Complete article War on Christians

With new information

Jun 08, 2024

Christian leaders in Minnesota are understandably very concerned about the persecution that Minnesota state government is now imposing on Christian people and Christian organizations. For example, Rev. Dennis C. Klatt, President of the Minnesota District of the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS), recently wrote about the state’s new law which abrogates our God-given right of religious liberty, by stating:

When civil government enacts laws which, if followed, would bring us into conflict with God’s word, “we must obey God rather than human beings.” (Acts 5:29) In addition, the current version of the MHRA violates the rights afforded to religious institutions under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Due to an outpouring of public opposition, the Minnesota legislature reversed itself late in the session by adding a religious exemption to this new law. The law would have required churches and Christian schools to recognize gender identity and gender “expression” as being protected classes under Minnesota’s human rights code. The actions of Minnesota’s state government tell us, nevertheless, what its intentions are.

Still in effect, however, are Minnesota’s radical new teacher certification standards. It is widely recognized that these new standards require Minnesota certified teachers to teach cultural Marxist ideology (also called “DEI”) to our students. It needs to be recognized that these new standards are also decidedly anti-Christian. These anti-Christian requirements were adopted without any elected official having to vote on them.

Ironically, schools, businesses and states are increasingly ridding themselves of these DEI doctrines. For example, the Associated Press (May 24, 2024) ran this story:

The University of North Carolina System Board of Governors on Thursday voted for a new policy that repeals previous diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) mandates for the state’s public universities. . . . This would impact all 17 public universities in the state and lead to the elimination of diversity programs and likely end DEI job roles, …
UNC CHAPEL HILL BOARD VOTES TO DISMANTLE DEI PROGRAMS, USE FUNDS ON CAMPUS POLICE AFTER ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTS.
The 24-member UNC Board of Governors approved its agenda, which included the DEI policy repeal, with two members, Joel Ford and Sonja Nichols, voting against the new measure. The board’s affirmative vote means the change takes effect immediately, although the system said campus changes are expected to take place at the start of the 2024-2025 school year… (UNC Board of Governors votes to repeal DEI mandates for North Carolina public universities (msn.com)

Importantly, the DEI doctrines and practices being removed from North Carolina universities are the same doctrines and practices Minnesota public-school teachers, state-certified after July 1, 2025, will be required to adopt and teach to their students. This article explains why these beliefs and practices are hostile to Christianity.

Incredibly, the State of Minnesota has chosen to impose these failed cultural Marxist requirements on all its schools. Doing so is an act of blatant persecution against Christians, since cultural Marxism is a religious ideology that is virulently anti-Christian. It is also a destructive comprehensive philosophy. These Marxist standards are being imposed on Minnesota schools, including its Christian Schools, in a variety of ways, one of the most important being by means of the state’s new teacher certification standards.

In April of 2023, Minnesota’s Professional Educators’ Standards & Licensing Board (PELSB) released the new standards, called “Standards for Effective Practice.” They have been adopted by the state of Minnesota, which means they now have the force of law.

These standards will have a profound impact on all of us because the doctrines taught in our schools in one generation become the guiding principles of our citizens in the next. (This why the cultural Marxists focus on controlling what is taught in our schools.)

We need to recognize, however, that these new standards are not well understood—the reason being that their meaning has been deliberately disguised by using misleading language.1

Part 1

The following analysis has been written in order to translate this misleading language into accurate and meaningful terminology, and to thereby enable readers to understand what the standards actually require. We begin with the overall worldview upon which the standards are based.

1. Marxism

This is the worldview established by Karl Marx that asserts all people are divided into two economic classes–the exploited class (proletariat) or the ruling class (bourgeoisie). Marx said that all human history, as well as important current events, can be explained by the conflict between these two classes of people. All Marxism is atheistic and accordingly holds that morality does not exist.2 There can be no moral law without a moral lawgiver. Consequently, Marxists see themselves as being free to engage in immoral behavior of any kind.

Cultural Marxism is the revision of traditional Marxism and was formulated by Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci. He accepted the basic Marxist views but said that economics is not the most important feature of history and life; it is culture that is the controlling factor of history and life. Hence the label “Cultural Marxism.” Gramsci also said that for the Marxist revolution (the “Great Reset”) to succeed, it must control the media and education. And education scholar James Lindsay has stated that cultural Marxism is actually a religious cult because it has those defining characteristics.3 Most Marxists today are cultural Marxists.

Cultural Marxism is referred to by a number of terms, including neo-Marxism, Critical Race Theory (CRT), critical consciousness, Diversity Equity & Inclusion (DEI), liberation theology, and social justice.

Scripture says:

In the beginning God created the heaven and earth. (Genesis 1:1)

The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.” (Psalm 14:1)

Those who reject the existence of God and also reject genuine morality cannot develop a workable life-philosophy be that in education, business, or any area of life.

Next is the terminology used by the Marxists with priority given to the terms and concepts used in the PELSB standards.

2. “Constructs,” Not Truth

The PELSB standards say:

The teacher understands how students construct knowledge and acquire skills. (“Standards of Effective Practice,” A,3, emphasis added)

The teacher understands that knowledge creation, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages. (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 8,D, emphasis added)

Notice that this requirement does not say “students learn knowledge,” nor does it say students acquire knowledge.” It says: “students construct knowledge, and that teachers assist in “knowledge creation.” The standards speak this way because in the Cultural Marxist worldview, the words “construct” and “knowledge creation” have specific meanings. Following the postmodernist paradigm, cultural Marxism assumes that neither truth nor knowledge are real. What we think of as being true, they say, are merely ideas those in power have “created” (“constructed”) to control others. These ideas, they say, masquerade as truth and knowledge. All such ideas they call “constructs” because they see them as having been created by human beings, not discovered.

It is from this doctrine that we get expressions like “my truth,” and “his truth.” Relative truth is not real truth, obviously. This is one reason why the PELSB standards are decidedly anti-intellectual. Real learning assumes that truth and knowledge are objectively real—that words are capable of describing the real world. The PELSB standards reject that view. This is one reason why they focus on emotional manipulation, not real learning.

Scripture says:

An intelligent heart acquires knowledge, and the ear of the wise seeks knowledge. (Proverbs 18:15 ESV)

“You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world—to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” (John 18:37, ESV)

The Christian view of knowledge and truth versus the Cultural Marxist view of knowledge and truth are direct opposites. Christians see knowledge and truth as genuine.

3. Morality as Construct

Marxism holds that morality is not genuine but rather is a construct (invention) of white males created for the purpose of controlling other people. For that reason, say Marxists, all traditional moral standards are made up by those in power and should be ignored.

Scripture says:

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them). (Romans 2:14, 15)

Scripture teaches that God’s morality is real, was created by Him, and is known by us instinctively (natural law), as well as by instruction and observation.

4. Equity

This doctrine is stated several times in the PELSB standards. One such statement reads as follows:

. . . the teacher demonstrates the ability to create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity. (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 4,H, emphasis added.)

Equity is not the same as “equality.” “Equality” means equal opportunity, but “equity” means equal outcomes. “Equity” means the same as the slogan of Karl Marx, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Equity requires socialism. Equity also requires discrimination against whites, Asians, and others so that various racial and other groups in aggregate have the same outcomes.4 For example, equity requires that a university’s graduating class in engineering have the same number of men and women and the same percentage of nonwhites as exist in the university overall. Accomplishing this feat, if it can be done at all, will require extensive discrimination against white male students.5

Scripture says:

“Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great but judge your neighbor fairly.” (Leviticus 19:15)

The same doctrine is stated in James 2:9 and in Exodus 23:3.

Therefore, the PELSB requirement of teaching and practicing equity is teaching false doctrine as well as being false practice because it requires discrimination against innocent people.

Part 2

5. White Supremacy

White supremacy is the doctrine that all whites are inherently racist, and non-whites are not racist. It includes the belief that, because of racism, whites are more successful than non-whites. The PELSB standards require teaching this doctrine as stated by the following language:

The teacher understands how ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, deficit-based teaching, and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity. (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 8,C, emphasis added).

White supremacy assumes that all people are divided into two racial groups—whites (the oppressor class) and nonwhites (the oppressed class). The PELSB standards, as is true for cultural Marxism generally, assumes that all racial disparities are the result of discrimination by whites against nonwhites, although there is no evidence of that.6 Consequently, the standards repeatedly use words like “bias,” “discrimination,” and “prejudice” to explain racial discrepancies. This doctrine, like other cultural Marxist doctrines, is totally made up.

Scripture says:

⁷Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome ¹¹(both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” (Acts 2:7-11)

Scripture commonly identifies people by their homeland or their nationality, but it never identifies people, nor does it ever divide people, based on race. Doing so is contrary to Scripture.

Nor does Scripture allow for the division of people into the categories of being racist (sinners) and nonracist (non-sinners). Doing so is contrary to Scripture. In Romans 3:27, Paul said: “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”

The PELSB doctrine of white supremacy is not only contrary to Scripture, it is also demonstrably false. For example, is racial discrimination the actual cause of racial disparities in education achievement? Notice in the chart below, on the nationwide SAT test, it’s Asians who score the highest on academic achievement, not whites. If “white supremacy” were true, then whites would score the highest, but it’s Asians who do so. Also notice the strong correlation between high academic achievement and two parent homes which demonstrates that two-parent families, as compared to single parent families—not discrimination—is the biggest factor in the racial achievement gaps.7

As is obvious from the chart, as the percentage of two-parent homes increases, so also the performance on academic achievement tests increases. Researcher Barbara Dafoe-Whitehead came to this same conclusion two generations ago. She said that if you adjust for single-parent homes, the racial disparities in education and other areas largely disappear. The leftists have conveniently ignored this important scientific truth. Keep in mind, cultural Marxists believe, as described in Part I, that scientific facts are constructs, not reality.

6. Affirming Homosexuality

This is another requirement of the new PELSB standards. (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 2,D.) “Affirm” is a legal term and has the dictionary meaning of “to state or assert positively, maintain as true.”

Scripture says:

For this reason God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. (Romans 1: 26,27)

Even if we were to use the wishful-thinking definition of “affirm,” that being to “create a safe environment for,” this mandate is still contrary to Scripture because a “safe environment” would not allow for teaching or even reading the above passage from Romans. Such a teaching or reading will be seen as “harassment” or worse.

False doctrine consists not only in what is said, it also consists in what is not said. To refuse to proclaim that homosexuality is wrong is false doctrine.

7. Affirming Multiple Genders

The PELSB standards require teaching the doctrine that there are more than two genders, and that people can change their gender if they wish. Scripture, however, clarifies that God created two, and only two, genders.

Scripture says:

So God created man in His own image,
in the image of God He created him;
male and female He created them. (Genesis 1:27)

We know that in His creation of two genders, from the moment of conception onward, God makes every cell in the bodies of males and females to be either male or female. For that reason, a person can pretend to change genders, but the nature of God’s creation makes it impossible to actually do so. Every cell in a boy baby’s brain is a male cell. And every cell in a girl baby’s brain is female. Nothing can change that truth. The claim of being able to change genders is contrary to Scripture and contrary to the real world of God’s creation.

This belief in multiple genders is the ultimate denial of God’s existence and will, because it is God Himself who made us male or female. The Marxists want to be the ones who decide what gender a person is. They have fallen to the oldest temptation known to man. They want to be like God. Scripture says:

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Genesis 3:4-5).

8. Culturally Responsive Teaching

The PELSB sample curriculum states that “culturally responsive teaching” includes the following requirement:

(Para. 2, D): The teacher fosters an environment that ensures student identities such as race/ethnicity. national origin, language, sex and gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, physical/developmental/emotional ability, socioeconomic class, and religious beliefs are historically and socially contextualized, affirmed, and incorporated into a learning environment where students are empowered to learn and contribute as their whole selves ( PELSB Sample Syllabus.docx (live.com)).

Similar terms, such as “cultural competence” have the same meaning. These and similar terms refer to the adoption of the cultural Marxist worldview.

Scripture says:

For this reason, God gave them over to dishonorable passions. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. Likewise, the men abandoned natural relations with women and burned with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men and received in themselves the due penalty for their error (Romans 1: 26,27).

Part 3

Breaking News: (May 7, 2024) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) announces it will no longer include DEI in hiring its professors because doing so is harmful to its academic program. This means that M.I.T. is announcing a return to hiring faculty members based on merit, not on race, gender, LGBTQ+ or other nonacademic criteria.

Just as M.I.T. is taking a major step to free itself from the destructive doctrines of cultural Marxism, the State of Minnesota at the same time is requiring its newly certified teachers to indoctrinate their students with the very constructs that M.I.T. is rejecting. (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) is cultural Marxism.)

The bureaucrats at the Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) know that its DEI teaching standards are not about education. The teaching mandates are not just harmful to genuine learning, they are a system of false religious doctrines that are antithetical to Christianity. MDE is more interested in immersing its students in a false worldview than in teaching them academic knowledge and skills.

9. Social and Emotional Learning

The PELSB standards say:

The teacher regularly assesses individual and group performance in order to design and modify instruction to meet students' needs in each area of development, including . . . social, emotional, and physical, and scaffolds the next level of development (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 3,F, emphasis added).

Consistent with its doctrine that truth does not exist, PELSB focuses on manipulating children’s emotions by means of Social and Emotional Learning. The command center for SEL is the “Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Leaning” (CASEL). It states unequivocally that its purpose is the indoctrination of our students in equity8 (cultural Marxism).

Scripture says:

I urge you, brothers and sisters, to watch out for those who cause divisions and put obstacles in your way that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Keep away from them (Romans 16:17, KJV).

And

³For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, ⁴that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, ⁵and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. ⁶After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. ⁷Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, ⁸and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. (1Corinthians 15:3-8).

And

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:7 KJV).

Scripture consistently instructs us to use a rational process based on-real world knowledge for instructing our students. Scripture never says we should rely on the child’s emotions for instruction. And Scripture consistently defines learning as being the pursuit of knowledge, truth and wisdom. Nowhere does Scripture define education or learning with terms like “emotional learning.” The Marxists have invented this term to put a positive spin on what is really the emotional manipulation of our children. Ironically “emotional learning” is a genuine construct. It doesn’t exist in the real world.

For a current example of Minnesota government’s war on Christians, see: Court revives case alleging DHS discrimination against Christian employee - Alpha News

10.Intersectionality:

The PELSB standards say:

. . . the teacher demonstrates the ability to create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity (“Standards of Effective Practice,” 4,H, emphasis added).

Intersectionality is another of the central doctrines of the PELSB standards and of cultural Marxism. Intersectionality is the belief that our identity should not be individual in nature but rather should be a composite of the groups we belong to. For example, a 15-year-old high school student could define herself as a high school sophomore who is white, a member of a jazz band, and a member of the swimming team. Do these groups affect her identity? Of course. But do they define who she is? They do not.

Scripture says:

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Genesis 2:7, KJV).

God created Adam to be an individual, not just as a member of various groups. To be a person, is to have an individual identity. In the movie Cast Away, was the man stranded on an island by himself still a person when there were no groups he could belong to? Yes, he was still a person with an individual identity, even though he lived in a very difficult environment. Our identity is personal, not a composite of various groups.

Why do Marxists want to confuse our identity? The reason is people with a poorly defined identity are easier to control than those with a clearly defined identity. This is also one of the reasons Marxists aggressively promote transgenderism—such people are easy to control.

Part 4

¹⁴Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14

11. Agents of Social Change

As noted above, the PELSB standards say:

Consistent with the local curriculum and state and local academic standards, the teacher demonstrates the ability to create opportunities for students to learn about power, privilege, intersectionality, and systemic oppression in the context of various communities and empowers learners to be agents of social change to promote equity (“Standards of Effective Practice,” Para. 4, H. emphasis added.)

The “social change” that the standards are speaking of is also called “the Great Reset.” In his book, Covid-19 and the Great Reset.9 Klaus Schwab states that most nations see themselves as being similar to ships on the sea. Some are bigger than others, some are wealthier than others, but all are independent and set their own course.

This view is mistaken, says Schwab. He says that countries need to change the way they see themselves and should view themselves as apartments on one big ship. In this view, nations will have no choice but to go wherever the captain of the big ship takes them. Nations will no longer be sovereign but will be subject to the big ship—the global government run by Marxists.

Teacher candidates receiving their state certification after July 1, 2025, will be required to indoctrinate their students to be agents of this Marxist revolution. All Minnesota colleges and universities that certify teacher candidates to teach in Minnesota public schools after this date need to ask themselves if this is really their mission as opposed to being institutions of higher learning.

For the globalists, everything they do “is all about the revolution.” The revolution is why people suffering with the Covid-19 virus were denied access to life-saving drugs such as ivermectin. The revolution is why pregnant women were told the Covid-19 vaccine was safe for them and their unborn child though pharmaceutical companies and federal health agencies knew it caused miscarriages and birth defects. (According to Klaus Schwab, the greater the tragedy, the more likely people are to make changes they would not otherwise make.) The revolution is why Marxists deny the reality of all moral restraints regarding sexuality and government activities, and the revolution is why the Hippocratic Oath is now routinely ignored. This information tells us that we need to do everything we can to resist this Marxist takeover of the education of our children.

The U. S. constitution forbids the government from instituting a state religion. The new Minnesota teacher licensing standards are instituting a false religion. The time has come to identify and oppose it. That is the first step. We will then begin to see ways to put this resolve into practice.

Addendum

Representatives of the licensing board have reportedly assured Minnesota Christian colleges in private conversations that PELSB will exempt the colleges from enforcement of any of the new standards’ required doctrines that violate the schools’ Christian beliefs. Christian schools are also reportedly being told that the new standards have been toned down to meet their concerns.

However, as can be seen from the standards themselves, they have not been changed in any way: Standards of Effective Practice (mn.gov). These standards have been officially adopted, and they have the force of law. They can be modified only by an extensive rule-making process—which has not happened.

From all appearances, PELSB representatives are promising Christian schools that they will look the other way when evaluating whether Christian education programs are teaching all the false doctrines in the standards. If that is the case, the problem remains. The standards are state law. Any verbal assurances can be discarded at any time. Keep in mind, Marxists believe that morality does not exist. They will do and say anything to accomplish their purposes.

However, most importantly, this “solution,” applies only to the colleges. All Minnesota newly state-certified teachers will still be required to teach the new standards to their students, and public schools will expect them to have affirmed the doctrines they must teach. There are no exemptions for the teachers certified after August 2025. Under the new Social Emotional Learning (SEL) programs, students will be assessed at least three times a year to monitor their progress in adopting the false doctrines in the standards. Students or classrooms or schools that fall behind are subjected to “interventions” to bring them up to speed. No students will be allowed to bypass this indoctrination.

This means that a teacher who becomes state certified through a Christian education program, just as in any other college education program, has been certified to become an agent of the false religion being taught in the public schools. Sending graduates into the public-school arena with this expectation is a betrayal to the graduate, regardless of what they have been taught.

Further, we cannot assume that Christian schools are recognizing the false doctrine in the PELSB standards. The promotional language of these doctrinal issues is profoundly deceitful, and schools and church bodies have demonstrated that they have been taken in by what they are told. For that reason, indoctrination into the new false religion is being unwittingly adopted into Christian school education programs and it may will be that the state licensing board will be content with that.

The new Minnesota teacher licensing standards do not just contain false doctrine that schools can theoretically correct or delete from their teaching. The new standards are false doctrine. If we are to be preparing Christian teachers, we must clearly identify those standards as false, wholeheartedly reject them, and focus on teaching genuine knowledge and truth—not false theology.

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