The activities of the Red Guards in the 1960’s under the auspices of the . . . Cultural Revolution had certain interesting characteristics. The major slogan these young students were acting upon was to ‘smash the old and make room for the new.’ Tens of thousands of high school and university students traveled all over China, especially to such big cities as Peking, Shanghai, Canton. . . . They stormed some of the most treasured Chinese cultural sites – Buddhist temples, Protestant and Catholic churches – invaded the libraries, and desecrated the graves of their ancestors.

Fifty years ago, a scholarly study of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s China serves as a case study to those in America today who may remain unable to perceive or unwilling to admit the religious nature of the neo-Marxist-based movement in our own culture. In recent months, a number of articles and blogs have shed light on the secular quasi-religion currently ravaging America, some of them in the pages of The Aquila Report. Perhaps today’s neo-Marxists’ reluctance to admit the religious nature of their movement is because Marxism is supposed to be a purely secular, a-theistic, non-religious movement. Bible readers will know, however, that as God has placed eternity in man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11), so must mankind in all ages be found to worship something or someone. The present writing uses several excerpts to make clear that this is no cherry-picked interpretation of past events. Some readers may even be surprised to learn that the study from 1971 that I draw from was published by the University of California Press at Berkeley – not exactly a hotbed of conservatism, then or now.

Nineteen sixty-six marked 17 years since the Communists had secured mainland China, having kicked out the Nationalists who withdrew to Taiwan where the Republic of China government was reestablished and remains to this day, albeit under increasing near-daily threats from the mainland. The year 1966 also witnessed the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). Five years later, Asian Survey published an article entitled, “The Role of Religion in Communist Chinese Society.” The writer, Lucy Jen Huang, a sociology professor at Illinois State University, collected her materials for the article from reports, editorials, newspapers, and official documents “published in Mainland China and intended for internal Chinese consumption,” supplemented with firsthand accounts provided by emigres from China and Western visitors to the mainland.

Huang noted that beginning in 1949,

Communist leaders, via the newspapers and monthly magazines, launched a diligent campaign against religion in which it was argued that religion and superstition were similar in that all religious activities were superstitious, but that not all superstitions were religious activities. . . . As long as class and class struggle are present, the struggle against religious superstitions will always be associated with the class struggle.[1]  

While the nature of the “struggle” – in reality, one small part of the war against God described in Psalm 2 – has shifted largely from class to other concerns in contemporary America, it was clear from the founding of the PRC that religious activities were to be equated with superstition.

Referring to the start of the Cultural Revolution, Huang wrote, “Every religious revival movement requires the true believers to spread the ‘word,’ in this case mainly selection[s] from the little red book, Quotations of Mao Tse-tung. Soon after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards [students, mainly], in the role of missionaries and disciples of the religious movement, traveled all over China.” A Canton news article recounted that the Red Guards in their missionary work, “. . . spared time every day to help the teenagers and children study quotations from Chairman Mao, teach them to sing revolutionary songs, and help the residents do household work.”

Lucy Jen Huang continued:

Maoism, by this time, had taken the form of extreme adulation of the great leader, sage, poet, philosopher, military genius, statesman, worthy successor to the mightiest of Emperors, and the great prophet of Marxist-Leninist thought. The worship of Mao could be discerned in the report on [the] Red Guards’ visit to his birthplace in Hunan Province. The house where Chairman Mao lived had been carefully preserved and an exhibition hall has been built near it. . . . Red Guards wrote the following pledges in the guest book: ‘We shall give our lives to defend Mao Tse-tung’s ideas! Henceforth, we live to implement Mao Tse-tung’s thought!’ . . . ‘Neither mountains of swords nor oceans of flame hold any fear for us as we work under your guidance. We shall follow you always. Let the seas dry up and the rocks crumble, but our hearts will never change.’

Bible readers perhaps will reflect on several passages of Scripture, of which the aforementioned is but a cheap plastic, soul-destroying imitation.

The article described activities engaged in by the young Red Guards:

. . . the heart and soul of the younger generation of Chinese was aroused by this Maoist religious experience. . . . Red Guards were set loose in the streets of Peking to demand that the traffic lights be changed so that red signaled ‘Go’ and green ‘Stop’; to rename the great Peking Square from ‘Heavenly Place’ to ‘East is Red’; to smash stamp collectors’ shops as ‘Bourgeois’; to break into people’s homes and toss out non-revolutionary pointed shoes and sport shirts. Persecution of the unbelievers can be traced in a Red Guard document entitled ‘One Hundred Examples for Breaking the Old and Establishing the New.’  

Sadly, American readers may substitute their own terms for today’s Red Guards let loose in their streets, not of Peking, Shanghai, and Canton, but Portland, Seattle, and Chicago – smashing shops, breaking the old and seeking vainly, if not hypocritically, to establish the new (utopia).

In terms frighteningly and disgustingly familiar to many Americans today, Huang summarized the devastations in China:

The activities of the Red Guards in the 1960’s under the auspices of the . . . Cultural Revolution had certain interesting characteristics. The major slogan these young students were acting upon was to ‘smash the old and make room for the new.’ Tens of thousands of high school and university students traveled all over China, especially to such big cities as Peking, Shanghai, Canton. . . . They stormed some of the most treasured Chinese cultural sites – Buddhist temples, Protestant and Catholic churches – invaded the libraries, and desecrated the graves of their ancestors. They smashed the statues and crosses, burned the Buddhas, and fed books into the flames. When they broke into Peking’s Roman Catholic Church, tore the crucifix from the altar and set up a plaster bust of Mao, the symbolism of the deification of Mao was complete. 

In conclusion, Huang pointed out part of the contradictory nature of the quasi-religion of Maoism:

The official policy of the Maoist regime has been anti-religious and anti-superstitious in nature. However, paradoxically, there are undeniably religious dimensions in the official tactics and ideology resembling the very phenomena of religion and superstition which the regime claims to oppose. Mao, as the symbol of god and prophet; Maoism the Bible, in the form of quotations of Mao Tse-tung; and the faith in Mao and his teachings, which have supposedly achieved superhuman feats and miracles, have stirred the religious zeal of Mao’s followers.

As was to be the case with the disciples of Wokeism in America fifty years later,

For many followers of Maoism they may have found in the Communist regime a seeming dedication to justice, international brotherhood . . . and tireless service to mankind. They are no longer confused and alienated. But for others who are overly idealistic and impractical, Maoism may turn out to be ‘the God that failed.’ It has challenged and fired their enthusiasm but may be unable to satisfy their cherished dreams and idealism.

One writer in 2021, questioning how “siblings, neighbors, colleagues, and classmates [could] turn on one another so viciously?” concluded that Mao’s “Cultural Revolution was fundamentally a civil war.” Perhaps 40 percent of China’s population in those days was fifteen years of age or under; nearly half were under twenty years, and they provided most of the Red Guards. Some estimates list as many as 1.5 million killed in China, 36 million persecuted, and tens of millions in addition affected “in a countryside upheaval” that lasted from 1966 to 1976, when Mao died. By 1981, the Chinese Communist Party called the Cultural Revolution an error, but deflected the blame from Mao toward his wife and his closest associates. The supposed “worthy successor to the mightiest of Emperors” could not suffer loss of reputation – at least not shortly after his death.[2]

For the student of the Bible, perhaps much of the assessment of China’s Cultural Revolution is as unsurprising as it is disheartening, except perhaps in the degree of its ruthlessness, vileness, and destructiveness. But the main point here is simply to recognize that, regardless of what Wokeism’s participants or observers may claim in 2021, it – like Maoism fifty years ago – is, in essence, a religion, and a false religion at that. But as is the case for all men in all ages, the follower of any worldly –ism – including Wokeism – is called to repent and believe the gospel of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and he shall be saved.

And for any that have believed the gospel but have been led astray by false teachers, heed the words of John to the angel of the church in Sardis: “Remember therefore what you have received and heard; and keep it, and repent. If therefore you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come upon you” (Revelation 3:3).

Forrest Marion is a ruling elder in Eastwood Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Montgomery, Ala.

[1] Lucy Jen Huang, “The Role of Religion in Communist Chinese Society,” Asian Survey, vol. XI, no. 7 (Jul. 1971): 695. Unless cited otherwise, all quotations in the remainder of the present writing are taken from Huang’s article, pp. 698-701, 707-708.

[2] Pankaj Mishra, “What Are The Cultural Revolution’s Lessons For Our Current Moment? The New Yorker, Jan. 25, 2021.