Collective Unity... unto Death

Planning the Perfection of Society

By Carl Teichrib

Dispatch Note: Last weekend I attended the NATO Dialogue Forum in Dayton OH. My dispatch report from this event will be ready for paid members, I’m planning and hoping, sometime next week (oh, if only I could somehow cram 72 hours into a day!).

However, in light of my two previous two articles — Collective Revolution and American Socialism, World Order, and the Problem of Peace — I am following up with an adaptation from my book, Game of Gods: The Temple of Man in the Age of Re-Enchantment, as it dovetails with the subject and presents a deeper understanding.

Final note: Other parts to the Magical Re-Enchantment and Regionalism series will be posted in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

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Collective Revolution

American Socialism, World Order, and the Problem of Peace

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“Science is a religion, science alone will henceforth make the creeds, science alone can solve for men the eternal problems, the solution of which his nature imperatively demands.” – Ernest Renan.¹

“Yes, we are going to destroy everything, and on the ruins we will build our temple!” – V.I. Lenin.²

The intellectual impact of Positivism,³ naturalism and evolution — scientific materialism — was predictable. Christianity could no longer be tenable for the “educated man.” A mind switch in academics took place. Profound changes within the arts demonstrated the cultural acceptance of naturalism, and at the same time, pointed to the internal struggle for meaning.⁴ Broadly speaking, for churches and seminaries facing the test of Modernity, three options presented themselves; either attempt to reconcile Biblical positions with naturalistic theories, or swing towards more ecstatic reactions, or remain silent and quietly hope that the boat won’t get too badly rocked by the ensuing social-cultural waves.

Politically, the ramifications of Modernity had a profound effect. Materialist revolutions shook nations, producing shock waves that still reverberate. Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Leon Trotsky burned Russia to the ground, erecting a colossal temple to scientific materialism – the Soviet Union. Christianity, that “infamous thing,” was driven underground. Instead of prosperity and peace and equality, the promise of Socialist central planning, Christians experienced repression and persecution. Contrary to what New Atheist and best-selling author Richard Dawkins claims — that there is no real link between atheism and acts of despotism, saying that “individual atheists may do evil things but they don’t do evil things in the name of atheism”⁵ — the reality demonstrated something else entirely; that a tangle connection existed between official atheism and Soviet brutality.

The Communist Party of the Soviet Union enforced its atheistic worldview.⁶