OPINION:
Have you ever wondered how we got into the mess we’re in, how Minneapolis became so ungovernable, how anarchy replaced civility and how rioting replaced the rule of law?
Have you ever asked yourself how this societal meltdown happened and how so many people have come to hate American culture, values and heritage so much that they would rather tear it all down than work together to preserve it?
Have you ever wondered how we became the “divided states” rather than the “United States” and how e pluribus unum (out of many, one) became “us against them” almost overnight?
If you’ve ever found yourself asking any of these questions, then look no further than your nation’s schools and churches. The bottom line is that none of this madness should surprise anyone.
When your nation’s schools teach one generation after another that their country is evil and must be dismantled, don’t be shocked when students start doing what you taught them to do. When your nation’s sermons are laden with neo-Marxist propaganda more than the Gospel of Christ, it shouldn’t surprise you when the few parishioners you have left start practicing what you preached.
On the educational front, schools across the nation have been teaching “intersectionality” and “microaggressions” more than the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic for decades. Woke ideology has become more commonplace in our curriculum than the basics of biology or the elementary principles of grammar.
Colleges that once taught students how to assess various viewpoints are now little more than reeducation camps for the ideas of Marx and Marcuse.
Whether it’s the University of Oklahoma professor who boldly admits her goal is to “disrupt Whiteness and White supremacy” or the instructor at the University of Minnesota who brags that she is teaching her students to “dismantle the settler project that is the United States,” it is clear that this kind of indoctrination, polarization and intimidation is rampant across nearly every sector of the American academy.
Then we have our churches (even those that still claim to be biblical). Here’s just one example of how far the Frankfurt School and the cult of critical race theory have seeped into the very DNA of supposedly “evangelical” denominations. It’s a prayer (a “lament”) featured on The Wesleyan Church of North America’s website, and it goes like this: “Father, we mourn right now! We cry out in despair because an evil lie has snuck into our consciousness, into the very fabric of society.”
What is this evil that this denomination so laments? It is the sin of “Whiteness.”
“Oh, Father,” it reads, “Those of us who have light skin fall before you and confess our sin of willful obliviousness … Forgive us!”
With this kind of nonsense coming from academic podiums and church pulpits across the land, is it any wonder a recent Harvard-Harris poll indicates that 79% of our nation’s youngest voters now align with it, and a significant percentage of those therein are willing to take to the streets in Minneapolis and burn the place down?
Say what you will about America’s schools and churches, but recognize this: What many of our teachers are teaching and what many of our preachers are preaching is a cancer. It’s a malignancy from the very gates of hell, and it is eating away at the soul of our culture and country.
Tom Ascol, in the book “By What Standard?” summarizes it as well as anyone: “I believe in the Devil. He is wicked and powerful. … I believe he has specific goals and designs to wreak havoc among the people of God by mimicking and corrupting the Gospel. I further believe that we are living in a time when the devil and his minions have been particularly effective in carrying out their designs by seeding culture with deadly, damnable ideas that have been wrapped in deceptive packaging to look like love and compassion. With Paul, I am afraid that just as the devil deceived Eve by his cunning, the thoughts of many … in our day are in danger of being led astray. Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. [It shouldn’t] surprise us if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness.”
Amen, Dr. Ascol! Amen.
• Everett Piper (dreverettpiper.com, @dreverettpiper), a columnist for The Washington Times, is a former university president and radio host. He is the author of “Not a Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery). He can be reached at epiper@dreverettpiper.com.
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