LEAH THAYER PRITCHARD
BOOKS
Never has American civil and religious liberty been so threatened as it is at this moment in history. Democratic socialism has seeped into every corner of our society and every branch of our government. Many of us sense the danger, we feel it acutely, yet we still struggle to put our finger precisely on what the danger is and where it’s coming from.
What is “democratic socialism”? Does it have any connection with the “socialism” of the 20th century that led straight to communism and fascism? Or is it something completely new and different? Do abortion, U.S. racial tensions, and climate change have anything to do with socialism?
Most importantly of all, what can ordinary Americans do about it today?
With penetrating insight that comes from a lifelong love of God’s Word and years spent carefully observing and studying how communism works in China and other countries, Pritchard cuts straight through the elusive layers of mist surrounding democratic socialism in the United States. She leaves us with a clear lens so we can correctly interpret―and respond to―the confusing events unfolding around us.
This is a MUST READ! The author clearly defines socialism and shows how it is affecting our society and changing our nation. She gives hope in laying out the blueprint of how we can change the projectory of where we are headed. So well written!!
—Reader Review
This is a thoughtful discussion of current political philosophies and their cultural and spiritual ramifications. Leah Pritchard is a talented writer with a tremendous message to share.
—Reader Review
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Introduction
Of course, I didn’t realize it at the time—one rarely recognizes the full significance of life events until long after they occur, but the seed of this book was planted in my soul nearly thirteen years ago when my husband Josh and I first moved overseas to teach English at a university in Southeastern China.
Our initial weeks there still pound like a drumbeat in my memory.
Every Fall all incoming freshmen are required by law to undergo military training in universities across China; regular classes don’t begin for freshmen until this exercise is complete. From our third-story apartment windows, we had a bird’s-eye view of our school’s road, soccer field, and basketball courts which overnight were shaded in with crisp, straight lines of freshman students.
For several weeks, thousands of 18-year-olds, most of them fresh from the countryside, drilled and marched. As they circled and crossed campus in a neat formation, they shouted out counts in unison:
“Yī! Èr! Sān! Sì! Yī-èr-SĀN….sì!”
One! Two! Three! Four! One-two-THREE….four!
The sea of camo rippling eerily between the gray university buildings was unlike anything I had seen before. It was unnerving, and I wondered if the repetitive counting would drive me to insanity before the month was out. We breathed a sigh of relief each night when the marching and shouting finally ended and students were dismissed to their dorms.
The American English teachers preceding us at the university had known we were coming and left a stash of random items in boxes for us in the guest room armoire of the foreign teacher’s apartment.
One afternoon soon after we arrived, we decided it was time to unpack those boxes.
The teachers had left books, teaching materials, and Christmas decorations; pots and pans, board games, and muffin mixes. We discovered, mercifully, a pair of U.S.-sized women’s rain boots that came in handy during the floods that next spring; and what was to become my best friend inside our cold apartment that winter—a long, warm, puffy blue bathrobe.
We had brought only two suitcases each from America, so that closet was a gold mine.
The last box Josh and I dragged from the very back of the armoire was stuffed with more clothes from home: sweaters, shirts, flannel pants. Chinese clothes don’t fit average-sized Americans, so these extra hand-me-downs were welcome.
We gathered up the clothes to lift them out of the box; but as we did so, other items began slipping out of the fabric, thudding to the floor.
Surprised, we stooped to pick them up and discovered a secret collection of books and videos—materials which were at that time either highly sensitive or completely banned by the government in China. The teachers had left us Chinese Bibles, Christian books, copies of the Jesus Film in Mandarin, and various censored Chinese history books—all painstakingly rolled up inside the shirts and sweaters.
Contraband.
We lined up the forbidden items on the floor and stared at them, then at each other, in disbelief.
We could lose our jobs if this stash was discovered. We could be evicted from the country.
The rigid, rhythmic marching of student soldiers-in-training outside our window continued as a blanket of responsibility silently wrapped itself around our shoulders.
We had been given a trust.
What was it in these materials the Communist government was so determined to hide from her people? What could be so dangerous?
The answer seared through our hearts like a sword:
Truth.
One of the items we discovered in that box was a 3-part DVD documentary series entitled China: A Century of Revolution. This documentary, first televised on PBS, exposes the realities of the horrific oppression and upheaval the people of China endured during the socialist revolution and implementation of communism which occurred from 1911-1997. The series is shocking, raw, and not available in China.
That January, when our neighbors and students deserted the campus for Chinese New Year and the air grew so frigid inside our gray cement apartment building that our little heater couldn’t compete, Josh and I watched the entire series through twice, huddled together on the couch under a pile of blankets and that puffy blue bathrobe.
I remember choking back sobs through much of the documentary, especially Part Two, which uncovers the tumultuous and inhumane Mao years. By this time I had names and faces to match with the intense hardships recounted in the film.
Gentle old āyí (auntie) with the sad face, who squats every morning in the alley peeling garlic; kind nainai and yé ye (grandmother and grandfather) who have embraced me as though I were part of your family…what have your eyes seen?
So much chaos. So much insanity. So much raw suffering was borne by the Chinese people during that revolutionary period of China’s history.
So much bitter class struggle.
And to what end?
That documentary shook me. It changed me.
When my beloved students returned to their overcrowded, unheated, and rat-infested dorms after the holiday—some shyly trying to hide from me their badly frostbitten cheeks—my heart broke further.
When I read their “creative” writing essays, they all sounded blank and hauntingly the same. It was as if a beautiful, crucial part of their brilliant minds was inaccessible even to themselves. It was locked inside an invisible prison.
The prison of communism.
Throughout the remainder of that year, and when we returned to live in a different province several years later, I kept my eyes open wide. My husband and I immersed ourselves in Chinese culture. We observed how communist propaganda worked. We listened and asked our friends many questions.
I felt driven both by compassion and by pure horror to understand communism and what is behind it and how it manages to keep the minds of millions of citizens bound.
In China, we saw something we will never be able to un-see. What we encountered was a palpable darkness intent on concealing Truth; an entire society circled by a curtain shrouding its vision and hindering its ability to think freely.
We, as Americans at that time, had access to mountains of information, facts, and resources which we found out the majority of Chinese people could neither see nor obtain. Most of them didn’t even know such a broad, beautiful world of dependable facts—as well as diverse views, ideas, and information—existed.
An entire society of people was going about their lives, making decisions, and viewing life based on augmented reality; with one hand, as it were, tied behind their backs.
And so in China, we learned this most valuable lesson:
The world is not always as it seems.
Little did we know that nine years later, as Josh and I returned to America after our second move to China, we would encounter a tidal wave of change sweeping our own country that would send us reeling.
We felt the tremors of a massive cultural earthquake happening in the West.
We were horrified at the sudden realization that the same curtain of darkness we had encountered in China—clearly recognizable to us now—was ever so slowly, discreetly, and silently being lowered in the United States. The Land of the Free!
This time, however, we weren’t standing outside the curtain looking in.
This time we were trapped inside.
What was happening to our beautiful nation?
One afternoon as I prayed with tears in my eyes for God to help me make sense of it all, old memories stirred in my mind of that cold, gray January holiday in China. Images from the Chinese Cultural Revolution documentary we had watched nine years earlier started flashing through my brain.
Suddenly, in a moment of stark clarity, I could see.
Once again, I felt the heavy weight of Truth pressing down on my shoulders. What if all we had heard, seen, learned, and experienced in China was for such a time as this?
God laid this verse on my heart: “Give them my entire message; include every word. Perhaps they will listen and turn from their evil ways. Then I will change my mind about the disaster I am ready to pour out on them because of their sins.” Jeremiah 26:2b, 3
My friends, there is a disaster fast approaching America—and I am not talking about a tornado, a flood, or even a deadly worldwide virus.
The disaster is called socialism.
