How an atheist hoaxer got “Christian nationalists” to publish Karl Marx
“ ‘Well, you have to hand it to James Lindsey — he got us,’ Josh Abbotoy, co-founder of American Reformer, wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, referring to Lindsay’s hoax.” - RNS
- 271 views
I am not happy to see that Lindsey got published, but I am happy to see that the guys he duped left the article up to serve as an example of what happens when you don't check your sources.
And really, it is telling that too many supposed "conservatives" are falling for things that real conservatives of the 1980s never would have fallen for. Many see "Trump" and turn off their minds.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
And really, it is telling that too many supposed "conservatives" are falling for things that real conservatives of the 1980s never would have fallen for. Many see "Trump" and turn off their minds.
What's interesting is that people such as Dr. Albert Mohler and Dr. Andrew Neselli have the fingerprints all over the American Reformer as well. Mohler's written an article for them and Neselli has written several and also has been one of their Cotton Mather "Fellows."
If you check out the American Reformer articles in general, several different authors offer a strong defense of Christian Nationalism, even for some of the worst architects and purveyors of it (i.e. Stephen Wolfe).
What I also find interesting is that now all of the American Reformers folks and their defenders are complaining about Lindsay's Atheism when several years ago Lindsay was one of their favorite "go-to" guys when it came to Wokeness and Critical Race Theory.
There’s a lot of fog of war these days. The culture war and all the adjacent political war brings that battle mindset with it. So, it’s things like…
- Readiness to pull the trigger, metaphorically speaking. Verbal attacks, counterattacks, etc.
- Hasty classification of everyone as combatants: everybody is ‘us’ or ‘them’
- Whatever works thinking, ethical compromises. All that matters is surviving or maybe winning.
I think that second bullet is what got AR this time. In a war, if somebody is not ‘them,’ they are ‘us,’ and so all we care about is who they are firing their rhetorical ordinance at.
The irony is that the Bible is full of calls to view the Christian life as a kind of war. But it is not that kind of war. It’s a war for all the things ‘fog of war’ tends to compromise or weaken: truth, ethical faithfulness, peace (yes, really—our war includes seeking peace Rom 12.18), relationship building.
It shouldn’t surprise us that the Christian thing is an inversion of the ‘normal’ thing. But it doesn’t look to me like many are seeing this about the culture war. We are called to an anti-war.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
This is the first time I had heard of American Reformer. Does anyone know any more about it? Is it a fairly small publication or is it fairly well known in some circles? Just because it has not gotten into my bubble until now doesn't mean it is insignificant, but it is new to me.
This is the first time I had heard of American Reformer. Does anyone know any more about it? Is it a fairly small publication or is it fairly well known in some circles? Just because it has not gotten into my bubble until now doesn't mean it is insignificant, but it is new to me.
The reason why you haven't heard of it is because its fairly new as a publication. It was started in 2022 by 3 conservative Christians, each with their own gifts. Two of its founders publicly promote Christian Nationalism, and one publicly rejects it. But they have come together with the goal of "promoting a vigorous Christian approach to the cultural challenges of our day, rooted in the rich tradition of Protestant Social and Political Thought."
Here are their founders:
.Nate Fischer, the multi-millionaire investor. Fischer is a graduate of Calvin University, who embraces a Neo-Calvinist Transformationalist approach to changing culture. He embraces a form of Christian Nationalism and polemic arguments that are akin to Douglas Wilson, with sympathies for the Baptist form of CN (William Wolfe) and Stephen Wolfe's version (Case for Christian Nationalism) both of which have been critiqued as Right-Wing Wokism, including Kevin DeYoung's critique of Stephen Wolfe's book. Fischer is utilitarian in his methodology where the ends justify the means to win the culture war to save America, including at times, misrepresenting, lying and slandering Christians who are against fighting a culture war to save America and the Progressives non-Christians who are the enemy.
Aaron Renn. The cultural thinker and strategist. Renn has a background in managerial consulting and is a political thinker/strategist as a fellow with the Manhattan Institute. His essay, The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism, is one of the most piercing critiques of how Christian evangelicals do cultural engagement wihin the historical context of the last 50 years and is a must read. While I don't agree with some of his premises and conclusions, he continually challenges my thinking, which is why I follow his blog. Renn rejects Christian Nationalism, which he writes about here and here but has no issue coming together with those who embrace CN to engage the elites who control most of the institutions in America and are hostile towards evangelical Christianity.
Chris Buskirk. The editor and publisher. He gained prominence with his 2017 book, American Greatness: How Conservatism Inc. Missed the 2016 Election and What the D.C. Establishment Needs to Learn. He is also the publisher and editor of a conservative news outlet called American Greatness. Buskirk promotes populist Conservatism and has no problem promoting conspiracy theories with little or no proof if it advances the populist conservatism of Donald Trump.
Also, the day after the election, Buskirk tweeted, This is the hate-filled, anti-Americanism we defeated on Election Day. Thanks be to God. Now, the next American Golden Age can commence. He has used the phrase "the American Golden Age" to describe the next four years in other tweets as well, here, here, and here, with his rose-colored glasses, putting his all his hope in the Trump administration. Buskirk is no longer its editor in Chief, having moved on from the American Reformer a year or so ago to focus being part of the propaganda machine of populist conservatism.
The accusations of those in the American Reformers camp as "Woke Right" over the past year hit a nerve as there have been several articles in the last year attempting to refute the claim. That is why James Lindsay's hoax article of a rewritten 21st paraphrase of the Communist Manifesto that was recently published by The American Reformer is such an embarrassment to them.
Discussion