This is Pastor Tim’s article which appeared in the Evening Leader on Tuesday, Sept 16, 2025.
In 1958, a book was published titled “The Naked Communist” by a man named Cleon Skousen. This book was published at the beginning of a period communist paranoia that gripped our country during the Cold War, which lasted into the 1980s. So I fully admit that this book is a biased book full of conspiracy theories and hate mongering toward communism. As a person who hates people dying, I am perfectly ok with anyone who wants to hate communism. I tell you this so that I can be up front about the bias this book has.
Cleon Skousen was a Canadian conservative and he was a Mormon. He did a lot of work raising awareness about the evil of communism. He wrote a lot of books about conspiracy theories going on in the world of his time. He also wrote about parenting and how to raise children not to be victims of many of prevailing fears of the day. Again, I point this out because I want to be clear that this book is anything but unbiased. Skousen presented Communism as hiding behind every tree.
On January 10, 1963, House Representative from the state of Florida, Democrat Albert Herlong, read a passage of “The Naked Communist” into the congressional record. The passage Representative Herlong read was entitled “current communist goals.” Today, you can find the document listing all 45 of the goals at marxist.org under the section titled “children’s literature.” If you are curious about the website name, Google Karl Marx.
I don’t have space here to comment on all 45 of the goals but I would like to list a few of them here for your consideration since we are now 67 years since they were published. For ease of reading, I will put the goal as stated in italics and my comment in regular font.
- Do away with all loyalty oaths. I am not sure why this is, but I point out that many public service jobs as well and church membership have oaths involved in joining. Today, church membership is declining and it is becoming more and more difficult to fill public service jobs.
- Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States. New York appears to be on the verge of electing Democrat Zohran Mamdani, who is a self avowed socialist. National political figures in the Democratic party are Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are both avowed Socialists. Socialism is a style of government that runs anything that requires money to operate. The only difference between a socialist and a communist is that socialism has an administration that enforces its rules and regulations where communism puts everything produced into a pool and everyone is then granted the exact same amount of resources as determined by society. Neither of these systems has ever experienced any long term success and most of them end up killing people for needing too many resources.
- Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. I have no further comment.
- Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks. I mean this sincerely, thank God for our local school board.
- Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. Go watch a video of anyone who is slightly right of center who goes to a college campus to speak.
- Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. I have no comment.
- Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.” 2 weeks ago, I published an article about how ugly modern buildings are. Go check out modern artwork. It is hideous.
- Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” I have no comment.
- Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.” Wayne Street Church disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church for this very reason.
- Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” This is so sad since Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase “separation of Church and State to the Baptists who were worried about the State interfering with the Church.
There are more goals that sound like prophecies on this list than I have space for in this article. But I want to leave you with this challenge. If you want to combat any of the goals on this list, whether you think this is a conspiracy theory or not, here is the best way: be an active member of your community. That means be an active member of one of our local churches that is filled with local people lead by a local pastor or church leader, be involved in community events like First Fridays or events at the Grand Opera House, be involved in the lives of our incredible kids in our community by attending concerts, performances and sporting events, and make sure that you turn off your phone and go touch grass every day. St Marys is currently building a community that we all can be proud of and a whole lot of community leaders are working hard to make that happen. What success requires is for all of us to do our part.