IN THIS WORLD, BUT NOT OF IT

Christ came and preached the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, a new paradise. But that was 2,000 years ago. Today we seem to have reached an impasse: communism "drew on the philosophies of both Marx and Nietzsch to advance a terrifying counterfeit of the transformation-imperative in ancient Christian cosmology," according to Fr. John Strickland's podcast series "Paradise and Utopia." But the utopia (or rather, "dystopia,") of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin is a gross distortion of paradise.

This world is not our home country, we await an eternal paradise. Nevertheless, here we are, in the land of exile: "Thus says the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel, to all the captivity, whom I have caused to be carried away captive from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat their fruit. Take wives, and father sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; and multiply there, and do not be diminished. Seek the peace of the city where I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray to the Lord for it; for in its peace you shall have peace. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets who are in your midst, and your diviners, deceive you; neither listen to your dreams which you cause to be dreamed. For they prophesy falsely to you in my name: I have not sent them, says the Lord." (Jeremiah 29:4-9) – We must make the best of the world we're in! Don't pay any attention to either the Marxist utopian fantasies, or to those who want us to retreat into a "holy huddle" having nothing to do with the world outside.

Why is it that communism's utopian dream always degenerates into terror and failure? It's because it denies the reality of human nature: watch the video "Konstantin Kisin: what the communists did to his family and why does communism always end in terror?" and all the videos at the Museum Of Communist Terror. Communism denies the glaringly obvious fact that people are not all equal: some are smart and others foolish, some are ambitious and others lazy, some are honest and others are devious, etc. So for a government to make them equal requires force or the threat of force to make people equal, to "level the playing field" by denying the smart, honest, and ambitious the reward for their labor.

Few people know that building Karl Marx's utopia was attempted as early as 1848 in Germany and again in 1870 in France, not just in 1917 in Russia. In fact, Marx believed that Russia would be the last place for a communist revolution because it was an agrarian society with hardly any industrial proletariat. But part and parcel of communist revolutions has been sexual revolution against Judeo-Christian morality regarding marriage and family. Marx developed his dystopian economic and social worldview because of the dislocation caused by the industrial revolution, so he posited the need for a new revolution to correct the inequalities caused by industrialization, including the suppression of women. Lenin's commune in Switzerland practiced open sexual relationships.

In earlier, agrarian societies, men and women were both producing material wealth: men mostly worked in the fields while women mainly worked in the home weaving fabric, preparing and preserving foods, and raising future farmhands. But with the industrial revolution, manufacturing of fabrics overtook the home looms, mainly men and older children worked in factories to earn money, and women became dependent on men for money and livelihood, as the podcast "Feminism Ep.1: The Paradox" explains. This exacerbated the already-existing patriarchal social structure and suppression of women.

The article "OPPRESSION, INHERITANCE AND PRIVATE PROPERTY: MARXISM AND THE FAMILY" describes this Marxist view: "Capitalism didn’t create the idea of the family or the idea of the man dominating the woman. It has inherited it from previous societies. But it finds it to be a very useful tool. It’s useful for dividing the working class and for mobilising backwards layers in moments of class struggle.Capitalism, however, also lays the basis for women’s liberation. In what sense? Through the development of the productive forces, by bringing women into production itself. It's through capitalism that the basis is created for the final overthrow of this form of the family. True liberation will come through a radical transformation of society."

Further, Karl Marx advocated for the abolishing of the traditional family structure: “'On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie,' he writes. Best of all, abolishing the family would be relatively easy once bourgeois property was abolished. 'The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.'” (Source: "5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)")

From this, we can see the intimate connection between Marxism and the Feminist movement. But surprisingly, feminism does not bring happiness. As the "Feminism Ep.1: The Paradox" podcast explains, exhaustive study after exhaustive study show that as more and more women gain postgraduate degrees than men and more women earn more and more money, they actually become less happy. Why does this strange paradox occur? The podcaster says it is because women inherently crave to be cared for and protected by men, not to domineer over them. So we see that Marxist economic dogma contradicts man's economic nature, and the related feminist dogma contradicts woman's psychological nature.

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-10-25.htm, and share it! Also, create your own blog or website for less than $4 per month!

GET MARRIED, STAY MARRIED, RAISE A FAMILY

It's a well-known fact in sociology, history, and politics that lifelong faithful marriage is the foundation for a stable and lasting society. But many today choose to ignore this fact in order to indulge their lusts. In her article "Protestants Against the Pill," Katelyn Walls Shelton relates what some traditional Protestants are rediscovering in the doctrine of the Early Church.

Her article explores a growing trend of Protestant women rejecting hormonal birth control and embracing Natural Family Planning (NFP) and an "embodied faith." It features interviews with women like Kelsey Meyers, who found NFP helped her understand her body better, and Chaney Gooley, who objects to contraception on theological grounds and its potential abortifacient effects. The article highlights the historical shift in Christian views on contraception, with a move away from the traditional Catholic stance of prohibition, as well as the redefinition of "pregnancy".

Ben Jefferies, an Anglican priest, supports a more nuanced approach, potentially allowing barrier methods under certain circumstances, but generally advocating for abstinence. Brooks Anderson, a birth doula, shares her journey with NFP, drawing on her personal experiences with her parents and her own views on honoring both the female body and God's design for marriage. The article suggests NFP fosters deeper relationships with God, husbands, and one's own body, challenging the notion of keeping faith separate from sexuality. Why then, have so many, even among professing Christians, fallen into sexual immorality? Duh!? It's the Pill! In the 1960s, the Pill opened the floodgates, encouraging promiscuity, leading to unwed mothers and broken homes.

Sexually liberal people and leftists today are in the habit of calling traditional Christians and political conservatives "patriarchal," "Nazis," "Fascists," and calling Hitler and Putin "Christians." This is simply blame shifting and a total reversal of historical fact. I majored in Central and East European Studies and lived over there for 20+ years, so I'm well-informed about their social and political history. In reality, the story of Hitler and Putin is much more complex and nuanced. They may have called themselves "Christians" but actually their ideology is much more secular, socialist, sexually promiscuous, and neo-pagan. Most people, though, don't bother to learn the historical facts and instead rely on sloganeering and sound-bites to rationalize their immorality.

"Nazi" is the German abbreviation for "NAzionalsoZIalismus" (national socialism). In 1932 when Hitler came to power, he called himself "a Christian; not a Catholic, not a Lutheran, but a German Christian" (in other words his nationalism came before religion). He imprisoned or killed many Lutherans and Catholics who opposed his rule. In 1963 while stationed in Germany in the army, I joined "The Fellowship Within the State [Lutheran] Church," the group – including Dietrich Bonhoeffer – that had resisted Hitler, so I'm very aware of what went on with Christians during WW2.

Similarly, by the early 1930s in the USSR under Stalin the ideal of the "Communist International" (Comintern) had morphed into a rebranded socialist-nationalist Russian imperialism. Hundreds of thousands of Christians were sent to the gulags or murdered. Orthodoxy in the USSR was taken over by a pseudo-Patriarch after Patriarch Tikhon was starved to death while under house arrest, Protestants there were forced to report to the KGB about everyone attending their churches, and children were forbidden to attend church or receive a Christian upbringing.

I knew personally some people whose parents helped Lenin during the 1917 Revolution but later denounced the Bolsheviks, others whose children were driven insane by harassment in elementary school, or whose parents had their homes and cows confiscated, leaving them with only the clothes on their backs. I've translated the gulag memoirs of Christian prisoners and I've gotten a few of them out of the gulags and into the West.

Few people know or want to recall that Hitler and Stalin were allies in their 1938 invasion of Poland, each taking 1/2 of Poland: an alliance of nationalist socialism and socialist nationalism. Only in June 1941, two years after that, did Hitler launch "Operation Barbarossa," invading the USSR, taking the Ukraine, besieging Leningrad and Moscow, and almost conquering the USSR, which lost over a million people. It was the German "Reich" ("Empire" in English) against the Soviet Empire: two imperial systems. However, neo-socialists in the West prefer to ignore the fact that both were socialist empires. But why? Why do they try to conflate conservatives in the West with Nazis and Fascists?

Here's why: It is "guilt projection" – shifting the blame for their immorality by falsely accusing conservative Christians of political sins. Meanwhile, our society crumbles. When a culture approves of sexual activity before marriage, researchers have found that monogamy, belief in God, and rational thinking tend to disappear within three generations.

They do this in order to mask the hidden agenda. Denigrating chastity before marriage and continence in marriage is part of the neo-marxist "Critical Theory" (Bible higher criticism, sexual criticism, racial criticism), the long-range plan to destroy the foundations of Christian society by infiltrating the movie and music industries, the educational system, the mainstream news media, and the political structure, leading to chaos, insurrection. and revolution. Look it up!

Also, read the article "Why Sexual Morality May be Far More Important than You Ever Thought" by Kirk Durston, in which he quotes from the 1934 book Sex and Culture by Oxford social anthropologist (and atheist) J.D. Unwin, 600 pages distilled from a lifetime of historical research on sexual behavior. He describes three premarital types:

Complete sexual freedom – no prenuptial restraints at all
Irregular or occasional restraint – cultural regulations require an occasional period of abstinence
Strict Chastity – remain a virgin until married.

Then he lists four postnuptial categories:

Modified monogamy: one spouse at a time, but association can be terminated by either party.
Modified polygamy: men can have more than one wife, but a wife is free to leave her husband.
Absolute monogamy: only one spouse permitted for life (or until death in some cultures).
Absolute polygamy: men can have more than one wife, but wives must “confine their sexual qualities (i.e., activity) to their husband for the whole of their lives.”

Here are a few of his most significant findings:

Effect of sexual constraints: Increased sexual constraints, either pre- or post-nuptial, always led to increased flourishing of a culture. Conversely, increased sexual freedom always led to the collapse of a culture three generations later.

Single most influential factor: Surprisingly, the data revealed that the single most important correlation with the flourishing of a culture was whether pre-nuptial chastity was required or not. It had a very significant effect either way.

Highest flourishing of culture: The most powerful combination was pre-nuptial chastity coupled with “absolute monogamy”. Rationalist cultures that retained this combination for at least three generations exceeded all other cultures in every area, including literature, art, science, furniture, architecture, engineering, and agriculture. Only three out of the eighty-six cultures studied ever attained this level.

Effect of abandoning prenuptial chastity: When strict prenuptial chastity was no longer the norm, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking also disappeared within three generations.

Total sexual freedom: If total sexual freedom was embraced by a culture, that culture collapsed within three generations to the lowest state of flourishing – which Unwin describes as “inert” and at a “dead level of conception” and is characterized by people who have little interest in much else other than their own wants and needs. At this level, the culture is usually conquered or taken over by another culture with greater social energy.

Time lag: If there is a decrease in sexual constraints, the full effect of that change is not realized until the third generation. Then that society devolves into chaos.

Why has Western society embarked on such a self-destructive course? Please see my article "Family Values: the Foundation of Society."

And what must be done about it? "Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling fragrance. But sexual immorality, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not even be mentioned among you, as becomes saints; nor filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which are not appropriate; but rather giving of thanks. Know this for sure, that no sexually immoral person, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the Kingdom of Christ and God... But as the Church is subject to Christ, so let the wives also be to their own husbands in everything. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up for it'" (Ephesians 5:2-5, 24-25). This is the foundation of a stable society.

You can read the rest of our newsletter at https://agape-restoration-society.org/ARC-News/a-n_2025-10-11.htm, and share it! Also, create your own blog or website for less than $4 per month!

ARC-News

Friday, October 24, 2025