This triad of cultural trends are fed to us daily through almost every medium of communication available. They operate with the same authority as creeds, are believed in the same way the faithful believe their creeds, and to violate them is to risk excommunication, or in today’s language, to be cancelled. For all intents and purposes, they operate like a secular religion. The dream given is for a utopian vision of the world made possible by adhering to a set of cardinal doctrines. In order for this to happen though – all people must play their part – and if coercion and persuasion does not work – then legislation must be used.
Globalism is really a form of utopian imperialism and has been in operation since the Tower of Babel and modelled by many of the imperial empires that followed in history. The world has seen many empires seek global dominance; the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Persians, the Romans, and the Ottomans to name just a few.
As Dr. Boot from the Wilberforce centre notes:
“the seeds of modern globalism were planted in the Enlightenment era as cultural elites began turning away from Christianity and the vision of the protestant nation state and started formulating globalist manifestos, emulating the ancient Greeks.”[1]
Such secularised models of uniformity demand that beliefs which cannot be embraced universally must be rejected – more than that they must be fiercely resisted. This does not leave room for the outworking of the Christian faith in public life and is the motivation behind why most people try to push faith to the “private sphere” of life, usually with the unstated intent of eradicating it completely.
Globalism envisages a world that is governed by a conglomerate of world leaders under a single political and legal entity which also asserts a uniform ethical morality upon people. In such secularist globalist utopias, the state takes the place of God and obedience (or maybe we could say worship) of the state is the key to utopia. Therefore, it is justified for the greater good to utilise the power of the state, both political and militarily, to reach this end. Such globalist pretensions have been infiltrating western civilisation for hundreds of years.
Philosophical thinkers like Rousseau wrote works like The Social Contract (1762) which strongly argues that a political revolution was needed to free humanity from inequality and corruption. As such he was really arguing for a totalitarian state that operated as “father” -and in his own words makes all citizens “children of the state”.
His idea paved the way for other thinkers who would contribute to political philosophy such as Karl Marx who offered the communist vision of utopia. Much of today’s political discourse is simply a rehash of Rosseau’s original ideas. Such ideological thinking even found its way into the church through thinkers like Immanuel Kant – who elevated reason to the preeminent position in political thought. He posited that such reason would surely lead to the peaceful utopia. In his work Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch he argued that in order for states to co-exist with each other [utopian vision] they must “renounce their savage and lawless freedom, adapt themselves to public coercive laws, and thus form an international state which would necessarily grow until it embraced all people of the earth.”[2]
The most contemporary expressions of such political ideologies are seen in a number of ways in today’s world. Positioning itself as the world authority who must steer society towards a better future, the World Economic Forum has taken the Mantle from Rousseau and others. The WEF is basically a global organisation that links the world’s richest private companies together and facilitates their interactions with the governments of the world. The forum is best known for its annual meeting in Davos Switzerland which brings together global leaders to consider the challenges of the world! Their purpose as a global supranational body is seen in their mission statement:
“The Forum engages the foremost political, business, cultural and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas” [3]
The Davos agenda for 2021 was “The Great Reset” – so what it this? Quite simply, it is the belief that the major infrastructures of the world (social, political, economic, industrial, environmental) need to be reset. The WEF founder has argued that the covid crisis represented a rare window of opportunity to “reimagine and reset our world”[4]. What he means by this is an opportunity to establish a globalist government that can shape society in their own image. He has stated it quite clearly, now is the time “for global leaders to shape the future state of global relations, the direction of national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models and the management of a global common interests.”
A number of themes involved in the great reset that are typical for such humanistic visions can be found in the agenda. Most strikingly, we see an attack on nationalism and individual state sovereignty. Schwabb defines global governance as “the process of cooperation among transnational actors aimed as providing responses to global problems.”[5]
He says, “it encompasses the totality of institutions, polices, norms, procedures and initiatives through which nation states try to bring more predictability and stability to their responses to transnational challenges.” He goes on to argue that we need more global governance and less nationalism when he says:
“The more nationalism and isolationism pervade the global polity, the greater the chance that global governance loses its relevance and becomes ineffective, Sadly, we are now at this juncture. Put bluntly, we live in a world I which nobody is really in charge.”[6]
The unspoken conclusion from such a statement is that this needs to change so they put themselves in charge. A typical route to tyranny that often masquerades as benefiting the public good. History is replete with examples of such double speak. Another observation related to this quote is that is clearly portrays the secularist worldview at play in such ideological visions as it leaves no room for either Satan’s role in this world system as the “god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) or for the sovereignty of God in history.
More to come in Part 2
[1] Boot, Joseph. Ruler of Kings: Toward a Christian Vision of Government (London: Wilberforce Publications, 2022) Pg.73
[2] Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace” in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss, trans, H.B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970) Pg. 105
[4] Schwab, Klaus. Covid-19: The Great Reset (Switzerland: Forum Publishing, 2020) Pg. 244
[5] Ibid. Pg. 114
[6] Ibid.
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