Christians must understand the new politics not only to give moral guidance but to make sense of Gospel preaching. We must counter not only traditional atheism, materialism and rationalism, but spiritually pagan Oneist thinking. The Gospel begins with God the Creator, Maker of all things, who is distinct from what he makes. The good news of the Gospel is that in his incredible love the Creator condescends to take on flesh and become the Savior of fallen human beings. The paganization of politics can only end in chaotic destruction of the good.

Do you sense that politics and morals have radically changed? These changes make us ask whether the Church should focus uniquely on preaching the Gospel to the lost. This traditional view is perhaps in question today not because orthodoxy has become soft and is no longer committed to Gospel preaching, but because politics and culture have seen such dramatic transformations. We no longer face mere choices between the free market and forms of government intervention. We sense, rather, that the political debate disguises two spiritual worldviews with radically opposite definitions of human morality. If the magistrate is to promote good and punish evil (Romans 13:1–3), then does the Church not need to tell the magistrate/culture what is good and what is evil? Things are urgent. Many of our politicians espouse a radicalism never seen before. Even Roman Catholic house members and senators refuse to observe their church’s view on abortion and marriage, supporting with open bravado the new definitions of sexuality. In the name of privacy and liberty, we accept all kinds of “normal” moral perversion, including the widespread “use” of pornography.

Many liberal political leaders accept a worldview that threatens the very freedoms of the Christian faith in an America our President says is no longer a Christian nation. The radical Left is not so much atheist as it is spiritually pagan. Thanks to Wikileaks, we recently saw hints of this when it became known that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, was involved in “spirit cooking.” This foul cooking uses various intimate bodily fluids in a depraved celebration of sexual perversion. Hillary herself has long been involved with an occult channeler. Such bizarre spirituality rarely rises to the surface of public knowledge. We do see, however, revolutionary expressions of a cultural pagan utopia, as progressives dream and plan for the future of the globe.

Marilyn Ferguson’s best-selling 1980 book, The Aquarian Conspiracy, serves as a useful introduction to the subject. It appeared at the high point of the New Age movement, and Ferguson, who ran for public office, unveiled a startling vision of the future. She stated this twenty-six years ago:

A leaderless but powerful network is working to bring about radical change in the United States. Its members have broken with certain key elements of Western thought…[broken] even continuity with history…[their] perspective sounds so mythical they hesitate to discuss it (p.23).

Ferguson describes the vanguard of those who deliberately set out to destroy Judeo-Christian Western civilization. Hillary’s channeler, Jean Houston agrees with Ferguson. She says:

…another order of reality is coming into time, the emerging planetary society, the stage where real work of humanity begins, the year one of something extraordinary, a quickening for a new possible world, the longest stride of soul we ever took. [Jean Houston, “The Mything of the World: The Social Artist as Transcultural and Transpersonal Agent of Change,” ITC, 2004].

But how could such a radical change be produced? Bob Dylan eerily sang about it already in his hit song of the Sixties, “The Times They Are A-Changin”:

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command…

For the times they are a-changin’.

This change was not the typical generational optimism that claims to do better than its parents (while, in fact, not much changes). Dylan sang of a change so profound that the older generation would not even understand it. Now, we do understand. Dylan was announcing a worldview invasion of the West by Eastern pagan thinking. In much of our culture, that invasion has become a triumph, overturning the Western Christian view of existence. We have moved from a Twoist presupposition of a Creator God who made the structures of existence and revealed his moral will, to a Oneist presupposition that rejects any Creator or pre-existing structures and believes that humanity creates its own reality and will make a better world. This is why the Left showed utter disbelief at having lost the election; traditional politics does not even enter into its worldview.

Christians must understand the new politics not only to give moral guidance but to make sense of Gospel preaching. We must counter not only traditional atheism, materialism and rationalism, but spiritually pagan Oneist thinking. The Gospel begins with God the Creator, Maker of all things, who is distinct from what he makes. The good news of the Gospel is that in his incredible love the Creator condescends to take on flesh and become the Savior of fallen human beings. The paganization of politics can only end in chaotic destruction of the good. Only the Gospel can overcome the chaos of unbridled human sinfulness and provide the foundation for beneficial political order.

Dr. Peter Jones is scholar in residence at Westminster Seminary California and associate pastor at New Life Presbyterian Church in Escondido, Calif. He is director of truthXchange, a communications center aimed at equipping the Christian community to recognize and effectively respond to the rise of paganism. This article is used with permission.