Baucham Identifies Signs Churches Are Adopting Neo-Marxist Ideology: Voddie Baucham, a well-known pastor and author, has highlighted three indicators that a church is eschewing biblical principles in favor of contemporary Neo-Marxist ideology in a society where truth is being attacked and Christianity is becoming more and more marginalized.
In an interview with The Christian Post, the 54-year-old dean of theology at African Christian University in Zambia highlighted a number of worrying trends in modern churches that he fears are undermining the principles of Christianity. The first of these trends is a de-emphasis on the Bible, where there is a lack of commitment to methodically teach and expose the Scriptures.
“There’s not a commitment to a systematic exposition of the Bible, and what we hear from the pulpit is rooted and grounded in more psychology and philosophy than text and theology,” Baucham said.
The second red flag involves the church’s alignment with post-Christian culture. Baucham noted that some leaders preach messages that resonate with the values and agendas of the secular world, including issues related to LGBTQ+ concerns.
“You begin to hear things in the church, from the pulpit, from the leadership, that resonate with this post-Christian culture, for example, the LGBTQ+, whatever agendas,” he said.
Finally, he said apologizing for essential Christian doctrines is another red flag indicating a departure from true, biblical Christianity.
“We’re apologizing for the ‘creation myth.’ We’re apologizing for the Gospel. We’re apologizing for the Reformation. We’re apologizing for Christian morality, these sorts of things. These are some signs that things have gone very wrong,” he said.
A May 2021 survey from Evangelical pollster George Barna found that just 6% of Americans have a “biblical worldview.” Similarly, survey data compiled in January 2020 showed that only 2% of millennials hold a biblical worldview, even though 61% identify as Christians.
Baucham, who is gearing up for a revised release of his 2004 book The Ever-Loving Truth: Can Faith Survive in a Post-Christian Culture? explained that for many decades, the Western Church has assumed and then forgotten the essence of the Gospel, leading to a foundation built on shifting sand rather than the solid rock of Christ.
The ramifications of that, he lamented, are becoming increasingly visible in today’s post-Christian America.
“For a long time, because of the assumptions of the culture, one of the things that we did was assume the Gospel,” Baucham said. “The message of the Gospel is an offensive message in a lost and dying world. But we assumed the Gospel. Then, after we assumed the Gospel, we forgot the Gospel and left it behind. And we begin to build churches—and really, I use that term loosely because, in many instances, they aren’t churches — and gather people based on commonalities that are not Gospel-centered. We gathered people because we liked the same kind of music or were in the same social class. We had those things as our foundation instead of having the Gospel as our foundation.”
Baucham, who previously served as pastor of Grace Family Baptist Church in Texas, stressed that the Gospel message is considered “offensive to the world.” And, in an attempt to avoid offense, many churches have neglected its transformative power. He warned that such churches, lacking a Gospel-centered foundation, are ill-prepared for the challenges of the post-Christian era.
“In this post-Christian era, where we’re all being sort of painted with the same brush, people who have not relied on the Gospel to build solid foundations are seeing their sheep scattered. They’re really not legitimate sheep in the first place, and they also don’t really know how to respond, because the response in many instances has been, ‘No, no, no, no, we’re not like them.’ And they,’ of course, are conservative, Bible-believing Evangelicals, those people who have always been vilified by the culture at large.
“But that’s not working anymore,” he said, “because it’s not enough to just not hold firmly to the truths of the Gospel and to not hold firmly to those things that the culture finds offensive. Any identification now with Christianity, which is seen as the sort of ultimate hegemonic boogeyman in modern, Neo-Marxist culture, is offensive. So, a lot of people are caught off guard because of compromises that they made a long time ago that looked like they were paying off.
Baucham made a strong appeal for a bold return to the pure Gospel, which is the foundation of Christianity. He highlighted the necessity for churches to uphold biblical teachings without wavering, even in the face of criticism and cultural pressure.
“We need to prepare ourselves for the opposition—not only the opposition coming, but for the opposition that’s already here,” he said. “We need to know what we believe and why we believe it. We need to be prepared to give an answer to those who ask us for the reason for the hope that is in us. We need to be prepared to speak to this post-Christian culture. Finally, we need to be prepared to accept the consequences of doing so, which are unpleasant.”