.

[xxii] Guinness, 23.

[xxiii] Ibid.

[xxiv] Saint Augustine, The City of God, trans. By Marcus Dods, D.D. (New York: Modern Library, 1993), 10.

[xxv] Ibid., 11.

[xxvi] Ibid., 12-13.

[xxvii] Tom Ascol and Jared Longshore, Strong and Courageous: Following Jesus Amid the Rise of America’s New Religion (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2020), 6.

[xxviii] Gilbert Meilaender, The Way that Leads There: Augustinian Reflections on the Christians Life: (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 79.

[xxix] Meilaender, 80.