How many people today are aware of the extent to which the printed word affects the destiny of a nation?

There was a group of writers in London around the turn of the century called the Fabian socialists. These were men such as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Sidney Webb. Now the Fabians rejected the Word of God as the basis for society. They figured that Christianity had had almost 2000 years to perfect society and that it hadn’t fared that well. So the Fabians decided that man could be perfected through changing his environment. They thought if they eliminated the working class, tore down the hills of affluence and filled in the valleys of poverty, that all of England’s social ills would be cured.

These writers didn’t talk about sin and the need for repentance – that was too theological. They talked about the hidden potential for good in man, the idea of material progress and the evolution of society toward a new world order. They heralded the dawning of the 20th century as a new era of advancement in human progress. But they forgot to consider man’s incredible potential for evil as well, as they promoted Marxist doctrine in England in the hope of doing something good for their society.

In 1883, a group of 16 men met in a parlour and had discussions “groping for some kind of secular faith to replace the old God-given certainties.” The Fabians plan was to create a socialist state in England by promoting Marxist and Darwinist doctrines in the form of literature. Much of the curriculum in our American universities today is based on the teachings of these sixteen men and women.

George Bernard Shaw was a playwright whose most famous work is Pygmalion, which was a financial disaster at the time, but later appeared after he died as the musical, My Fair Lady, and did remarkably well. The premise of My Fair Lady, if you remember, was that the working class could be perfected though education and the proper environment. This was a noble sentiment, but Shaw relied heavily on Marxist teachings to accomplish these goals. Before his death, Shaw asked that his ashes be sprinkled on his home “to make the soil of England more fertile for socialism.”

Aldous Huxley, although not an original member of the Fabians, was a novelist whose books dealt with the merging of scientific advancement and mysticism as a way to perfect the human race. His most famous novel, Brave New World, which you may have read in high school, explores this theme. Later in life, Huxley became convinced that mind altering drugs, especially hallucinogens, were the answer to perfecting human intelligence. He died in the early sixties of a heart attack while experimenting with mescaline. Huxley’s essay, “The Doors of Perception,” was the inspiration for the drug subculture of the latter part of the 1960s.

H.G. Wells, the world’s most famous science fiction writer, was a militant advocate of socialism, evolutionism and rationalism. His science fiction novels were cleverly implanted with socialist principles which were a subtle means of advancing Marxist politics. Wells understood that you have to advance subversive ideas subtley before making a bold declaration. This strategy worked as he later wrote socialist pamphlets for mass distribution.

If you look at England today you will see a socialist state bankrupt both financially and morally. The point here is that it was the literature of the Fabian socialists that was the seed that produced this present bankrupt society.

The thing to remember about the Fabians was that they began as a group of only 16 people. Yet they changed the destiny of their nation. The national membership of the Fabian society has never been very great (at its peak in 1946 it had only about 8,400 members), but the importance of the society has always been much greater than its size might suggest.

In the 1980s, nearly half the members of the Labour Party members in the House of Commons in the English Parliament were Fabians, and the Labour Party has held great influence in England since WWII. The most integral part of their influence has been carefully researched pamphlets promoting socialism which are distributed to the English people.

American literature as a socialist weapon

Now America is only a generation behind England in the downfall of our society. We are headed in the same direction as England. If you look at America at the turn of the century, just a few years after the Fabian socialists began writing in England, another group of American writers arose with the same evil purpose of throwing off the yoke of Christianity from the American public and promoting socialism through literature.

In September of 1905, another gathering of literary types took place in a New York City restaurant. The leader of this group was Upton Sinclair, the author of the successful novel, The Jungle, which promoted socialism. These writers included Jack London, whose novels, The Call of the Wild and White Fang, contain simple Marxist and Darwinist principles; Charles and Mary Beard whose reinterpretation American history according to Marxist economic principles has become the blueprint for American history textbooks in our public schools; and also Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was the forerunner of the modern feminist movement.

Together they formed the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Their stated purpose was clear: “For the purpose of promoting an intelligent interest in socialism among college men and women, graduate and undergraduate, through the formation of study clubs in the colleges and universities, and the encouraging of all legitimate endeavors to awaken an interest in socialism among the educated men and women of the country.”

Today America has become a product of these writers’ thinking. Our colleges and universities are filled with neo-Marxist professors, feminists and evolutionists, who promote godless philosophies and mock at biblical Christianity. As a result our society stands at the brink of a socialist state with a bankrupt economy with the largest national debt in the history of any nation.

The point to be stressed here again is that these people were writers and their philosophy was promoted through the mass distribution of literature.

The wheat and the tares:
Matthew 13:24-26

“He presented another parable to them, saying, ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went away. But when the wheat sprang up and bore grain then the tares became evident also.’”

This is a similar situation to what is going on in America today. University professors have been sowing the seeds of godless philosophies among the students. To make matters worse, the tares have sprung up in abundance and few are even aware of it – like the sleeping men in the parable. We have become so saturated with Marxism, evolutionism, feminism, Freudianism, and every other -ism, that we often don’t even recognize these philosophies when they appear

University students are thinking according to spurious principles today. They are as much a product of socialistic thinking – even more so in many cases – as most of American society. They believe in socialism, not because they want to, but because neo-Marxists have taught us through the public schools that church and state should remain separate even in terms of reasoning and thinking. Even worse – few students read anything on their own except shallow books and magazines written for a semi-literate audience.

Turning the Tide in the Late 20th century

It is very important that when you have want to have Christian principles affect people that it be in the form of the printed word. Most students on college campuses today are influenced more by the visual media than they are by what they have read in books. Nevertheless, we need to realize that the primary source of all knowledge is in the printed word. Before we can be effective in changing our society we need to study exactly how biblical principles can be applied to every aspect of our society. These principles then need to be outlined in an accessible medium.

Literature and whatever contains the truth of God desperately needs to be dispersed among today’s students. We can expect Gospel principles to take root in people’s hearts and minds more quickly than Marxism, humanism, or any other vain philosophy. When God’s truth is presented in any form, it will always gain ascendancy over the godless philosophies of this world because it is the truth of God.

The purpose of The Forerunner is to saturate the market place of ideas – the university campuses – with a Christian world view that applies to every area of life. When this Christian world view is spoken on a consistent basis, we can expect the hearts and minds of the students to be affected and changed on a larger scale.