March 12, 2006
ATTAC Report This Week
Wolves Among the Clergy
(Transcript)
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After years of outspoken stands on principle, conservative religion is being pushed in a new direction. Today, well be taking a look at whos behind the clergys new left turn.
Hello. Im your host, Boruch Ellison, and this is ATTAC Report This Week for March 12, 2006.
Since its founding in the mid-1800s, the Communist International has always made its war against religion a high priority. Communist spokesman Karl Marx labeled religion an opium, a drug that interferes with revolution and must therefore be stamped out.
Nikolai Lenin, first Soviet dictator, fully agreed. In 1967, the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities issued a report entitled, The New Communist Propaganda Line on Religion. That report quoted Lenin as declaring in 1909, Marxism is
relentlessly hostile to religion.
Every Communist regime in the entire world has fought bitterly against religion, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism. Religious practices are restricted or suppressed; clergy are infiltrated and persecuted; and the population is subjected to ongoing atheistic propaganda.
But the Communists have found that most people arent willing to give up religious beliefs. So Marxism had to develop a new strategy to mobilize religious people for revolution, using them as ignorant pawns to prepare the way for an atheist, Communist regime.
A 1991 issue of The African Communist, journal of the South African Communist Party, quoted Soviet Communist leader Lenin as saying, We must not only admit the workers who preserve their belief in G-d into our party, but we must deliberately set out to recruit them.
Many Communist organizations over the years have echoed the goal of working from inside religion, their hated enemy. One example was the July, 1966 issue of Political Affairs, a publication of the Communist Party, USA. In it were several articles on Communism and Religion; the 1967 congressional report mentioned earlier summarized that publication as follows:The basic message of this special issue of the Communist organ was that communism and religion are no longer incompatible, that Christians and Communists can work together, and that they should do so.
Communism in religious disguise has been appearing on a worldwide scale for decades. Among Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Christians, the most prominent organization is the World Council of Churches, which promotes Marxist propaganda using Christian, Biblical language, and which actively finances terrorist groups. Among Catholic Christians, Marxism calls itself Liberation Theology and incites followers to join violent revolution, while using churches as bases of support for the revolutionaries. Among Jews, the Marxist agenda is expressed through the Reform movement, which indoctrinates and recruits its followers to march in protests and to donate to black power revolutionaries and other left-wing causes. In the Muslim world, Communist goals are promoted through the movement of Islamic Marxism and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. Among Buddhists in Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and other countries, the Marxist agenda is advanced under a variety of labels.
But while these movements have done much to promote disarmament, labor unions, abortion, and terrorist groups, they have failed to win over the more traditional followers of each religion. That is, until recently.
Now, even in the most conservative religious movements, voices are being heard advocating similar goals. In Evangelical and conservative Catholic circles, theres a push for socialistic measures, environmentalism, and even for supporting the Soviet-created PLO and its war against Israel. In orthodox and Hasidic Jewish communities, one can find environmentalism, abortion, and Public Health radicalism starting to creep in. And among conservative Muslims, theres a growing push for feminism and socialism.
Marxist radicalism used to be found only on the political Left. But agents of revolution have been quietly infiltrating the right as well, and one day soon, you may be waking up to find clergy who once seemed conservative suddenly veering sharply leftward.
Thank you for listening. From all of us at ATTAC Report, good-bye.
(ATTAC Report This Week is available at www.ATTACReport.com.)
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