Marxism In The Church

The Dissenter (formerly Reformation Charlotte) has an excellent summary that describes the infiltration of Marxism in the evangelical church over the last half-century. Some of this information may be familiar, but parts will not be. I am taking the liberty of excerpting heavily:

Evangelicals… signed the Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern in 1973. Suddenly, evangelical playmakers were confessing collective sins of racism and poverty, laying down the groundwork for the next several decades of ideological compromise.

And so the infection spread.

Men like Jim Wallis, who cut his teeth with the socialist Students for a Democratic Society, traded protest signs for pulpits. His Sojourners movement turned Marxist talking points into Sunday school flannelgraphs.

The late Ron Sider wrote Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, a book that could have been subtitled, “How to Feel Holy While Critiquing Capitalism.” Suddenly, evangelicals were no longer talking about the sinner’s reconciliation to God, but the sinner’s reconciliation to the welfare state.

Seminaries, ones that historically taught biblical theology, became the breeding ground for this new ideology. Southern Baptist seminaries like Southern and Southeastern quietly allowed liberationist and feminist theology to set up shop in the 1970s and 80s. Molly Marshall, who later a progressive icon in far left Evangelical circles, taught courses on liberation theology at Southern Seminary.

Marshall wasn’t alone. Professors in other Baptist institutions were introducing students to Marxist categories of systemic oppression and power imbalance, all while sprinkling a thin veneer of biblical vocabulary to make it sound respectable.

The Conservative Resurgence tried to flush them out, and in part it did—but termites don’t disappear because you knock down a few walls. They burrow deeper. They wait. They bide their time.

By the 1990s, the stage was set. The Southern Baptist Convention, embarrassed by its own pro-slavery past, issued a grand apology in 1995. Racial reconciliation became the new golden calf. On its surface, repentance for racism seemed like a good idea. But in practice, the resolution cracked open a door that would soon be blown off its hinges.

Language borrowed straight from liberation theology—systemic sin, corporate repentance, structural injustice—became baptized as “gospel truth.” The PCA followed suit with its own resolutions in 2002 and 2004, suddenly speaking the language of the progressive ecumenical councils it had broken away from thirty years earlier. A denomination born to resist liberalism now sounded suspiciously like a social justice NGO…

Seminaries began launching “diversity programs” and “urban ministry initiatives.”

Reformed Theological Seminary brought in John Perkins to talk about “redistribution and reconciliation.” Tim Keller, planting Redeemer in New York City, championed “mercy and justice”—not the biblical kind, but the Marxist, social kind—as central to the gospel mission.

The language shifted, and with it, the theology bent like a reed in the wind. By the early 2000s, Southeastern Seminary was laying the groundwork for its “Kingdom Diversity” initiative, and by 2013 it had an Associate VP for Diversity, Walter Strickland, who praised Black liberation theologians like James Cone. Yesterday’s heresies became today’s required reading lists.

Of course, all this moral grandstanding doesn’t come cheap. Enter George Soros and James Riady—the sugar daddies of the Religious Left. Soros, ever the opportunist, cut checks to Sojourners in the mid-2000s. Two hundred thousand dollars here, another hundred thousand there, and suddenly Jim Wallis had a megaphone.

Wallis denied it, of course—until the receipts came out. Riady, the Indonesian billionaire and Clinton crony, funneled donations into Ouachita Baptist University, Biola, and cultivated ties with Reformed Theological Seminary. This is the same James Riady who had been convicted of campaign finance fraud, suddenly repackaged as an evangelical benefactor, building seminaries in Jakarta with RTS’s blessing.

When you follow the money, you discover the gospel is being auctioned off like a relic in a cathedral gift shop.

Fast forward just a few years, and the termites had built their empire. The MLK50 Conference in 2018—an unholy marriage of The Gospel Coalition and the ERLC—celebrated a man whose theology denied the resurrection while smuggling in Critical Race Theory through the back door.

Jarvis Williams, still a professor at Southern, lectured us all on systemic racism as though Moses had carried CRT tablets down from Sinai. Danny Akin’s Southeastern built its reputation on “Kingdom Diversity,” with Walter Strickland catechizing future pastors in James Cone’s (liberation) theology. Ligon Duncan, President of RTS, endorsed Woke Church without a blush and told us that God might be using mass illegal immigration to desecularize America.

And at the center of the SBC’s political machinery sat Russell Moore. Under his ERLC leadership, he linked arms with Soros-funded immigration groups, wept crocodile tears over supposed evangelical racism, and gave cover to Revoice sympathizers pushing gay-affirming ideology into the church. Moore wasn’t a victim of cultural winds—he was a weathervane, spinning whichever direction the progressive donors wanted.

So why do they do it? Why are these Evangelical kingpins so infatuated with wokeness?

Because Marxism offers three payoffs.

First, it gives them cultural clout. They’re no longer those embarrassing Bible-thumpers—they’re the enlightened Christians with New York Times op-eds and seats at CNN panels.

Second, it allows them to dismantle the last real resistance to cultural Marxism—the conservative evangelical church—from the inside. Reframe the gospel as social activism, and suddenly anyone who resists is branded as “anti-gospel.”

And third, it ties them to globalist money and influence. Soros, Riady, and their class aren’t buying prayer books, they’re buying pulpits. And they’re sticking their Evangelicalized mouthpieces behind them.

What used to be called heresy is now marketed as “gospel-centered diversity.” What used to be Marxist jargon is now seminary curriculum. What used to be the faith once delivered to the saints is now a sermon outline with footnotes from Ibram X. Kendi.

And make no mistake, this is all no accident or misunderstanding. It’s a takeover. And the leaders who push it aren’t naive—they’re bought. They defend it as a “gospel issue” because they know it’s their shield, their sword, and their ticket to relevance all in one.

The gospel of Christ was never about quotas, corporate repentance statements, or environmental summits with secular billionaires. But in today’s evangelical privileged circles, the termites are calling the shots. They’ve hollowed out the beams, and the sanctuary still stands—barely—but the sound you hear isn’t revival.

It’s the creak of collapse, orchestrated by men who traded the cross for the hammer and sickle dressed in Sunday best.