Newt Gingrich, Contract with the Earth, the Tofflers, Ecumenicalism, and the New Religious Right
By Brannon S. Howse
The merging we’re talking about extends into the political realm as well, and while there is no perfect candidate, that does not mean evangelicals should compromise biblical truth and embrace politicians with worldviews hostile to biblical truth. Newt Gingrich is just another in a long line of political candidates many of the New Religious Right have hooked their wagons to in political and spiritual endeavors. While the story of the New Religious Right and Newt will soon fade, it is important history to document and remember. Why? The Newt Gingrich and New Religious Right relationship is a great example of the compromise in which the New Religious Right will participate to achieve their largely self-serving and often unbiblical, unachievable goals and objectives—all to the detriment of the Gospel.
The Newt Gingrich/New Religious Right story reveals several problems. On a small scale, it is a preview of how a future group of global “Christian” leaders will assist in leading a false church into following not just a local, state or presidential candidate, but a one-world leader. In other words, if today’s New Religious Right can be convinced that a man like Gingrich is a Christian and is good for the country, American families, and the Church, then how much easier will it be for the antichrist to deceive the religious leaders of his day?
Newt may have been honeyed-tongue and tickled the ears of NRR leaders, but it did not come close to the deception that will come from the hand of the antichrist. What Gingrich did with the NRR will occur again on a global scale. Then it will be the antichrist the religious leaders help ascend to world power.
Occurrences like this are further evidence that God is judging America. The infiltration of the religious and political left into the New Religious Right is part of God’s judgment as our nation and institutions are led by vain, foolish, and futile-thinking men (see Romans 1:21-22). America’s national judgment includes God giving America leaders whose practices oppose the righteous judgments of God, while encouraging others to do the same (Romans 1:32). Romans 1:25 adds that national judgment involves God giving a people over to pagan spirituality. The New Religious Right has openly embraced the NAR, Word of Faith, and other groups that practice pagan spirituality.
To further understand how God is judging America, you must understand that leading political candidates on local, state, and national levels are almost always hostile to biblical truth. If not hostile in their words, they are hostile in their personal lives and public policy. The final leading presidential candidates in America’s recent presidential races have shown that God is turning America over. Look at the worldviews of the final US presidential candidates in 2012—a Mormon, Mitt Romney, and two Roman Catholics, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
Gingrich offers a particularly important example because of the basis of his worldview. The modernist thinking of Heidi and Alvin Toffler was embraced and promoted by the former Congressman. He was so inspired by the futurist vision of the Tofflers that he wrote the foreword to their book Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave. And what did the Tofflers promote? What did Newt promote in his book A Contract with the Earth? It gets complicated.
Renewing America or Reinventing America?
The organization Renewing American Leadership—started by Newt Gingrich—posted a list of participating evangelical pastors, leaders of the New Religious Right, and leaders of the New Apostolic Reformation and Word of Faith movements, all uniting in a call to America for prayer and fasting. The list includes: Kenneth Copeland, Creflo Dollar, Mike Bickle, Che Ahn, Lou Engle, Cindy Jacobs, and Rick Joyner.
Charismamag.com reported on an event sponsored by Gingrich’s organization:
[quote] Organized by California pastor Jim Garlow and Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson, Pray & Act has gained support from a cross-section of Christians, including Bible teacher Kenneth Copeland, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Generals International co-founder Cindy Jacobs, Southern Baptist Convention leader Richard Land, Atlanta pastor Creflo Dollar and campus for Christ co-founder Vonette Bright. [end quote]
(There are many things I would call Kenneth Copeland but “Bible teacher” is not one of them.) The article continued:
[quote] The Pray & Act kickoff, to be broadcast on the American Family Association (AFA) website Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern, will feature leaders attending the AFA’s Values Voters summit this weekend. The speakers—ranging from conservative politicians to pastors—will be interviewed by Garlow and will join him in calling Christians to 40 days of prayer and fasting. [end quote]
Do you really think God is going to bless a prayer and fasting event with false teachers like Creflo Dollar, Cindy Jacobs, and Kenneth Copeland? As John MacArthur has correctly said, many of these false teachers are blaspheming the Holy Spirit, and uniting with them in a prayer enterprise surely will not yield God’s blessing. MacArthur explains:
[quote] Attributing to the Holy Spirit the work of Satan. Satan is alive and at work in deception, false miracles, bad theology, lying visions, lying dreams, lying revelations, deceptive teachers who are in it for the money and power and influence. Satan is alive and well and the work of Satan being attributed to the Holy Spirit is a serious blasphemy just as attributing to Satan the work of the Holy Spirit is a serious blasphemy….
I couldn’t even begin to give you all the illustrations; you have enough of them in your own mind. You can turn on your television and see any litany of them that you would choose. And in order to give credibility to all these things, all these lies, they attach them to the Holy Spirit as if it’s a freebie, as if there’s no price to pay for that kind of blasphemy.
The latest wave of this, I’ll just give you one illustration, the latest wave of this that is gaining traction and has entered into the sort of national news is a new form of Charismania, bringing reproach on the Holy Spirit called the New Apostolic Reformation, NAR, the New Apostolic Reformation. It is not new, it is not apostolic, and it is not a reformation, by the way. It is like Grape Nuts—it’s not grapes and it’s not nuts. It’s like Christian Science—it’s not Christian and it’s not scientific. Well, the New Apostolic Reformation isn’t new, it isn’t apostolic, and it isn’t a reformation. But it is a rapidly expanding movement being generated by some of the same old troubling false teachers and false leaders that have been around in Charismania for decades, always dishonoring the Holy Spirit, always dishonoring the Scripture, always claiming miracle signs, wonders, visions, dreams. Peter Wagner, the Kansas City prophets, Mike Bickle, Cindy Jacobs, Lou Engle, and on and on and on it goes. In fact, this is exploding so fast that they have a 50-state network that are now involved in this….[end quote]
The website of the Pray & Act event included pro-family and evangelical leaders such as:
[quote] Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Tony Perkins of The Family Research Council, Tim and Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, Jerry Falwell, Jr., of Liberty University, David Barton of Wallbuilders, Chuck Colson, Founder and President of Prison Fellowship, Tony Evans of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, and many more. [end quote]
If you think Newt Gingrich is someone America’s evangelical and New Religious Right leaders should be uniting with, then I suspect you don’t fully understand his worldview. Yet several pro-family leaders enthusiastically and publicly endorsed and campaigned for Newt Gingrich when he ran for president of the United States in 2011 and 2012. One actually declared:
[quote] Gingrich recognizes the threat to our country posed by judges and lawyers imposing values upon the country inconsistent with our religious heritage, and has proposed constitutional steps to bring the courts back in balance under the constitution. We need someone in the White House who can balance the budget and get the economy moving again. Newt is the only candidate who has done it before and I believe he can do it again. I am proud to endorse Newt Gingrich for president. [end quote]
I personally don’t think most evangelical pro-family leaders really understand what has influenced Gingrich over the years—influence that includes a man who has actually called for replacing the governmental system installed by the founding fathers. As researcher Steve Farrell explains, Newt Gingrich promoted and embraced the worldview of Alvin Toffler:
[quote] On November 11, 1994, still bubbling and cocksure over the Republican takeover of both houses of Congress, his coming coronation as speaker of the House, and his anointing as king of the Republican Revolution, Congressman Newt Gingrich couldn’t resist taking advantage of the moment to put in a free plug for something he so devoutly believed in.
“The core of our Contract” and the solution for those “trying to figure out how to put me in a box,” he said, could be found in a book by futurist Alvin Toffler called “The Third Way,” to which he added, “I am a conservative futurist.” [end quote]
Farrell continues:
[quote] …futurism is a head-in-the-clouds political philosophy complete with theories and forecasts which envisions the use of force to insure that those theories and forecasts come to pass.
I’m sure my Republican friends won’t like this: but it would not be a stretch on futurism to sum it up thus: communism with economic vision. That is certainly how the futurists of the Third Way describe it. If so, what, then, is a conservative futurist? Well, if Mr. Gingrich was being honest about his agenda (which became the agenda of the Party), it is individually: a post-1994 Republican; and in policy: The Contract With America, the go-along, get-along policies of a party that for the next six years caved under Clinton. It is, also, the faith-based subsidies, public-private partnerships, fast-track hopes, and the bipartisan spirit of the 2000-2008 Compassionate Conservative movement—the latter movement having its start in the already in place proposals, legislation, and underlying principles of the Gingrich inspired Contract With America.
As fictitious as this may have sounded to the average pre-Tea Party party partisan who presumes his party is as conservative as the talk show hosts who promote it, confirmation of it all comes in spades as we consider the sincerity and depth of Gingrich’s relationship with the same center/left of center Third Wave/Third Way that pummeled our country under Clinton and Gore. [end quote]
In his foreword to Heidi and Alvin Toffler’s Creating a New Civilization, Gingrich wrote:
"The gap between objective changes in the world at large and the stagnation of politics and government is undermining the very fabric of our political system….This book is a key effort in the direction of empowering citizens…to truly take the leap and begin to invent a (new) civilization"
The third wave of the Tofflers is also referred to as third way. (For quick review: third way is another word for the Hegelian Dialectic process that involves bringing about change through conflict between opposites. This process is done in many areas, including economics, law, government, and religion. Karl Marx embraced the third way he learned from German philosopher George Hegel.)
Steve Farrell explains that the third way of the Tofflers is not a rejection of the philosophy embraced by Marx but a rebranding and renaming. After reviewing Creating a New Civilization, Farrell reveals some of its third wave vision:
[quote] Some will argue that Toffler’s Wave 3 significantly departs, free-market-like, from Marx’s centralized imperialistic model, because Toffler calls for decentralization. But Toffler’s supposed decentralization, or what he and Congressman Gingrich call “decision division,” shifts power not just downward to the states, but upward to the United Nations, to subsidiary international organizations like NAFTA, the WTO and NATO, and to totally unaccountable NGOs. Nothing could be more centralized and anti-free market than these. Toffler apparently not one to miss throwing in a few hints of what he really means, a few caveats for his leftist readers to cherish, confirms this suspicion by his incessant insistence that national sovereignty is “a myth” and that these regional and global arrangements he desires to shift power upward need to assume nation-like powers, including enforcement mechanisms. [end quote]
The phrases that are often used by those who embrace the third wave or third way (communitarianism) include common good, shared community, shared values, shared principles, and shared opportunity. Farrell reveals some additional code words often used by third way-ers:
[quote] While it’s sure as shootin’ that Toffler’s Three Waves are but a remake of Marx’s, it is equally revelatory that the whole wave thesis is built around another communist principle: the dialectical view of history. On this point, a reviewer would have to be hell bent on looking the other way not to notice the all too frequent cover-to-cover use of the communist dialectic’s unique vocabulary. Words like: clash, collision, convergence, inevitable, compelled, quantum leap, and transformation appear over and over again and are applied precisely as Marx applied them. [end quote]
Most people don’t see the Trojan horse inside our government, political, religious, and educational institutions, because politicians, pro-family leaders, and religious leaders alike have been hoodwinked by the “philosophies of men” that are not of Christ, as explained in Colossians 2:8. Sadly, most evangelical pro-family leaders are misguided, and they get away with the damage they do to the family, the Church, and the country because average “evangelicals” are also misguided and naive.
The New Religious Right doesn’t recognize the wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing “conservative” sounding words of politicians such as Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, and countless others. Most have never heard of the third way, third wave, communitarianism, or the Hegelian Dialectic Process. Hence, they are easily controlled and manipulated by double speak and new speak.
So just why have the globalists targeted the Republican Party? Farrell explains:
[quote] Surprisingly, leftist Alvin Toffler singled out the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, as the preferred Third Way party. Why? Because the Republican Party had the largest contingency of centrists and moderates – perfect fodder for a scheme which thrives on compromising politicians, rather than dedicated ideologues to the left or the right. [end quote]
In two of his books, Toffler writes an imaginary letter to the founding fathers that reads as follows:
[quote] For what I now must write can all too easily be misunderstood by my contemporaries. Some will no doubt regard it as seditious. Yet it is a painful truth I believe you would have quickly grasped. For the system of government you fashioned, including the very principles on which you based it, is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare. It must be radically changed and a new system of government invented – a democracy for the 21st Century. [end quote]
If you think Gingrich was not basing his “Republican revolution” on the philosophies of Toffler, then consider the following as revealed by Steve Farrell.
[quote] Mr. Gingrich told his fellow congressmen in his Republican Revolution Victory Speech in November 1994 that “The Third Way [The Third Wave]” represented the key to figuring out where he and the new Republicans were coming from, and that this futurism-based book was “one of the seminal works of our time.” It isn’t. At best, the work represents a compilation of glaring contradictions, hasty generalizations, and shamefully shallow analysis of U.S. constitutional foundations, topped off with foolish, risky, naive solutions that discard the political past and leap blindly into a radically different political future for no better reason than “we must!” That’s the kind appraisal. At worst, the work is intentionally deceptive, possibly treasonous, and clearly Marxist in its political, historical, and sociological philosophy. Either way, it is not seminal. It is one of the most embarrassing and revelatory documents on just how far the Republican Party has strayed since 1994 from the old hypothetical platform and from the promise of the Contract With America to “return to the wisdom and brilliance of the Founding Fathers.” The party simply did not then, and does not now, seek the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, but in its new gutless political outlook grovels in the gutter of the gulags in search of gangrenous Information Age answers. [quote]
Why would so many pro-family leaders unite with Gingrich in spiritual events such as “One Nation Under God”? Numerous pro-family leaders promoted this webcast that included speakers such as Newt Gingrich and Samuel Rodriquez. “Prophet” Rick Joyner even hosted a “One Nation Under God” event with David Barton, Newt Gingrich, Samuel Rodriquez, and five other speakers.
Steve Farrell also documents that Toffler, in his book The Third Wave, wrote that “he wants divorce, hot affairs, bisexuality and immorality without guilt; he hopes that schools, churches and other institutions will cooperate in promoting this message to avoid the bloodbath.” Does that sound like family values to you? In 2009, columnist Rebecca Terrell documented what many other conservative writers and research have also seen:
[quote] In 1994, Gingrich described himself as “a conservative futurist.” He said that those who were trying to define him should look no further than The Third Wave, a 1980 book written by Alvin Toffler. The book describes our society as entering a post-industrial phase in which abortion, homosexuality, promiscuity, and divorce are perfectly normal, even virtuous. Toffler penned a letter to America’s “founding parents,” in which …[h]e went on to describe our constitutional system as one that “served us so well for so long, and that now must, in its turn, die and be replaced.” [end quote]
Terrell also described the congressman’s commitment to globalism:
[quote] Another explanation for Gingrich’s liberal voting record is that he has been a member, since 1990, of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a group founded in 1921 as a think tank of influential politicians and policymakers dedicated to sacrificing national independence to create a global government. He showed his fidelity to internationalism in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Affairs in July of 1995 when he brazenly admitted his disdain for our founding document.
“The American challenge in leading the world is compounded by our Constitution,” he said. “Under our [constitutional system] — either we’re going to have to rethink our Constitution, or we’re going to have to rethink our process of decision-making.” He went on to profess an oxymoronic belief in “very strong but limited federal government,” and pledged, “I am for the United Nations.” That is certainly no surprise since his mentor is none other than former Secretary of State and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger (also a CFR member and one-world internationalist). [end quote]
Perhaps you think Gingrich has changed, and these are the views of the young Newt. But to the contrary, Rebecca Terrell’s research confirms my own when she explains:
[quote] In front of a Tea Party crowd, he expounds the virtues of limited government, but elsewhere he is still the futurist conservative devoted to internationalism. His blog biography brags about his work as Speaker of the House and then boasts of such unconstitutional credentials as serving on the CFR’s Terrorism task force, co-chairing the UN task force to “reform” (i.e., strengthen) the United Nations, and receiving credit for the DHS being his brainchild. “Newt Gingrich is a leading advocate of increased federal funding for basic science research,” reads the bio. Gingrich’s ASWF endorses federal involvement in areas such as energy, education, labor and the environment. He also founded the Center for Health Transformation, which advocates its own version of socialized medicine. [end quote]
Aside from promoting the Tofflers and their books, when Gingrich ran for president in 2012, a pro-Gingrich PAC was given millions of dollars by a casino mogul. That is a bit ironic since some of the pro-family guys who supported or endorsed Gingrich had previously spoken out aggressively against gambling, casinos, and state lotteries. Why would pro-family advocates back a presidential candidate whose campaign was benefiting from a political action committee funded by a casino mogul?
I am never surprised by the spiritual and political coalitions in which self-professing evangelicals are willing to engage just to “win the culture war” or to win the White House, even if it means supporting a candidate whose worldview is backed by people hostile to the Bible and the Gospel. In “Newt Gingrich and the Tofflers,” a January 11, 2012 article for American Thinker, Sam Blumenfeld observes:
[quote] Yet, Newt considers himself a Reagan conservative. He claims to adhere to the U.S. Constitution, but his record – both in and out of Congress – has demonstrated many deviations from constitutionalism and conservatism…the Tofflers also believe that our Constitutional system needs to be changed. In fact, they say it must “die and be replaced.” They thank Thomas Jefferson for a system of government that has served us so well all these years, “and that now must, in its turn, die and be replaced.” [end quote]
A pro-United Nations website praised Newt Gingrich because he “co-authored a lengthy treatise about the value of the United Nations to American interests” in 2005. And Newt’s 2007 book, Contract with the Earth, calls for strengthening the United Nations.
Do the members of the New Religious Right not own computers that would enable them to research a candidate, or did they not care about Newt’s worldview as long as they thought he could win the White House and give them a place at the table? Are today’s New Religious Right leaders really committed to a biblical worldview, the defense, protection, and proclamation of a biblical gospel, or are they more interested in power, political access, a big tent, bragging rights, and a seat at the table? Even at the table of those who promote a worldview hostile to biblical truth? Even if it is a seat inside the religious Trojan horse?
Copyright 2012 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.
