CULTURAL MARXISM IN THE CHURCH
From the Gospel of Jesus Christ to Sympathy for the Devil
“ACCUSERS OF THE BRETHREN”
“And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God day and night.” Revelation 12:10
As previously stated, Rosaria Butterfield is a former lesbian who was a tenured professor at Syracuse University. Rosaria’s primary field of study in 19th century English literature and culture was “the philosophical and political worldviews of Freud, Marx, and Darwin,...Critical Theory, Queer Theory”— in other words “Cultural Marxism.”
“My historical field in English studies was 19th century literature and culture. My historical interests in 19th century literature were grounded in the philosophical and political worldviews of Freud, Marx, and Darwin. My primary field was Critical Theory—also known as postmodernism. My specialty was Queer Theory (a postmodern form of gay and lesbian studies).” (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Kindle 146-148)
The term “postmodernism’ does not convey the subject matter of a course in “Critical Theory”—which is a major component of Cultural Marxist ideology to effect social revolution.
The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory
“The academic influence of the ‘critical’ method is far reaching in terms of educational institutions in which such tradition is taught and in terms of the problems it addresses. Some of its core issues involve the critique of modernities and of capitalist society, the definition of social emancipation and the perceived pathologies of society. Critical theory provides a specific interpretation of Marxist philosophy and…critique of mass culture…”
Cultural Marxism is a reformulation of Marxist philosophy which failed to bring about the world revolution predicted by Marx and Engels. Whereas Marxism was revolutionary and violent, Cultural Marxism is evolutionary—the gradual deconstruction and transformation of Western culture. This movement was set in motion by the Frankfurt School Institute of Social Research.
“As they reworked Marxist theories they developed a new strain of Marxism that gave priority to the radical transformation of the cultural superstructure (foundations) of Western civilization. They perceived Christianity and Western cultural traditions as obstacles to the revolution, which needed to be severed at their roots. This Marxist ideology came to be called cultural Marxism, a non-violent but revolutionary collectivist ideology that seeks the gradual gain of power via the modification of laws, institutions, and social organisations.”
Critical Theory is a strategy of Cultural Marxism taught in universities to indoctrinate future generations in the destructive skills of “critique of mass culture” – of government, capitalism, nationalism, white privilege, heterosexuality, patriarchy, Christianity, traditional values and morality – until Western culture and Christianity are overthrown and a pagan New Age / New World Order is built on the ruins.
Rosaria Butterfield has a compelling testimony of conversion to Jesus Christ which she presented in her 2012 book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. The former lesbian’s conversion was dramatic, and according to her, traumatic (compared to an alien abduction or train wreck). She is now married to a Reformed Presbyterian minister and former FBI agent with Top Secret clearance.
Rosaria is widely promoted as a speaker and author throughout the Reformed Calvinist and Southern Baptist churches and ministries, and she is unanimously praised by many Reformed and SBC leaders as:
“…just what the church and the world need, and just when we need it… Like Jael of old, Rosaria Butterfield wields the tent peg of the gospel against deception and accusation” (Russell Moore)
“Rosaria is a woman of whom the world is not worthy….a gift from God to the church” (Justin Taylor)
“...explains what it means to be a true Christian” (Mark Jones)
“Rosaria Butterfield is a special trophy of God’s grace, raised up for a special time and place in the history of the church (perhaps a kind of 21st century American Esther).” (R. Brian Rickett)
The Word of God does not say that a compelling testimony or a popular ministry or favor with denominational leaders is evidence of salvation. 1 John 3:14 tells us “We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.” In her public interviews and presentations, Rosaria Butterfield gives the impression of being a sweet, kind and compassionate Christian, however, her books are another matter entirely. The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert and Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity are fundamentally a screed against Christianity and a tour de force for Cultural Marxism.
The following excerpts from Rosaria’s books and interviews describe her former life as a lesbian and reveal that her antipathy toward Christianity has not abated since her conversion. They are representative of so many statements in her books that it becomes apparent where her true affections lie.
"I was an associate professor at Syracuse University, recently tenured in the English Department also holding a joint teaching appointment in the Center for Women’s Studies. I was in a lesbian relationship with a woman who was primarily an animal activist and a nature lover and also an adjunct professor at a neighboring university....
"The part of my job that I loved the best was undergraduate teaching. I still shiver at the dynamism and the epiphanies of the classroom. I miss this. I also miss my colleagues. I miss being in the company of risky and complex thinkers, people who are invested in our culture and who challenge me to think to the edges of my comfort zones. I believed then and I believe now that where everybody thinks the same nobody thinks very much. I miss being around people who find their equilibrium in contradiction and diversity.” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 138-140, 166-167).
“The closest I ever got to Christians during these times were students who refused to read material in university classrooms on the grounds that ‘knowing Jesus’ meant never needing to know anything else; people who sent me hate mail; or people who carried signs at gay pride marches that read ‘God Hates Fags.’ (By the way, ‘God Hates Fags’ is also a website where young nominally Christian homophobes can log on to acquire hate tactics). (Kindle 176) 1.
Not mentioned is the fact that the “God Hates Fags” website is sponsored by a 5-point Calvinist church—Westboro Baptist. Its former pastor, Fred Phelps, prior to his role as a hate-filled Baptist minister, was a flaming liberal who ran for three public offices, including U.S. President, as a Democrat. Phelps is now deceased but his characterization of a hateful, vitriolic Baptist minister lives on in radical and left-leaning publications. The facts about Fred Phelps are available in Thomas Littleton’s expose “The Westboro Baptist Straw Man: How The Media Aided Christians’ Self Loathing.”
Agent provocateur, Pastor Fred Phelps, and Westboro Baptist Church are hardly representative of Christians or Christian churches, however, demonizing Christians is a major tactic of cultural Marxists to discredit Christianity and Christian doctrine. Cultural Marxism’s twin tactics of “criticism” and “shaming” are taken from the Frankfurt Institute playbook to project guilt and blame onto the masses of Christians in sufficient amounts that they will give in to the demands of gay rights organizations—to “welcome” homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and queers into the membership of their churches, lest they be associated with the despicable Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church.
Using the skills learned in her Cultural Marxist studies, Rosaria is relentless in her criticism of Christians who believe and quote the Bible to settle all matters. She observes that “Marxists” would call this “vulgar.”
“Christians always seemed like bad thinkers to me. It seemed that they could maintain their worldview only because they were sheltered from the world’s real problems, like the material structures of poverty and violence and racism. Christians always seemed like bad readers to me, too. They appeared to use the Bible in a way that Marxists would call ‘vulgar’— that is, common, or, in order to bring the Bible into a conversation to stop the conversation, not deepen it.
Of course Marxists consider quoting the Bible “vulgar” because they don’t believe in God or recognize the Bible as the final authority on all matters—unlike their “manifestos,” failed theories and social experiments.
“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man. For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.” 1Cor. 2:14
Rosaria continues to ridicule Christians who say, “The Bible says…”:
“‘The Bible says’ always seemed to me like a mantra that invited everyone to put his or her brain on hold. ‘The Bible says’ was the Big Pause before the conversation stopped. Their catch phrases and cliches were (and are) equally off-putting. ‘Jesus is the answer’ seemed to me then and now like a tree without a root. Answers come after questions, not before. Answers answer questions in specific and pointed ways, not in sweeping generalizations. ‘It’s such a blessing’ always sounds like a violation of the Third Commandment (‘Do not take the Lord’s name in vain’) or a Hallmark card drunk with schmaltz. It seemed to me that the only people who could genuinely be satisfied with this level of reading and thinking were people who didn’t really read or think very much— about life or culture or anything.
About putting our brains on hold, not thinking, and quoting what “the Bible says,” Rosaria doesn’t seem to know that true Christians have the “mind of Christ,” not the “mind of Marx.” There are good reasons Christians are admonished to defer to God’s Word and not lean on human understanding:
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9
“Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the LORD, and depart from evil.” Prov. 3:5-7
“All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Tim. 3:116-17
Rosaria felt at home and safe in the lesbian community but 13 years after her “train wreck” conversion she is still an unhappy camper in the Christian community:
“In addition to appearing to be anti-intellectual, Christians also scared me... Here is one of the deepest ways Christians scared me: the lesbian community was home and home felt safe and secure; the people that I knew the best and cared about were in that community; and finally, the lesbian community was accepting and welcoming while the Christian community appeared (and too often is) exclusive, judgmental, scornful, and afraid of diversity. What also scared me is that while Christianity seemed like just another worldview, this one for people who enjoyed living narrowly circumscribed lives, Christians claimed that their worldview and all of the attending features that I saw— Republican politics, homeschooling biases, refusal to inoculate children against childhood illnesses, etc.— had God on its side. Christians still scare me when they reduce Christianity to a lifestyle and claim that God is on the side of those who attend to the rules of the lifestyle they have invented or claim to find in the Bible...” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 178-204)
Therefore, instead of living the lifestyle they find in the Bible, Christians should be living like the world, notably the feminists:
“It seemed to me then and it seems to me now that Christians truly become ugly when we become jealous of the successful persuasive rhetoric of others. The truth is, feminists have been more successful rhetoricians at the core of major U.S. universities than have Christians, even though most of these universities have Christian origins.” (The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, Kindle 221-224)
“Although I live my life now for Christ and Christ alone, I do not find myself in like-minded company when my fellow Christians bemoan the state of the university today. Feminism has a better reputation than Christianity at all major U.S. universities and this fact really bothers (and confuses) many Christians. Feminism has truly captured the soul of secular U.S. universities and the church has either been too weak or too ignorant to know and to know better. But how has the church responded to this truth? Too often the church sets itself up as a victim of this paradigm shift in America, but I think this is dishonest. Here’s what I think happened: since all major U.S. universities had Christian roots, too many Christians thought that they could rest in Christian tradition, not Christian relevance. Too often the church does not know how to interface with university culture because it comes to the table only ready to moralize and not dialogue. There is a core difference between sharing the gospel with the lost and imposing a specific moral standard on the unconverted. Like it or not, in the court of public opinion, feminists and not Bible-believing Christians have won the war of intellectual integrity. And Christians are in part to blame for this.” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 230-232).
Should Bible-believing Christians fear what the “court of public opinion” thinks of them? Of course the world will love its own and despise Christians, as Jesus told his disciples: “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” (John 15:19) Jesus’ disciples then and today know that the world is lost and needs to hear the Gospel, which does not happen by trying “win the war of intellectual integrity.”
Flaunting the intellectual superiority of the gay community is another shaming tactic used to bully Christians into being ashamed of the “simplicity that is in Christ” and to become like the world—to use carnal weapons to win the “culture war” that has been launched against us; to be “intellectual” rather than spiritually-minded. To be like Rosaria, who still prefers the company of lesbians and gays to the fellowship of born-again Christians:
“As I stood before the congregation to make this profession of faith, I felt the assault of my disloyalty to the gay community as powerfully as I did my loyalty to Christ… Once I had said these vows with my lips and held them in my heart, therein truly lay my treason from the gay community… Each Lord’s Supper made me experience my traitorship to my gay friends and to the person that I once was.” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 804-811)
Even the time-honored tradition of Christians giving testimony of God’s mercy and grace in their salvation as sinners is misrepresented as “pride”:
“He wanted to know if I was ready to share my testimony with the college community. ‘No thanks,’ I said… I had read too many cheesy Christian testimonies, all written in the past tense, all very simple, happy, and filled with more clichés than sugar in grandma’s cookies… All of the testimonies that I had heard up to this point were egocentric and filled with pride. Aren’t I the smarty-pants for choosing Christ! I made a decision for Christ, aren’t I great? I committed my life to Christ, aren’t I better than those heathens who haven’t? This whole line of thinking is both pervasive among evangelical Christians and absurd… I felt and feel no solidarity with people who think their salvation makes them more worthy than others… I still felt ambivalence about my disloyalty to my gay friends…I was critical of the stories I heard from my churchy friends and my evangelical culture…I put up pictures of my old friends in my apartment and I pictured myself delivering this paper in front of them. (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 1497-1525)
Rosaria’s low view of Christians resumes in her second book, Openness Unhindered: Further Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert on Sexual Identity and Union with Christ:
“Of course, it is not just my testimony—the story, to the best of my ability to tell it, of how the God of the universe burst into my secular world and atheistic worldview in the person of Jesus Christ in 1999, when I was thirty-six years old, happily partnered in a lesbian relationship, and recently tenured in the English department of Syracuse University, poised and ready to work in the field of Queer Theory. Somehow, I missed the ‘party-like-it’s-1999’ paradigm, and my world was turned upside down and inside out…
“I wrote about all of this in a book entitled The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. It is a small book, and I wrote it because, as the years unfolded after my conversion, I started to look dangerously cleaned up. I’m not. Well-meaning church ladies who had been raised on the right side of the Christian tracks and who gave themselves unearned kudos for good choices thought I was one of them. In the parlance of queer culture, I ‘passed.’ But I’m not one of them. I’m Mary Magdalene. I’m Rahab the Harlot. Left to my own devices, I am much more the whore next door than the girl next door. I’m a woman with a past, and Christ’s call on my life did not lobotomize me. Nor did it leave me with the sentiment that Christians are better, nicer, more honest and a more fun crop of cronies. We are not. No way. At least, not in my experience.” (Kindle 242-254)
“Dangerously cleaned up”? The Bible warns that the danger for the Christian lies in not “cleaning up” one’s life, for without holiness no one will see the Lord. (Heb. 12:14) Christians are commanded to purify themselves as Jesus Christ is pure (1 Jn 3:3), cleansing ourselves from everything that defiles body and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God (2 Cor 7:1), “to lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1:21)
On the same page, after she has maligned Christian “church ladies” who “gave themselves unearned kudos for good choices” but were not “better, nicer, more honest or a more fun crop of cronies” than her former queer culture, Rosaria tells her unsaved readers: “If you are curious about Christianity, it is my hope that this book answers your questions about who Jesus is and what Christians believe.”
Rosaria Butterfield’s books have been read by non-believers as well as new converts and young people. I found myself wondering what a poor impression of true Christians and Christianity non-believers and young people might have after reading her lies. Truly, her base opinion of Christians as simple, mindless, ignorant, exclusive, judgmental, proud, egocentric, scornful, dishonest, narrow-minded homophobes seemed like a rather more polite version of the slander and verbal abuse that atheists and skeptics heap on Christianity and Christians.
In Rosaria’s opinion, the “Christian community appeared (and too often is) exclusive…” She would rather the Church be more inclusive, yet, by its very nature Christianity is exclusive. In commenting on 1 John 3:10, theologian F.B. Hole extolled the exclusivity of the spiritual and familial bond that unites born-again Christians:
“The Scriptures draw the most distinct line imaginable between the believer and the man of the world. In his first epistle, 1 John and 1 John 4, the Apostle John has much to say to the Christian as to his brother. And who is the brother in question? Any other child of Adam? No, any other child of God; any one who is ‘born of God.’ John, indeed, wields his pen in the clear and cutting style of his great Master and speaks of ‘the children of the devil’ in contrast to ‘the children of God’ (1 John 3:10).
“A universal cousinship, in very attenuated degree, exists amongst men. The only true Christian brotherhood is that which exists amongst Christians as born of God.”
The apostle Peter also wrote of the beauty of unfeigned love which Christians, having been born again into the family of God, need to cultivate for one another, and never betray:
"Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever." 1 Peter 1:22-23
One perceptive review of Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert notes the fallacy of Rosaria’s claim to diversity of thought in her beloved academia:
[On my Women’s Studies 101 syllabus, I wrote this about critical perspective:]
"NB (nota bene, or, ‘note well’) Students are expected to write all papers and examination essay questions from a feminist worldview or critical (postmodern) perspective. In Spanish class you speak and think in Spanish. In Women's Studies you speak and think in feminist paradigms. Examination essay questions written from critical perspectives outside of feminism will receive an automatic grade of F. Papers written from critical perspectives outside of feminism will be allowed one revision. Any student who is unable to write and think from a feminist critical perspective or worldview with a clear conscience should drop the class now.
"How did I get away with this? The secular academic world is bold in its protection of worldview." [Secret Thoughts, Kindle 1621]
“She goes on to say that all her colleagues had the same syllabus, working as a bloc. She admits that ‘an interpretive community consciously and intentionally protects its way of thinking.’
“So much for celebrating diversity in academic thought.
“And yet, even as a Christian, Butterfield throughout the book is critical of Christians (by which she means conservative evangelicals) who, according to her all think alike and therefore, don't think at all. She seems to have trouble coming to grips with the fact that being a tenured professor where the criteria seems to rest largely on your lifestyle choice doesn’t make you an intellectual heavy weight.
“Did she forget she admits that University professors ‘protect their worldview?’ It’s not the Christian community that creates ‘safe spaces’ from people with opposing opinions or wants to censor classic literature due to ‘micro aggressive’ stories that could produce ‘post-traumatic trigger’.
“When over eighty percent of University educators are on the extreme liberal side of the cultural spectrum, I don’t believe a lot of intellectual exchange is transpiring…
“She is also a hard core Calvinist. She insists that we do not choose God, He chooses us, even against our will as in her case…
“…Butterfield apparently went from being an elitist Lesbian to being an elitist Christian. She does not hide her contempt for Conservative Christians, making sweeping statements about them (us) about how we hate gays (untrue!) and worship in ‘Disneyland Churches’" with our coffee bars and Contemporary worship bands and Praise teams.
“It’s almost as if she wants everyone to know, ‘OK, I’ve become a Christian, but remember, it was against my will and I’m still very smart, not like all those other yahoos who call themselves Christians.’ Apparently she has not been able to shed the ‘us and them’ mentality she fostered before her conversion.”
Much of Rosaria Butterfield’s book sounds very spiritual, however, her antipathy to Christians tarnishes her testimony. Her condescending attitude, nay loathing, of conservative Christians, combined with her high praise and love of liberal feminists strongly implies she has an agenda other than sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That agenda appears after she has finished insulting the “cheesy Christian testimonies” of her “churchy friends”:
“But could I be more than just critical of the stories that encompassed me? Could I start a new conversation? What would happen if I just told the truth? Was anybody else out there ambivalent about conversion?” (Kindle 1517-1519)
A “new conversation” is code for “dialoging to consensus” instead of simply quoting the Word of God. “Ambivalent about conversion” may be an apt description of one who, like Lot’s wife, looked back with longing to that condemned city of Sodom. Rosaria complains about her unhappy conversion…
“Did anyone else see it as bittersweet? Did anyone else get lost in fear when counting the costs of discipleship? Did anyone else feel like giving up? Did anyone else tire of taking up the Cross daily? Did anyone else grieve for death to one life that anticipates the experience of being ‘born again’? Did anyone else want to take just one day off from the command that we die to ourselves?” (Secret Thoughts, Kindle 1519-1522).
A few pages later Rosaria referred to her colleagues at Geneva College as “real Christian intellectuals” and from her frequent and favorable use of the word “intellectual” it’s clear she places herself and feminists in that worldly category. She claims to be in “union with Christ” but has she noticed that Jesus bypassed the intellectual community of Israel and chose uneducated fishermen as His companions and disciples? Jesus knew that the wisdom of this world is foolishness and the “secret thoughts” of the wise are “vain”:
“Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him become a fool, that he may be wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, The Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are vain. Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours.” 1 Cor. 3:18-21
By criticizing and shaming Christian women for being out of step with the world, Rosaria exposes herself as a questionable convert who is out of step with God’s Word and His Church:
“I know that I am not the only woman who feels out of place in church culture. Maybe it is my Myers-Briggs score: INTJ. (I am told that only one to three percent of the female population shares this score.) Or maybe it is the fact that I am a marked woman. Rahab. Mary Magdalene. Rosaria. Maybe it is that I am much more at home in the world of systematic theology or critical theory than in the strange and scary terrain of wedding or baby showers. And often I long for just one person in church to understand me.” (Openness Unhindered, Kindle 648-651)
Rosaria’s fields of study –“Freud, Marx, Darwin,” “Critical Theory” and “Queer Theory”– were tailor made to prepare her for the career she now has in the Church – launching a torrent of criticism against conservative Christians as “oppressors” of homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, etc., at the same time she is introducing a “new conversation” which calls into question God’s Word on these issues and contradicting Bible doctrine with the intellectual views of Cultural Marxists.
“Yea, hath God said?” As the Serpent drew Eve into a “dialogue” about God’s command, so Rosaria invites her readers to consider a new point of view on homosexuality.
1. homophobeNoun, Offensive Slur.
1. Non-medical, non-scientific pejorative term used to demean and ridicule anyone who disagrees with or disapproves of aberrant, deviant, or unnatural pseudo sexual behavior, conduct or practices, i.e., aberrosexualism, bisexualism, homosexualism, lesbianism, sadomasochism, zoophilism, etc.
2. (Sexism) Offensive, pejorative term used to degrade and ridicule anyone who agrees with the universal rejection of aberrant, deviant or unnatural pseudo sexual behavior or practices.
