December 30, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

“Worldliness Cloaked in Godliness”

Friends,

The words are not mine, but of my dear friend “The Dissident Mama,” and they appear in her latest column, a superb critique of what “establishment” Christianity has become in our time.

What caught her attention was the editorial—if  you wish to call it that—by one Mark Galli, editor of the Evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, savaging President Trump and demanding that he be removed from office forthwith, without delay. Yes, because of his supposed quid pro quo with the president of Ukraine, but, with much more sinister intent, because of who he is and what he represents.

You see, President Trump, for all his failings both personal and administrative, represents a real clear and present danger to the Progressivist global project. Standard Republican opposition, like that of the Bushes I and II, or from the likes of John McCain or Mitt Romney, is one thing: it’s like “tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum” in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass—no real opposition at all, but rather over who gets the spoils and whether we advance to the secular Paradise, the global Parousia, a bit faster or a bit slower. Both political parties—and most of their leadership—partake of this dialectic, and share in the power. We now denominate it the “Deep State.” Or perhaps what the late Dr. Sam Francis called Leviathan (from Old Testament usage).

Certainly since the end of the War Between the States, this geographical entity we call the United States has been headed in that direction: more governmental control, greater centralization, the secularization of society, and the end of traditional Christian belief. And with a burgeoning state-run educational system which has essentially one diabolical duty: to inculcate and indoctrinate into each generation a set of “values” and beliefs which is not only inimical to those held by most of the Framers, but which within the scheme of Western Christian thought is destructive and dissolvent.

But one immense force, one powerful presence remained to block this progress. One major institution stood in the way, and inspired opposition to this headlong descent into a horrid “slough of Despond” which we were told is Paradise on Earth, but in reality is the fetid bowels of Hell.

Overcoming this presence was and has been the last major phase of the world Revolution that began in force with the Enthronement of the Goddess of Reason in the Cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris…. But actually commenced long before that in the screeds of some of the religious revolutionaries, and, ultimately, in the serpent’s “Non serviam” in the Garden of Eden: the desire of restless man to become as gods.

While much of established Protestantism fell to this temptation with the assaults of “higher Biblical criticism” and “social gospelism” in the Nineteenth Century, it was only in the Twentieth Century that the major obstacle to the success of Progressivism was tackled in earnest and with any success. That bitter, incarnate enemy was the Catholic Church which throughout the course of the Nineteenth Century and much of the Twentieth had denounced liberalism, Modernism, Evolutionism, pseudo-democracy, and equality of the sexes.

It was in the early Twentieth Century that theological Modernism was joined at the hip with a theoretical cultural Marxism. Although condemned formally by Pope St. Pius X (in his 1907 encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis) and by successive pontiffs up until Pius XII, Modernists and Marxists had learned that open, face-to-face opposition was futile. Rather, infiltration and slow methodical progress, the “long march” through the institutions—not just in the Church—was the way of success.

And in the Second Vatican Council those progressivists, largely hidden from view but burrowed away, nonetheless, in seminaries and colleges, at magazines, and at media centers, emerged. While maintaining the façade of orthodoxy, the language—the expression of the Faith—used by that Council in its documents was altered just enough so as to render it capable of various interpretations, both orthodox and heterodox.

And what followed was disaster. The minions of Revolution emerged full-blown. The last major redoubt against the success of the Progressivists, the last institutional opponent against the advance to a global dystopia—to that secular Antichrist—disappeared largely from the battlefield, except in small huddled groups.

Then, a curious event happened. Just when it appeared that the triumphal election of Hillary Clinton would cement the final victory of the Revolution, an upstart billionaire, brash and, yes, profane, came upon the scene. He was not like the shining knight in armor, the chevalier sans reproche, the Sieur de Bayard of French history, but a bustling Yankee who spoke boldly and openly…and with whom millions who seemed to awaken from their lethargy and somnolence identified. Almost it appeared that the gnawing sensation within normal people—that belief that things were badly out of kilter—all of a sudden had found a mouthpiece.

It did not matter that he was woefully imperfect or that he was not the most cultured or most proficient by the current standards of etiquette. After all, did not God speak through Balaam’s donkey? Did not He choose the vehicles for His messages to His creatures? Donald Trump represented something far more dangerous to the ongoing Revolution: he incarnated and represented millions of “deplorables”—those “irredeemables”—who had not been brought along by the academics and educators, the Hollywood elites, the media, and the cocooned political class.

Despite Mark Galli’s hysterical pseudo-Christian screed against President Trump  in Christianity Today, it is we who are the REAL targets. It is we, the unreformed, the non-adepts, the uninitiated into the fraternity of the elites, who are the enemy. We remain faithful to our baptism; we remain faithful—even if without the great erudition of the academics at Harvard or Berkeley—to what we have received. Our comprehension may not be on a philosophical level, but nevertheless we see what is happening and what has happened. And we are still able to tell the difference between eternal good and infernal evil.

Thus we stand with pitchforks in our hands, like Pat Buchanan’s “Pitchfork Brigades” of nearly thirty years ago.  Donald Trump will pass from the scene, but our counter-revolution has only begun. We seek no quarter, and we give none. We are outnumbered, and we know it.

But we have one Doomsday Weapon: we have the final power and judgment of the Creator Himself. Even if we must live for centuries like the early Christians in catacombs or imprisoned by our secular masters, we know how history will end: “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat.”

May each of you and yours have a happy and blessed New Year!

*****

Here follows The Dissident Mama’s latest column:

Woe unto you, elitists!

http://www.dissidentmama.net/woe-unto-you-elitists/

By Dissident Mama on Sunday, December 29, 2019

Just before Christmas, Christianity Today published an article entitled “Trump Should Be Removed From Office.” It was written by editor Mark Galli, who said the facts surrounding the case are “unambiguous” and that the president’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky was “not only a violation of the Constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral.”

I am not here to defend Trump as a saint. Sure, there are reasons to impeach this president, just as there have been grounds for kicking to the curb each and every president from Abraham Lincoln onward. We have an “imperial presidency,” as historian Brion McClanahan aptly describes it.

McClanahan rightly states that foreign aid (which is at the heart of the manufactured Trump brouhaha) is itself unconstitutional, yet all presidents sign off on it. Hell, virtually all foreign policy has been unconstitutional since 1861.

As an example of the selective-outrage lunacy of Trump’s impeachment, McClanahan cites the Marshall Plan as one giant quid pro quo, yet no Democrat worth his salt ever complains about that. Well, it was just smart post-WWII policy, they say, certainly not bribery. What are you, a pinko commie?

Why then all the inconsistent indignation toward illegal governance just when Trump’s in office? The answer, of course, is power. As President Andrew Johnson (who himself was impeached by the radical Republicans over Reconstruction measures) once declared, “Whenever you hear a man prating about the Constitution, spot him as a traitor.” Yep, especially when the praters themselves are lawless profiteers, like the criminals, liars, and thieves in Congress and their evangeleftist foot soldiers.

So when CT gets all high and mighty, claiming that their civic sleight of hand and clear ideological motivations are “not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments,” it should be abundantly clear that sanctimony is not purely the business of politico shysters. There is no difference when the Wall Street Journal says that “Those attacking the ‘Deep State’ are really attacking the rule of law” than there is when CT says that resisting “social justice” is unbiblical. In fact, it is these statist straw-men arguments that work in concert to propel forward “progress.”

Theology professor Robert A.J. Gagnon also notes that “the same CT that called Obama ‘the evangelical in chief’ now acts as if Democrats’ allegations about abuse of power are undisputed and no other interpretations of events exist.” The “elite” evangelical bubble is all hot air, no substance.

Gagnon suggests looking at Galli’s own words in “Still Evangelical?” a book comprised of Never-Trumper evangelical insiders waxing very political and occasionally theological-ish about the disconnect between mainline Christian bigwigs and the unwashed Protestant masses. “It’s as if we’re each speaking a different language,” Galli wrote.

“That was certainly the shock some evangelicals felt after the election of Donald Trump, especially when they heard that 81% of white evangelicals voted for him,” he continued. “Most evangelical Christians like me exclaimed, ‘Who are these people? I know hardly anyone, let alone any evangelical Christian who voted for Trump.'”

This reminds me of the old story of film critic Pauline Kael who in 1972 pontificated, “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” Since she was so insular and protected from non-urbanites – you know, fly-over-country types, rural folk, and people who never earned a degree (gasp!) – Kael was utterly flabbergasted by Nixon’s 49-state landslide. After all, reality evidenced that those horrid knuckle-dragging yahoos did indeed exist beyond her cosmopolitan safe space. Icky!

“Where they are I don’t know,” she mused. “They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater, I can feel them.” (Cue heavy dank breathing, banjo music, and the aroma of chewing-tobacco spittle permeating the air.)

Similarly, Galli actually describes himself and other progressive Protestants as “‘elite evangelicals,” but that “doesn’t mean we are superior in any way, only that we are a distinct social class, mostly defined by being leaders in evangelical institutions and movements.” Good Lord, Galli’s pride would be comical if it weren’t so sinister.

“And this class of evangelicals has discovered that we have family members so different they seem like aliens in our midst,” he explains. “These other evangelicals often haven’t finished college, and if they have jobs (and apparently a lot of them don’t), they are blue-collar jobs or entry level work.” Eh, screw the poor if they’re white folk. Man, Galli’s Christian charity runs deep.

He continues, “They don’t write books or give speeches; they don’t attend conferences of evangelicals for social justice or evangelicals for immigration reform. They are deeply suspicious of mainstream media. A lot of them voted for Donald Trump.”

What Galli means by “class” has nothing to do with economics, of course, but everything to do with being woke on the “religion of anti-racism,” as politics professor Eric Kaufmann calls it. And anyone who deviates from the dogma – which includes all the rainbow flavors of cultural Marxism like feminism, LGBT, and anti-fascism – is an apostate at best and an evil-doer at worst.

That’s why Trump can move the US Embassy to Jerusalem, support increased legal immigration, aim to end the criminalization of homosexuality around the world, sign into law the $1.4 trillion spending package for fiscal year 2020, and sign an executive order targeting the fictional scourge of anti-Semitism on America’s college campuses (just to name a few of the president’s non-populist policies), yet still be considered the Racist In-Chief.

As law professor Jonathan Turley, who is no fan of Trump, explained to Congress during the impeachment hearings, there is a “paucity of evidence … [yet] an abundance of anger.” The elites are mad as hell. Why? Because Trump dared to resist (at least during his campaign) the status quo of open borders and forever wars: two of the most vital components of the globalists. He spoke to and for Joe 6-Pack, and right past the oligarchs and their gate-keepers.  Trump, despite his flaws, broken promises, neoconism, and lack of intellectual curiosity, is still seen as a “believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people” – the very definition of a populist – simply by virtue of not always kowtowing to the elites. He’ll call out the corporate media and the statist swampers, and then bypass them altogether by tweeting directly to the people. This is a big no-no in empire etiquette. Evangeleftists “keep and protect globalist norms,” remarks Dr. Steve Turley, who has his finger on the pulse of the elite-vs-populist clash for civilization.

Trump may be a symptom of the “imperial presidency” disease, but he is enough of an outsider, an outlier, a lower-class man, an anti-establishment guy that he is considered a threat to the machine. Even though your average Trump-voting evangelical dutifully pays his taxes, recites the Pledge, and waves his American flag, he too is still seen as a pariah just because he questions some facets of the progressive order. The untouchables must be scorned precisely because they have pulled back the veil.

Populists are willing to take on some economic pain in order to prevent or at least curtail large-scale change in culture and community, says Kaufmann. These are the build-the-wall voters who rallied behind Trump. They are altruistic to a fault but certainly not suicidal. At least not anymore, and this awakening doesn’t work for the globalists and their cultural Marxist schemes. So, the archetype and their symbolic leader must be smashed.

This is why evangeleftists and Deep-Staters alike bemoan “the rise of identity politics” but only for the populists, you see. The elite power structure is built upon placating and celebrating every self-defined aggrieved minority while simultaneously pushing Jim Snow Laws. This is why Galli will castigate Trump voters but most certainly not “black theologians” who say that whiteness is wicked. Gotta stick with the program.

This CT controversy goes way beyond some Ameridox Christians writing pro-Democrat articles. It’s about the unholy matrimony of evangelicalism and the Deep State. It’s about the Soros-funded “evangelicals for hire” and the overall leftist infiltration of mainline Christianity, as well as high-church Protestantism, Catholicism, and even some quarters of Orthodoxy. It’s about an American religiosity hellbent on growing the bureaucratic managerial state and all of its progressive tentacles. It’s worldliness cloaked in godliness. It’s a new world order sold as truth, justice, and the American way.

In 1993, writer Daniel Walker argued that “The parallel rise of theological liberalism and the growth of governmental power in this century in America was hardly coincidental. Historic Christianity was abandoned by theological liberalism, and the ‘Social Gospel‘ movement – having given up on the Gospel – wished to impose its own vision of the City of God here on earth. Biblical authority was weakened; a governmental authority filled the void.”

My friend Boyd Cathey summed up this duopoly through the lens of the impeachment “charade.” He said it’s “an effort not just against Donald Trump, but against any and everyone who voted for him, against all of those who dissent from the ongoing policies of and control by the Deep State, all those who have realized or begun to realize that what we stare in the face is not the corpulent mass of evil flesh that goes by the name of Jerry Nadler or the beady-eyed evil of an Adam Schiff, but a ‘rough beast’ (to use William Butler Yeats’ term) of satanic proportions, intent on our extinction, and the enthronement of a new false god of Baal, what the late Dr. Sam Francis called the Leviathan – a totalitarian world government, more fierce than anything envisaged by Stalin or Mao, without liberties, without tradition, without morality … and without God.”

The Deep Staters and evangeleftists are like the religious establishment of Jesus’ day. They fancy themselves wise experts who vie for control simply because the lower classes just need some good reformin’. They try to force upon the perceived peons their pretend notions of morality, yet they never practice what they preach.

In Matthew 23, Jesus boldly proclaims, “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” He calls the elite “ye fools … blind guides … Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers,” and refers to them as “hypocrites” 14 times in total.

The governmental and churched elites pretend to be beacons of light, selfless public servants, ethical arbiters of justice, unbiased teachers of the law (both man’s and God’s), and benevolent leaders, just leading their hapless flock. But despite their assurances of upholding the Constitution or the Ten Commandments, they are corrupt inside. Globalism is their god, and there’s nothing more “profoundly immoral” than happily leading sheep to the slaughter while trying to convince them otherwise.

As the brilliant Father Seraphim Rose once opined, “Philosophers and other supposedly responsible men in governmental, academic, and ecclesiastical circles, when they do not retreat behind the impersonal and irresponsible facade of specialization or bureaucracy, [they] usually do no more than rationalize the incoherent state of contemporary man and his world.” Today’s elitists do both.

Woe unto you, elitists! No matter how much you quote the Founders or cite Scripture out of context, the populists in the pews aren’t falling for the hypocrisy of ye white-washed tombs. Thank you, Jesus!