Identity Politics, the Opium of the People | Carl R Trueman firstthings.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from firstthings.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
4 . 29 . 21
Identity politics is the new religion of the United States. Some will dissent from this claim. There are those who simply don’t want to see how deep-seated the factionalism of the public square now is. And there are those who have a vested interest in minimizing the righteous religiosity of what is commonly called “wokeness.” But in its demand for full conformity, its rituals and liturgies, and its unfailing ability to sniff out heresy, it resembles nothing so much as a religious cult. And this, ironically, is where the man whom many consider the founder of the feast, Karl Marx, may prove useful to those of us wondering how to respond.
âThe early church was a socialist church.â
So said Rev. Raphael Warnock in 2016, four years before the citizens of Georgia elected him a U.S. senator.
Itâs a strange statement, least of all because the description âsocialist churchâ is an oxymoron. Not only would the Church fathers be puzzled by it, but so would socialismâs fathers.
âEveryone must be absolutely free to ⦠be an atheist,â wrote Vladimir Lenin, âwhich every socialist is, as a rule.â
âReligion and communism are incompatible, both theoretically and practically,â noted Nikolai Bukharin, founding editor of Pravda. âCommunism is incompatible with religious faith.â On behalf of the Bolsheviks, he insisted: âA fight to the death must be declared upon religion. We must take on religion at the tip of the bayonet.â
4 . 15 . 21
Another week, another pile of victims of those who pride themselves on courageously “speaking truth to power,” as the saying has it. This time, it was the unlikely figures of Cher and Gwen Stefani the former accused of racism, the latter of the catch-all “cultural appropriation.”
These latest incidents occurred while I was reading
Places of Mind, Timothy Brennan’s fascinating new biography of Edward A. Said, the controversial left-wing academic, polymathic scholar, and influential founder of postcolonial studies. The juxtaposition allowed me to reflect that the much remarked upon intellectual bankruptcy of the contemporary conservative movement has its counterpart in the bankruptcy of the left. The major difference is that the left now controls every significant cultural institution, which allows rhetoric and volume to compensate for hard work and thoughtfulness.
By Paul G. Kengor
In the late 1980s, as a pre-med major at the University of Pittsburgh, I pulled many all-nighters at Scaife Hall at Pittâs School of Medicine. My friend Dirk and I knew the only way we would ever make breakfast at the cafeterias at the Towers or Lothrop dorm-halls was by staying up all night studying and then sauntering in zombie-like at 6:00 a.m. for eggs and pancakes. Otherwise, the typical early morning fare for me and my buddies was âO Friesâ from the iconic Original Hot Dog Shop, washed down with cheap beer around 2:00 a.m.