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“Cultural Marxism” and “Evangelicalism”

May 10, 2018Filed under Theology#culture#evangelicalismMarkdown source

Alan Jacobs posted this yesterday:

There are no ideas, no beliefs, no positions that reliably correspond to the phrase “cultural Marxism.” It is a phrase whose use is purely emotive and without denotative value.

It occurred to me that the same thing is now equally true of “evangelicalism”: both “cultural marxism” and “evangelicalism” are terms that did have specific content at one point—but, by dint of their cooptation as overly-broad descriptors used primarily in the culture wars, both have been emptied of all of that meaning and therefore utility.

(I’ll grant you an exception if you demonstrate that you’re actually talking in terms Gramsci or Bebbington respectively would recognize. But not otherwise.)