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While in the past it was always emphasized that political views had no relevance to Christianity - and therefore that there was a symmetry about politics and Christianity - with problems distributed on both sides: that is no longer the case.
The situation is no longer symmetrical.
Now being a Leftist entails not being Christian - and Christianity lies on the Right, indeed very far to the Right (while, of course, most of those on the political Right certainly are not Christian - although some seek to use Christianity as an instrument in their politics).
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Why? Because although honest confusion was possible in the past, Leftism is now old and much developed and multi-national and much repeated; and its is now a certain fact that Leftism is built on and around atheism, that Leftism is intrinsically anti-Christian.
This is now apparent in a way that was not clear and obvious until about half a century ago (excepting to some of the most devout 19th century Russians who immediately perceived the atheist and anti-Christian nature of the Left from the very start of its influence).
Yet to be a Leftist nowadays, in the West, adhering to the New Left in its form of Political Correctness - this is incompatible with Christianity, and there are no longer any innocent Leftists: Leftism denies the reality of reality, has an utterly different model of the world than Christianity - with different aims, meanings, and a different scheme of evaluation - and Leftism creates and enforces the inversion of Good.
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Whatever kind of Christian you are, Leftism will force you to deny the fundamental grounds of faith.
This can be seen by considering John Wesley's 'quadrilateral' of evidences for Christianity: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience:
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1. Scripture: the Left treats scripture as if it was just like any other sort of writing - having no special quality or authority. Scripture is dissected with secular historical scholarship, language studies, re-translated and re-interpreted and rewritten; put under a microscope on the one hand and on the other hand mixed-in and compared-with other religious texts from other religions. At the end of all this, scripture has become a problem, not the gateway to a new life. At the end of this, plain scriptural information, instruction or statements can be denied, inverted or ignored.
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2. Tradition is exactly what Leftism is against. Leftism is rebellion against Tradition, progress away from Tradition, dwelling on the negative aspects of Tradition, discarding and transcending of Tradition, seeking of evidence conclusively to support every aspect of Tradition, characterizing of the past by its abuses and horrors: Leftism is the built-in assumption that Tradition is wrong.
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3. Reason. The Left (with its heart in the mass media) has reduced Reason to whatever fits into emotive soundbites; and no substantive challenge can be fitted into a soundbite because hostile brief communications are deliberately misrepresented. Reason is thwarted by ever-changing taboos, by the sentence by sentence need to self-excuse, to express proper sympathies and distance oneself from designated-badness. Under Leftism Reason has become one-sided and subordinated to already-existing Leftism: and reason is never allowed to compel re-evaluation since when it reaches unwelcome conclusions Reason is relativized - as being just one type of reason among several, and Reason hostile to Leftism is labelled as repressive.
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4. Experience. Christian converts often have experiences which convince them of the rightness of Christianity - which assure them of their forgiveness and salvation, that they are being watched and helped. Leftism, however, denies the validity of experience; relabels experience as intrinsically self-serving, repressive, a mass of stereotypes and prejudice. For Leftism, experience is not primary but secondary; wholly a product of culture, education, propaganda: Leftism sees personal experience as something to be shaped towards a better society, not a basis for knowledge.
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So, we see that whatever kind of Christian you may be, Leftism will corrode, subvert and (if persisted-with) overthrow every possible basis of Christianity.
What remains from Christianity in a Leftist, is whatever shrinking, dying, ineffectual residue that Leftism has not yet gotten round to destroying.
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