Liberalism (the "Left"): a Demonic Deception & Satanic Takeover in American Thinking

by Pastor Jim Feeney, Ph.D.

Summary:  I am disgusted with large portions of the American political scene, including much that occurs on both sides of the political spectrum. For the record, I am a registered nonaffiliated voter. I have no party identity and haven’t for some years. That said, I see multiple positions currently embraced in American liberalism that defy biblical teachings. And that, not politics, is of the greatest importance to me. I have no interest in dealing with these issues politically. My focus is entirely on examining some of the pillars of the American "Left's" thought from the standpoint of Scripture. That to me is the overriding, governing principle in this discussion. I am not interested in the names of candidates or of political parties. None will be named. My purpose is to examine from a biblical perspective current American liberalism (the term "progressives" has been embraced by many "liberals," although the two are not always identical). The conclusion I have drawn is that much of modern liberalism — I'm specifically referring to what today is commonly called "the Left" — is based on demonic deception and represents a Satanic takeover of a large portion of present-day American thought.


1 Timothy 4:1
  The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.

Revelation 12:9, Amplified Bible  …the age-old serpent who is called the devil and Satan, he who continually deceives and seduces the entire inhabited world…

Ephesians 6:12, New Living Translation  For we are not fighting against flesh-and-blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

Our battle is not against flesh-and-blood enemies. Rather, our ultimate opponents are in the unseen world, where Satan and his evil spirits “continually deceive.” The Bible warns prophetically that in these later times there will be many who will “follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons.” It is many of those devilish teachings that have emerged as pillars of modern liberalism as it is widely practiced in America today. Let’s examine some of those liberal mainstays not from a political perspective, but in the light of God’s Word, the Bible.

Abortion on demand —

Sadly, abortion rights seem to have become a cornerstone of today's American liberalism. For the first two centuries of our nation, abortion was almost universally denounced as the barbaric taking of the lives of innocent, unborn babies. Then in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned two centuries of national consensus and legalized abortion in the first trimester. Since then the courts have expanded abortion rights into later stages of pregnancy. This is widely praised by liberals as supporting “women’s reproductive rights,” with the health and well-being of innocent unborn babies being ignored or scarcely mentioned.

Liberals generally maintain that a “fetus” is not a human life with rights. This is a fundamental error of liberal "pro-choice," abortion-on-demand thinking. The Bible makes it very clear that unborn children are full-fledged human beings, not just lumps of “fetal tissue” as some define them. In fact, there are a number of instances where God in His Word identifies the unborn as “babies” and “children” in the clear sense of their being human beings held in high regard by God and therefore deserving of full protection. Here are some examples:

Genesis 25:22  “The babies jostled each other within her” The King James Version says, “And the children struggled together within her”. The word for those “babies/children” in Rebekah’s womb is the same Hebrew word used in 1 Kings 3:26 for the living “baby” [KJV: “the living child”] brought before King Solomon. The biblical writers, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, consistently identified the unborn as “babies” or “children.” That is God’s perspective. They are not merely fetal tissue or, as some liberals call them dismissively, “the products of conception.” To God they are babies/children while still in the womb.

Luke 1:44  “…the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” The Greek word for baby here is the very same Greek word used to describe the already-born infant Jesus: the “babe wrapped in swaddling clothes” (Luke 2:12, KJV) … “the baby, who was lying in the manger” (vs. 16, NIV).

Luke 1:44  “…the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” The human emotion of joy was attributed to the baby (John the Baptist) in his mother’s womb.

Psalm 51:5  “Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” The great King David spoke of his sinfulness (a uniquely human quality) from the time of his conception.

Jeremiah 1:5  [God to Jeremiah] Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.” God knew Jeremiah and set him apart and appointed him to be a prophet prior to Jeremiah’s birth. The divine prophetic call was issued upon a human child who was still in the womb.

In sum, God looks upon the unborn as “babies,” as “children.” They can have elementary emotions, as did the unborn John the Baptist. They already possess the uniquely human trait of sinfulness from conception. While still in the womb, they can be called by God, as Jeremiah was, to future great ministries. They are fully worthy of God’s blessing and protection as His creations, as boys and girls yet unborn and being brought by Him into a world where they will have the great privilege of serving the Lord in His kingdom on this earth. Modern liberalism’s abortion on demand is a demonic strategy to take the lives of millions of innocent, unborn children who were created by God to serve Him and to experience His full love and blessings.

For more biblical support of God’s prolife stance, I refer you to my article entitled Pro-life or Pro-choice? Why I Choose Life Over Abortion.

Transgender —

A more recent antibiblical doctrine of demons that has received broad acceptance in American liberalism is the transgender issue. Liberals are waging unrelenting battles in the courts, the media, and the court of public opinion to embrace transgenderism as proper and normal, with all the rights due to it. But this doctrine of demons is very simply countered by Jesus Christ’s clear teaching in the verses just below:

Matthew 19:4-5, NASB  And [Jesus] answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

Jesus settled this issue once for all for those who believe that the Bible is the Word of God Almighty. Jesus said that from the beginning the Creator God “made them male and female.” There is no gender confusion in God’s mind. He makes some male and others female.

From the very Garden of Eden Satan has tried to discredit God’s Word. In Genesis 2:17 God said clearly to Adam: “You must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” From that day to today Satan has continually cast doubt upon, and even openly denied, the Word of God. For instance, in Genesis 3:1 we see Satan casting doubt on God’s word: “He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’” Then in Genesis 3:4 the devil flatly denies what God had said: “You will not certainly die.”

Today as then, the devil and his demons are working nonstop with their “doctrines of demons” to discredit and deny the clear statements of God in Scripture. Liberal thought has swallowed Satan’s lie that gender identity can be a chosen thing, rather than a decree from God. Liberals ask, “How do you identify?” God declares, by stark contrast, that “from the beginning [He] made them male and female.

Gay marriage —

This biblical abomination — and you can read here to verify from Scripture that it is indeed an abomination to God — has been widely accepted and approved of by American liberalism. But the same verses we read above to refute transgenderism also clearly establish God’s plan for marriage as between one man and one woman. Take a look at Jesus’ words:

Matthew 19:4-5, NASB  And [Jesus] answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?

God established marriage in the Garden of Eden as between “male and female … a man … [and] his wife.” The husband is male, his wife is female. But modern liberals, supported by very recent court decisions, have accepted and even glorified the antibiblical “marriages” of men with men and women with women. All kinds of feel-good justifications are offered by same-sex marriage supporters. But God’s Word is very clear and is diametrically opposed to the gay marriage doctrine of demons.

1 Corinthians 6:9b-10  Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.

On the broader issue of homosexual conduct the Bible is similarly clear. One of many Scriptures condemning homosexual sex is the one just above. “Men having sex with men” are spoken of by the Word of God as “deceived” and as not “inheriting the kingdom of God.”

I have written further on these issues at:

Biblical Arguments Against Gay Marriage | The Case Is Strong

Traditional Marriage? Gay Marriage? Or Both?

Removing prayer and the Bible from the public square —

In the latter half of the 20th century, the U.S. Supreme Court removed prayer and the Bible from public schools. Since then the courts have upheld cases removing virtually all mention of God from public buildings, public squares, and more. These court decisions are widely supported by liberals in the name of “separation of church and state” — a phrase, by the way, that does not occur anywhere in the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitution’s First Amendment is very clear. It restricts only one group religiously — the U.S. Congress:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Congress is not allowed to officially establish any religion. Nor can it prohibit the free exercise of religion. The people are not restricted; only Congress is.

Sadly, though, liberal American courts have incrementally reinterpreted that one simple, clear constitutional restriction imposed on the Congress to place numerous religious restrictions on the people as well as on other branches of local, state, and federal governments, schools, and more. I was a student at the public Dolan Junior High School in Stamford, Connecticut, in the 1950s. At the start of every day we students in every classroom would stand and recite the Lord’s Prayer and the pledge of allegiance. In two years there I never heard one person express being “offended.” In the 170 years from the Constitution’s founding to my time in junior high, the U.S. Supreme Court found no constitutional basis to restrict school prayer. Also in the mid-20th century, in many schools and other public buildings in America the Ten Commandments were still posted on the walls.

For the majority of two centuries of American history the Bible and prayer were openly accepted in the public schools. Then slowly, incrementally, this secularist doctrine of demons began to take hold in American liberalism. It says basically that God has no place in any public venue even remotely connected to government, and people therefore need to keep their religion private. It has reached the absurd point where nowadays if a student says “Merry Christmas” in the school hallway, he might be sent to the principal’s office! And don’t even think about putting a manger scene on the city hall lawn!

Looming over all this discussion is the fact that God intends that His Word, His Name, and His Gospel be openly declared to the entire world.

• “[Jesus] said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation’” (Mark 16:15).

• When the Jewish authorities tried to forbid Peter and the other apostles from preaching openly about Jesus in the city of Jerusalem, they replied, “We must obey God rather than human beings!” (Acts 5:29).

• The supreme court of ancient Greece met on the Areopagus hill. The apostle Paul openly preached the Gospel to them in Acts 17.

• God’s blessing is upon a nation that serves Him: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord…” (Psalm 33:12).

• The entire record of the Old Testament shows God’s blessing on nations that serve Him openly and fully, but His judgment on nations that reject Him. The very first of God’s Ten Commandments is “I am the Lord your God … You shall have no other gods before me (Exodus 20:2-3). God Almighty wants the undivided worship of all human beings.

What is God’s (not man’s) intention concerning His name and His Gospel being freely declared in our cities, states, and nation? It was exemplified by the early apostles. Brought before the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish authority in Jerusalem, they came under accusation because they had “filled Jerusalem with [their Gospel] teaching” (Acts 5:28). They were simply obeying Jesus’ command — and so should we — to “be [Jesus’] witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” ( Acts 1:8). It is God’s declared intention that “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). Satan is fully aware of this, and liberalism has been deceived by his siren song into cooperating with the devil in continual efforts to eliminate God and His Word from vast segments of American public life.

Evolution —

This doctrine of devils take many forms. But its bottom line is that species, including us humans, have evolved from more primitive forms of life. The theory of evolution as it is widely taught among American liberals does not accept that there is a God who has created the universe and all life in it.

Acceptance of the theory of evolution denies and contradicts the very first verse of the Bible (Genesis 1:1), which states: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” This theory — the evolution of species apart from a Creator God — has been broadly accepted by western liberals. But it is absolutely a doctrine of demons that almost always denies the existence of and/or the direct creative acts of an omnipotent God. American public schools routinely teach the theory of evolution, but almost always forbid teaching that God created all things. Sad to say, those who have allowed the evolutionary theory to eliminate God from their own belief systems will experience the wrath of God at the Second Coming of Jesus, when He comes “in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus” (2 Thessalonians 1:8, ESV).

Moral Relativism —

Moral relativism in its simplest terms holds that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong. Christian broadcaster John Ankerberg defines it this way: “Moral relativism is the philosophical theory or belief that there are no absolute or objective standards for moral values which are used to determine right and wrong. A moral relativist believes that there is no un-changing basis for moral values, therefore all moral values are only opinions and must have equal weight.” Ankerberg continues by stating that the main forms of moral relativism “deny the existence of moral absolutes or objective moral truths that apply to all people in all times. According to these…views, moral truths are determined either by personal opinion or group consensus.”

In its section on “Moral Relativism,” Wikipedia states: “Moral relativity is a philosophy that states there is no absolute Right or Wrong, and that anyone can freely use his own conscience to decide what is moral.”

Now I must add an important disclaimer here. Moral relativism is not the belief of liberals only. There are followers of other political and social philosophies and religious beliefs who also embrace moral relativism. But one can safely say that moral relativism is a dominant position in American liberalism. This is also true of other issues I have named above. Some non-liberals might embrace one or more of the themes we have discussed, but not to the broad extent to which these are core values in liberal thought. My intent today is not to cover every point on the political spectrum, but to expose a broad base of core liberal values as classic examples of demonic deception, or what the apostle Paul called “things taught by demons.”

Now back to moral relativism — the denial of absolute standards of right and wrong — and its widespread (although probably not universal) acceptance in liberal thinking. From as far back as Old Testament days, people cast off God’s standards and “every man did that which was right in his own eyes” (Judges 17:6; 21:25, KJV). By contrast, the longest chapter of the Bible, Psalm 119, is almost totally devoted to praising God’s Word as revealed in the Scriptures as the perfect standard for all to follow. Here are some examples from Psalm 119. Notice how they clearly do not permit a personal or culturally-derived relativism in morals.

• vs. 1  The “blameless” are said to be those who “walk according to the law of the Lord.”

• vs. 4  “You have laid down precepts that are to be fully obeyed.”

• vs. 9  “How can a young person stay on the path of purity? By living according to your word.”

• vs. 11  “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”

• vs. 21  “You rebuke the arrogant, who are accursed, those who stray from your commands.”

• vs. 44  “I will always obey your law, for ever and ever.”

• vs. 105  “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”

• vs. 118  “You reject all who stray from your decrees, for their delusions come to nothing.”

• vs. 133  “Direct my footsteps according to your word.”

• vs. 138  “The statutes you have laid down are righteous; they are fully trustworthy.”

• vs. 152  "Long ago I learned from your statutes that you established them to last forever.”

Satan is always trying to induce people to “think for themselves” rather than heed God’s absolute, unchanging, Scriptural moral standards. This is nothing new. Genesis 3 records the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, the consequences of which affect us negatively to this present day! God had spoken a specific command to them. Then the “serpent” Satan (see Revelation 12:9) came along and cast doubt and discredit on God’s word. In essence, he lured them into making a personal moral judgment for themselves, rather than heeding God’s clear command. The catastrophic results — sin, sickness, and death — persist from that original sin unto our day. The moral relativism of today’s liberalism continues to plague men and women with the disastrous results of discarding God’s righteous standards in favor of those created by personal choices or the current cultural consensus.

There are other issues common to American liberalism that could be addressed in detail and shown from the Bible to be “doctrines of devils.” But the topics above that we have examined from Scripture represent some of the fundamental pillars of liberalism as it is practiced today in the USA (and very likely in other western nations).

Let these suffice to make my point: liberalism as it thrives in America today represents a broad range of demonic deception which has led to a Satanic takeover of a substantial portion of the American people’s thoughts and values. From the first book of the Bible (in Genesis chapter 3) to the present day we see Satan attempting to discredit God’s word, His standards, His perfect wisdom, and to replace it with ever-shifting human-centered and culturally-derived values systems that push God to the periphery (or out completely) and place man at the center of life and thought on this earth.

To those willing to opt for God and His Word in the Scriptures over man’s continually changing moral perspectives — I encourage you to submit your worldview to the standards of the Bible. Change your views wherever the Holy Spirit convicts you of antibiblical beliefs. Believe God over all else. Believe and obey His Word, and you will prosper and find peace of mind and inner confidence in your soul. And God’s Word, not man’s faulty intellect, will be “a lamp to your feet and a light to your path” (Psalm 119:105).


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©2016, James H. Feeney.
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