Karl Marx’s Spirit in Lausanne: Theology of
Integral Mission
René Padilla: Lausanne upheld Theology of
Integral Mission as the mission of the church
By Julio
Severo
Karl
Marx was in Lausanne in 1867, for an international Marxist congress.
One
century later, another international congress drew attention in Lausanne. It
was not a Marxist congress. It was an evangelical congress on evangelization.
Yet, it gave a fantastic spotlight for Latin American proponents of TIM
(Theology of Integral Mission), which, according to its Brazilian proponents,
is the Protestant version of the Marxist Liberation Theology. One of them is Ariovaldo Ramos, who has praised Hugo Chavez. Ramos is the director of the Brazilian branch of World Vision.
It
was the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization,1974, where one of its
theologians, René Padilla, was one of the most prominent TIM advocates in Latin
America.
So
Karl Marx was present also, spiritually, at the Lausanne congress, through his
ideology, which was receiving evangelical clothes.
Beautiful
clothes disguise an ugly and deceptive ideology.
So there is an effort by TIM proponents to
hijack the purpose of major evangelical conferences by exploiting any statement
resembling TIM’s socialist feelings. In his paper “Integral Mission and its Historical
Development,” Padilla made his case for TIM by listing a number of previous evangelical
conferences as allegedly supporting it.
I
will use Padilla’s paper as reference to address TIM in Lausanne.
Regarding
the Congress on the World Mission of the Church (Wheaton 1966), Padilla said:
“The
Wheaton Declaration confessed the ‘failure to apply scriptural principles to
such problems as racism, war, population explosion, poverty, family
disintegration, social revolution, and communism.’”
“Population
explosion” was a common subject and obsession among Western elites in the 1960s
and 1970s and it should have been addressed by responsible and capable
Christian leaders not according to elites’ wishes, which led to abortion
legalization in the U.S., the largest Protestant nation in the world, and later
radical societal homosexualization. “Population explosion” is a myth and
rhetorical strategy that disguise population control efforts that include family
planning and are responsible today for the deluge of “homosexual rights” to the
detriment of rights and well-being of children and their families. If this myth had been debunked by
Christian leaders in that time, it could have averted abortion legalization in
the United States, which happened in 1973, with a massive toll today of over 50
million innocent unborn victims.
Concerning
social revolution and communism, whatever interpretation Padilla might try to
give, it is obvious that TIM, in its Latin American practice, was never a foe
for him and his liberal theological colleagues.
Padilla
wonders on Wheaton 1966:
“How such a
document could come out of a mission conference held in the United States at a
time when evangelicalism in that country was simply not interested in social
change or social activism.”
Yet, a socialist gospel was not a
strange reality in America. Apparently, Padilla is ignorant of the Social
Gospel movement, which was born in America in the 1870s. Socialism in the
American society and among its churches was a so serious threat that “The
Fundamentals,” a theological paper organized by R.A. Torrey and published in
1915, had a whole chapter against Marxism and socialism.
Socialism,
disguised as an interest in social change or social activism, is an old problem
in the American churches.
The
old Social Gospel movement dispels the myth that the U.S. evangelicalism had
not been involved in “social change or social activism.” And there are
significant signs that the most important theological liberalism in Latin
America was influenced by it.
Theology
of Integral Mission, or even Liberation Theology, may be the Social Gospel’s
most important offshoot.
A
Presbyterian missionary from the Social Gospel movement came to Brazil in 1952
and spent one decade teaching theology in the most prominent Presbyterian
theological institution in Brazil. His name was Rev. Richard Shaull, and he was
involved in several Marxist and communist causes in Brazil. The birth of the
Theology of Integral Mission (TIM) ideas in Brazil is traced and credited to
him.
In
the 1950s he already said what Liberation Theology and TIM proponents would be
saying in the 1980s and 1990s and decades to come. Shaull’s disciple Rubem
Alves, initially a theologian in the Presbyterian Church of Brazil and later an
agnostic, advocated Liberation Theology ideas before its official launch.
Even
though TIM is labeled as the Protestant version of Liberation Theology, TIM was
born before Liberation Theology. For more information, download my free e-book
here: http://bit.ly/15AJmMC
Padilla
tried give TIM a nobler birth by using major evangelical conferences, including
the World Congress on Evangelism (Berlin 1966), as alleged precursors.
In
his opening address at the Berlin Conference, Billy Graham reaffirmed his
conviction that “if the church went back to its main task of proclaiming the
Gospel and people converted to Christ, it would have a far greater impact on
the social, moral, and psychological needs of men than it could achieve through
any other thing it could possibly do.”
Nevertheless,
Padilla used this conference as a major TIM precursor. He said,
“With all
these antecedents, no one should have been surprised that the International
Congress on World Evangelization (Lausanne 1974) would turn out to be a
definitive step in affirming integral mission as the mission of the church. In
view of the deep mark that it left in the life and mission of the evangelical
movement around the world, the Lausanne Congress may be regarded as the most
important worldwide evangelical gathering of the twentieth century.”
For Padilla, Lausanne established
Theology of Integral Mission as the mission of the church. So, with TIM at
Lausanne, socialism became the mission of the church.
Because
of the leftist influence of Padilla and other Latin American theologians,the Lausanne Covenant said, “we affirm that evangelism and socio-political
involvement are both part of our Christian duty.” The Lausanne Covenant
basically equaled evangelism with leftist political action, a profane union
never done by the Gospel or Jesus.
The
central personality in the 1st Lausanne Congress was Billy Graham. Without him,
there would have been no Lausanne, but even he did not expect repercussion on an
ideological level. When Graham perceived that the Protestant Left was trying to
co-opt everything, he stopped funding Lausanne, and it displeased Brazilian
Marxist Anglican Bishop Robinson Cavalcanti, an old columnist of the Brazilian leftist
Presbyterian magazine Ultimato, who openly accused that Lausanne was under a
“hegemony from a conservative, white, anti-WCC (World Council of Churches) and
anti-socialist group,” etc. (Poor Graham: white, Anglo-Saxon, conservative,
etc!)
Cavalcanti
wanted Graham to continue in the Lausanne movement to raise funds to advance a
TIM revolution. This revolution has been happening, but without Graham’s money
and participation. Valdir Steuernagel, a TIM leader, has said that today
Lausanne is much more TIM than ever. It is not, therefore, a movement with the
Gospel’s face, but with the face of an ideology masking itself as the Gospel.
Padilla
remarked on the results he helped to produce in this TIM covenant by saying,
“The Lausanne Covenant not only expressed penitence for the neglect of social
action, but it also acknowledged that socio-political involvement was, together
with evangelism, an essential aspect of the Christian mission. In so doing it
gave a death blow on attempts to reduce mission to the multiplication of
Christians and churches through evangelism.”
Yet,
“social action” and “socio-political involvement” as “an essential aspect of
the Christian mission” have never been, in view of Padilla and other TIM adherents,
conservative activism. They have always been socialist activism.
Padilla
stresses the same point when he says:
“If both
evangelism and social action are so intimately related that their partnership
is ‘in reality, a marriage,’ it is obvious that the primacy of evangelism does
not mean that evangelism should always and everywhere be considered more
important than its partner. If that were the case, something would be wrong
with the marriage!… Concept of mission as a marriage in which the two partners
– word and action – are ‘equal but separable.’”
So
for Padilla, social action — in truth, socialist action — is as important as
the Gospel is. This is a profane union that Jesus and his apostles never
preached or knew it.
Padilla
tries to make TIM opponents look like upper-class evangelicals in North America
opposing poor Latin American ministers who have embraced a theology to help the
poor. He said:
“In spite of
its opponents, most of them identified with the North American missionary
establishment, integral mission continued to find support among evangelicals,
especially in the Two-Thirds World.”
Yet,
he did not inform his readers that TIM preachers in Latin America are equally upper-middle
class Lutherans, Presbyterians and Baptists, often graduated in European and
U.S. universities, who clash with usually poor charismatic, Pentecostal and
neo-Pentecostal preachers who help the poor in their own poor communities, but
without TIM. They help the poor by preaching the Gospel without socialism. They
encourage their audiences to seek prosperity, healing, health and salvation
from God. They pray for the sick and expel demons. This is a Gospel massively
unknown by TIM adherents.
Because
Padilla has no Bible support for uniting the Gospel with leftist political
action, he has to use major evangelical conferences and their ambivalent or
vague language or even Lausanne, whose language had his active participation.
Besides, intentionally or not, Padilla
overlooked conservative opposition in Lausanne to his efforts to make Lausanne
more leftist. The leader of this opposition was C. Peter Wagner, who was a
missionary in Latin America and knew very well the TIM advocates. He accused
TIM of being left-wing.
Hardcore
Marxist Liberation Theology in ECLCB makes TIM look like, in it “softcore”
socialism, “conservative” or even “right-wing”! Yet, as the example of Rev. Musskopf shows,
both theologies facilitate the acceptance and expansion of gay theology.
Steuernagel’s
upper class status and his higher theological experiences in no way reflect the
experience of the predominant Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal churches in
Brazil, whose congregations often are composed by members poorer than the
Lutheran congregations, which usually are middle class and higher. ECLCB, which
has embraced Liberation Theology and TIM, is no representative of the
Evangelical Church profile in Brazil.
Padilla
also recognizes Steuernagel’s influence in Lausanne by saying:
“But the lack
of adequate attention to the question of justice during the Congress was
clearly articulated by Valdir Steuernagel from Brazil in a ten minute speech
that he was allowed to give to the plenary at the very end of the Congress.”
Similarly,
other Brazilian theologians do not speak for the Brazilian Church when they
talk about her to First World audiences and international evangelical
conferences.
Paul
Freston, a naturalized Brazilian who has books published in English about the
Brazilian Church, has a story of socialist involvements in Brazil and he is a
key figure in TIM events in Brazil.
Another
TIM proponent is Rev. Alexandre Brasil, a Brazilian Presbyterian minister who
has delivered speeches in Calvinist institution in the U.S. about the situation
of the Evangelical Church in Brazil. Rev. Brasil has kept a high-paid job as a
consultant for the Brazilian presidency in the current socialist
administration.
All
of them are upper class Brazilians addressing poverty issues largely not
experienced by their Protestant segment, but by Pentecostal and neo-Pentecostal
segments.
Nevertheless,
Lausanne has been a platform for these not poor theologians to promote their
Marxist ideas in the name of the Gospel — which has already abundant assistance
for the poor, without socialism.
If
spiritual curses can affect spiritually sick Christians, could the Marxist
meeting of Karl Marx in Lausanne in 1867 and its dark spiritual influences have
affected an evangelical meeting 100 years later?
The
responsibility of a Christian is to preach the Gospel to every creature,
including Marxists, socialists and communists. To inoculate the Gospel with
Marxism, communism or socialism is not God’s plan.
To
preach socialism masked as a “Christian” social responsibility or as “married”
to the Gospel to every Christian is not what Jesus commanded. He commanded Christians
to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom of God and heal de sick and expel demons —
presumably, even demonic ideologies among Christians. Sign and wonders, or
healing and demon expelling, are married to the original and first Gospel.
If
given the opportunity, the Holy Spirit could have manifested himself in
Lausanne and other similar evangelical conferences. Instead, Karl Marx’s spirit
made its Protestant manifestations in Lausanne, which, according to Padilla,
established TIM as “the mission of the church,” leading evangelicals to embrace
and help an ideology that makes the State replace the Gospel in the capacity to
help the poor, heal the sick and expel demons through its social services,
funded not by the pockets of its political rulers, but by the pockets of its exploited
citizens.
Why
does no one dare to call TIM another gospel and another spirit?
Recommended Reading:
Posts
