In New York, the
Reverend F.D. Huntington — another Marxist — was busy founding the
American branch of the Christian Socialist Movement. It was to be a
religious arm of the infamous Fabian Socialist Society which had been
created some years earlier in London at the direction of Sidney and
Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and a host of other prominent
Marxists of the time. Indeed, the Webbs made a trip to the United
States in 1898 to review the success of Fabian infiltration of
religion. By the turn of the century, Marxist plans for the capture of
our churches were proceeding apace.
In February of 1900
the first effort to create a National Federation of Churches resulted
in a nationwide committee of twenty-five leading churchmen, many of
whom were devoted Fabians. One of those young organizers was an
English protégé of Walter Rauschenbusch named Harry F. Ward. Years
later, in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, it would be revealed that Ward was not only a secret
Communist, but "the Red Dean of the Communist Party in the
religious field."
By February 1901,
delegates from local church federations met at Philadelphia and formed
the National Federation of Churches, forerunner of a larger, more
powerful Fabian organization whose projects on behalf of the Communist
apparatus would radically alter the course of American history. The
next year at Chicago, during the national convention of the Socialist
Party, a number of prominent N.F.C. clergymen participated actively.
There followed a
Committee on Correspondence, made up of the more radical ministers and
laymen of the day, which toured the nation's seminaries and church
offices propagandizing for yet another Red project, an Inter-Church
Conference on Federation. Deliberations at that important Conference,
held in New York on November 15, 1905, would have a profound influence
on the minds and actions of thousands of religious leaders for many
years to come. It was at that historic gathering that the first formal
proposal was made calling for the formation of the Federal Council of
Churches, now the National Council of Churches.
In 1907 the Far Left
created a supporting Front called the Methodist Federation for Social
Service, a "religious" organization found by the House
Committee on Un-American Activities to have been a key apparatus of
the Communist Conspiracy since its very inception.1
In fact, when it was finally exposed years later, it was cited as
"Among the more Conspicuous fronts for Communist activity . . .
"And, as you might expect, one of the founding Methodist
ministers was Harry F. Ward, the brilliant protégé of Walter
Rauscbenbusch. For the next thirty-five years this Communist Front was
directed by Comrade Ward, and staffed by numerous functionaries of the
Communist Party.
By this time the
groundwork had been laid and Dr. Rauschenbusch paid a return visit to
Sidney and Beatrice Webb in England, fully committing himself to
Fabian designs for subversion of the Christian church in America. The
following year, on December 2, 1908, Waller Rauschenbusch and Harry
Ward set up a nine-day conference at Philadelphia during which the
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (F.C.C.) was
officially formed by representatives of twenty-nine Protestant and
Eastern Orthodox denominations. The F.C.C. then chose as its
constitution the same plan of federation that had earlier been adopted
by the Socialists attending the 1905 Inter-Church Conference on
Federation. They also adopted "The Social Creed of the
Churches" written by English Communist Harry F. Ward, who had
earlier submitted his Plan to Nikolai Lenin for approval.
By 1914 the Federal
Council of Churches had become one of the major outlets in America for
Marxist propaganda. On February tenth of that year a group of
conspirators met in the home of millionaire industrialist Andrew
Carnegie and laid plans for something called the Church Peace Union.
In Pioneers For Peach Through Religion, Charles S. Macfarland
(at the time General Secretary of the F.C.C.) reveals that this group
included only those religious leaders who were in some way connected
with the Federal Council of Churches. This newly formed organization
was the brainchild of top conspirator Andrew Carnegie, who used it to
capture for the Insiders the controlling clique of the Federal
Council by subsidizing the Church Peace Union to the tune of $2
million.
Shortly after the
meeting with Carnegie, two international church conferences were
promoted by the F.C.C.'s Church Peace Union — one for Roman
Catholics, to be held at Liegé, Belgium, and the other for
Protestants at Constance, Germany. Both were scheduled to convene on
August 1, 1914. Which, by an odd "coincidence," was the very
day that war was declared between Germany and Russia.
Several months later,
at Cambridge in England, the Fabian Socialists set up an International
Fellowship of Reconciliation to protest the War while propagandizing
for Socialism. This was followed a year later on November 11, 1915, by
the formation of an American Branch of F.O.R., organized by such
stalwarts of the Federal Council of Churches as Harry F. Ward and
Walter Rauschenbush. They were aided in this project by leading
Socialists Norman Thomas, Oswald Garrison Viliard, and Jane Addams (at
whose home in Chicago the Webbs stayed during their visit to America).
In April 1917, one month after the Czar had been forced to surrender
control of his government to Socialist Alexander Kerensky, The United
States was finally maneuvered into World War I, thus ending 141 years
of neutrality. That fall, a relative handful of bolsheviks led by
Nikolai Lenin captured the Government of Russia, thereby establishing
a base for the Marxists' continuing world revolution.
By 1918, as its
interlock with the Fellowship of Reconciliation became more
pronounced, the Federal Council of Churches stepped up its agitation
against the War and became the major propagandist in America for the
Bolshevik Revolution. That year, too, with the passing of Walter
Rauschenbush, the mantle of the Marxist movement within the church
passed to Comrade Harry Ward, who had by then begun teaching the Red
dialectic at Union Theological Seminary, where he was to remain for
twenty-five years.
In early 1919 the
Russian Communists issued a call for the founding of the Communist
International, resulting that September first in the formation of the
American Communist Party from the Left wing of the Socialist Party.
Among the hundreds of delegates at the founding convention in Chicago
were Comrades John Keracher and Dennis Batt, representing the Michigan
State organization of the Socialist Party. They insisted "that
the Communist Party should in its program adopt a plan calling for an
all-out campaign against religion as its main and immediate
objective." Years later a charter member of the Party
revealed:
The policy in those
days was framed in such a way that the members of the Communist
Party could infiltrate church organizations for the purpose of
conducting their propaganda among them, for enlisting their support
for Soviet Russia, and for the various campaigns in which the
Communists were interested.
In the early Twenties
the Communist Party made considerable gains in its program to
infiltrate the churches. This effort was led by such prominent
"American" clergymen as Harry F. Ward, Jerome Davis, William
B. Spofford, and Albert Rhys Williams. As former top Communist
Benjamin Gitlow told the House Committee on Un-American Activities in
1953: "This group wielded tremendous influence in the religious
field and did Trojan Horse work in advancing the Communist conspiracy
in religion."
The most important
Communist in the field of religion, said Gitlow, was Robert W. Dunn
— who "served as the Communist Party's liaison between its
political committee and secretariat and the clergymen operating under
instructions of the Party." Comrade Dunn, an official with the
American Civil Liberties Union, carried his orders to Harry Ward and
the others, who in turn issued directives of their own. Comrades Ward,
Spofford, Davis, and Williams were all leaders of the F.C.C. and all
were members of the Communist Party. Williams even worked in the
Soviet Union as an assistant in the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.
In 1922 the American
Communist Party, and all Communist Parties throughout the world,
adopted the "United Front" strategy ordered by Nikolai Lenin
and the Communist International. This enabled the Reds greatly to
expand their infiltration of religion. As Ben Gitlow testified:
"The number of clergymen who followed the Communist Party line
grew by leaps and bounds."
In 1924 (and again in
1929) Federal Council chieftain Harry Ward traveled to Moscow to
discuss with Stalin the use of the churches in furthering the goals of
the International Communist Conspiracy. In early 1925, Ward was sent
to China where he lectured widely among Christian clergymen. His
lectures in China were discussed at length at the Comintern, and it
was agreed that "the missions and church institutions in China
could be used . . . to cover up Communist espionage activities. . . .
"That was also the case in this country, where the Federal
Council already had a budget of $350,000 and an office in Washington
from which it promoted Communist interests.
In 1927 the F.C.C.'s
lobbying for Communist causes became so flagrant that Congressman
Arthur M. Free introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives
describing the Federal Council as "a communist organization aimed
at the establishment of a state-church .... "In that same
year, a report issued by the Military Intelligence Association branded
the F.C.C. as subversive. Another denunciation appeared in the Naval
Institute Proceedings of 1928, which established that the
Federal Council had been meddling in defense matters and was
"probably the most powerful propaganda organization in the
country."
Testifying before the
Senate Lobbying Investigating Committee, Congressman George Tinkham
revealed that he had received propaganda from the F.C.C. on fifteen
different political issues. Tinkham later revealed that Insider
John D. Rockefeller Jr. had from 1926 to 1929 contributed over
$137,000 to the Federal Council of Churches — a sum equal to about
ten percent of its total annual income from all sources.
During 1932 the
Federal Council suffered a series of setbacks. Congressional Committee
Report Number 2290 formally branded the F.C.C. as subversive.
And the Sunday School Times of August 13, 1932, exposed an
obscene F.C.C. sex manual entitled Young People's Relationships,
described as "a crowning achievement of the Federal Council
controlling group along the line of preparing the way for atheistic
Communism." Also, Major Amos A. Fries produced documentation
before a Hearing of the House Immigration Committee in January 1932,
proving that "There has been an interlocking board of
directorates all the way from the Federal Council of Churches to the
most extreme Communists."
During this hectic
period for the F.C.C., Harry Ward was graduating one of his more
interesting proteges from Union Theological Seminary in New York —
an eager young Marxist who promptly began working for the A.C.L.U.
Ward's pupil was Arnold Johnson, now Public Relations Director for the
Communist Party, U.S.A. The following year Comrade Johnson served as
Field Secretary for the Communists National Religion and Labor
Foundation, created in 1932 by Communist Sidney Hillman. Acting in the
same capacity as Johnson in that effort was Willard E. Uphaus, a
Federal Council official who has since affiliated himself with ten
other officially cited Communist projects. Other F.C.C. officials
listed on the letterhead of the Reds' National Religion and Labor
Foundation include such members of its Executive Committee as
Communists Jerome Davis, A.J. Muste, and Charles C. Webber.
By 1935 Communist
infiltration of religion in the Untied States was in full swing,
presaging orders of the Seventh World Conference of the Comintern at
Moscow to maintain such subversion. On September 10, 1935, a Report on
the F.C.C. from the Office of Naval Intelligence was read into the Congressional
Record, establishing that the Federal Council was one of several
organizations which "give aid and comfort to the Communist
movement and Party." Its leadership, the Intelligence Report
revealed, "consists of a small radical group which dictates its
policy," and "it is always extremely active in any matter
against national defense." In fact the Chief of Naval
Operations, Admiral William H. Standley, formally accused the F.C.C.
of collaborating with the Communists.
How far the Federal
Council of Churches was prepared to go in pushing the Communist Line
was revealed in a special report issued by the Commission to Study the
Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, at the 1942 convention of the
F.C.C. It called for:
Ultimately, "a
world government of delegated powers." Complete abandonment
of U.S. isolationism. Strong immediate limitations on national
sovereignty. International control of all armies and navies. A
universal system of money.... Worldwide freedom of immigration.
Progressive elimination of all tariff and quota restrictions on
world trade .... A "democratically controlled"
international bank ....
Chairman of the
Commission which issued these proposals was John Foster Dulles, an Insider
who was a leader of the Federal Council of Churches.
The F.C.C. conference
concluded:
Many duties now
performed by local and national governments "can now be
effectively carried out only by international authority."
Individual nations . . . must give up their armed forces
"except for preservation of domestic order" and allow the
world to be policed by an international army and navy . . . .
Three years later, in
1945, the Federal Council of Churches was one of only forty-two
non-governmental organizations invited to send delegates to the
international conference at San Francisco which founded the United
Nations. Presiding over the U.N. conclave was Communist agent Alger
Hiss, who like Dulles had earlier served as Chairman of an important
committee of the Federal Council of Churches. The Federal Council even
boasted that it had first conceived the idea of the United Nations,
and noted that one of its prominent officials, John Foster Dulles, had
been responsible for incorporating the Federal Council's "Six
Pillars of Peace" into the U.N. Charter.
Nonetheless, the
F.C.C. had taken quite a beating from Conservatives during the
Forties. It was time for a change of image if it was to survive. On
November 29, 1950, the Federal Council held a convention at Cleveland
where it absorbed four additional agencies (the Church World Service,
the Interseminary Committee, the Protestant Film Commission, and the
Protestant Radio Commission), and formally changed its name to the
National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Leaders of
the old Marxist organization became leaders in the new one. In fact,
the F.C.C.'s Bulletin that December explained: "All the
work of the Federal Council will continue under new auspices....other
divisions of the National Council and the general administration of
the Council will also draw upon the resources in both personnel and
finances."
In checking the
quick-change artistry of the Federal Council of Churches, Dr. J.B.
Mathews, who compiled the voluminous Appendix IX of the Dies
Committee on Un-American Activities, found:
In the formal
constitution of the National Council of Churches in Cleveland, one
representative from each of the participating denominations signed
the official book which became the Document of Record. Eleven of
these 29 signers of the official book have public records of
affiliation with pro-Communist enterprises....
There were 358
clergymen who were voting delegates to the constituting
convention.... Of these clergymen, 123 (or 34 per cent) have had
affiliations with Communist projects and enterprises. That
represents a high degree of Communist penetration.2
The overlap between
the old Council and the new was almost complete. It included Edwin T.
Dahlberg who had been Chairman of the Department of Evangelism in the
F.C.C. and later became President of the "new" National
Council of Churches. The public record shows that Dahlberg has
affiliated himself with at least twenty-seven officially cited
Communist projects. Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, who had been President of
the F.C.C. in 1948, became a member of the powerful N.C.C. General
Board. Oxnam has a record of affiliations with forty-one officially
cited Communist Fronts and projects. Roswell P. Barnes, as Associate
General Secretary of the F.C.C. in 1940, and editor of the F.C.C. Bulletin
in later years, turned up as Executive Secretary of the N.C.C.'s
Division of Christian Life and Work. Barnes has associated himself
with nine officially cited Communist Fronts. And then there was Walter
W. Van Kirk, who had held the identical title of Executive Director of
both the F.C.C. and N.C.C. Department of International Justice and
Goodwill. The list, as one might expect, could go on and on.
What is most
interesting about control of the National Council of Churches is that
its hierarchy consists of a General Assembly made up of 750 delegates
who meet once every three years. From this group is chosen a General
Board of 275 members who meet every four months. The rules provide
that a quorum must be present to take any official action, and that a
majority of those present must be in favor of said action for it to be
official. The fantastic thing about this is that it only lakes 20 of
the 275 to constitute a quorum — and a majority of that twenty is eleven.
Therefore, the balance of power lies in the hands of just eleven
men who can issue a declaration on any political subject and
promulgate that declaration in the name of thirty-three denominations
comprising over 42 million American Protestants. That, people, is just
the way the Communists want it.
In 1951, opposition to
the N.C.C. came from both the House Committee on Un-American
Activities (see its investigation of the Communist Committee for
Peaceful Alternatives to the Atlantic Pact), and from a newly formed
Methodist organization based in Cincinnati, the anti-Communist
"Circuit Riders."
The year 1952 began
with the H.C.U.A. exposing the Communists' Methodist Federation for
Social Action, which was found to be directly linked to both the
F.C.C. and the successor N.C.C. The House Committee also heard
testimony from former Communist leader Joseph Kornfeder, who said
there were at that time somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 American
clergymen who were members of the Communist Party. Kornfeder had
trained at the Lenin School of Political Warfare in Moscow from 1927
to 1930, been a top aide of Josef Stalin, and spoke from experience.
When Dwight Eisenhower
took office, Leftists in the National Council of Churches began to pop
up in key posts in the Administration. There was John Foster Dulles,
who became Secretary of State; Harold Stassen, who became Mutual
Security Director (he had been Vice President of the N.C.C. and
President of its International Council of Religious Education); and,
Arthur S. Flemming, who became head of the manpower division of the
Department of Defense and later Secretary of Health, Education and
Welfare.3
President Eisenhower personally added prestige to the N.C.C. by
speaking at its functions.
During 1953 the Senate
Internal Security Subcommittee and the House Committee on Un-American
Activities took thousands of pages of testimony on Communist
penetration of all phases of American life. In July of that year,
H.C.U.A. heard testimony from such former leaders of the Communist
Party as Manning Johnson, Benjamin Gitlow, and Joseph Kornfeder,
detailing Communist infiltration and manipulation of our nation's
churches. Supporting evidence was likewise given in sworn testimony by
such experts as former Communists Paul Crouch, Karl Prussion, and
Albert Vassart. The latter testified that "In 1936, Moscow sent
out an order to have sure and carefully selected Communist youth enter
the seminaries and become priests." After all, Stalin had himself
been a seminarian.
1953 was also the year
of the famous G. Bromley Oxnam Hearing before the House Committee on
Un-American Activities, in which Oxnam admitted his participation in
numerous Communist projects and implicated his N.C.C. Comrades. During
that year the American Legion launched a drive to block the N.C.C.
effort to bypass the McCarran Act in order to bring Communist
clergymen to America from the Soviet Bloc. Meanwhile, the National
Council was attacking the Bricker Amendment and the McCarren-Walter
Internal Security Act of 1950.
The following year,
while the National Council of Churches was pushing to abolish Bible
reading in public schools, Walter Reuther presented a check to the
N.C.C. for $200,000 — a grant from the C.I.O.'s Philip Murray
Memorial Foundation. In the meantime, the Communist Daily Worker was
devoting its space to reporting the National Council's attacks on
Senator Joseph McCarthy and on all Congressional Committees
investigating subversive activities.
In 1958 the National
Council of Churches World Order Study Conference met at Cleveland,
Ohio, from November eighteenth through the twenty-first. As the
Communist Worker reported, the Cleveland delegates proposed:
Diplomatic
recognition by the United States of Red China — and its admission
to the United Nations; Co-existence with "the Communist
nations"; Avoidance of "the posture of general
hostility" to "the Communist nations"; Ratification
of the genocide convention; Internationalism to supercede national
patriotism; "Disarmament by multilateral agreement" for
"universal disarmament"; "The creation of a permanent
United Nations police force" and abolition of universal
military training; "Abolition of the system of military
conscription" and of the Selective Service System; Extension of
trade and travel without restriction between the United States and
Communist countries.
Of course, these
N.C.C. proposals might just as well have come directly from Moscow. We
are told, however, that they emanated from a "Message to the
Churches," prepared by a committee of twenty-three N.C.C. laymen
and clergy under the chairmanship of Dr. John C. Bennett, dean of the
faculty at Union Theological Seminary. As one would assume, Bennett
had already affiliated himself with at least twenty-seven officially
cited Communist Fronts and projects.
What is most
interesting about the Cleveland Conference is that, of the six hundred
delegates, two-thirds were lay-men. The Circuit Riders note in Recognize
Red China? that one-half of the registered clergymen at the
conference, or 103, had public records of affiliation with Communist
Fronts and causes.
The next major
incident to jar the hierarchy of the National Council came on February
25, 1960, with the publication of Issues Presented By Air Reserve
Center Training Manual, a Report of the House Committee on
Un-American Activities. As the H.C.U.A. Report revealed, the Air Force
had issued a training manual for its officers which dealt at some
length with Communist penetration of religion. Officials of the
National Council of Churches, learning of this, immediately contacted
Secretary of the Air Force Dudley C. Sharp, demanding that this
"offensive" manual be removed and the chapter pertaining to
subversion of religion be rewritten to exclude any mention of
Communist penetration. On the same day that the N.C.C. message was
received, February 11, 1960, General Lloyd P. Hopwood, Director of
Personnel Procurement and Training of the U.S. Air Force, ordered the
manual withdrawn.
Some time thereafter,
Secretary of Defense Thomas Gates told the Press: "in response to
the letter of the National Council of Churches...I have assured this
fine organization of my very genuine regrets regarding the statement
that appeared in [the] Air Force Reserve Manual .... "
Citing the
"offensive" passage on page fifty-three of the Air
Reserve Center Training Manual, H.C.U.A. staff director Richard
Arens quoted it as follows:
A while back
Americans were shocked to find that Communists had infiltrated our
churches....
The Communist
Party, U.S.A., has instructed many of its members to join churches
and church groups, to lake control whenever possible, and to
influence the thoughts and actions of as many church-goers as they
can .... The party tries to get leading church men to support
Communist policies disguised as welfare work for minorities. Earl
Browder, former head of the American Communist party,, once
admitted: "By going among the religious masses, we are for the
first time able to bring our anti-religious ideas to them."
Are there
Communist Ministers? Sure.
The manual then named
two such identified Communist ministers — the Reverend Eliot While,
and the Reverend Claude C. Williams. It was Williams who once boasted:
"Denominationally I am a Presbyterian, religiously a Unitarian,
and politically I am a Communist. I am not preaching to make people
good or anything of the sort, I'm in the church because I can reach
people easier that way and get them organized for Communism."
Defending the H.C.U.A.
position favoring the unaltered Air Force Reserve Manual, staff
director Arens declared:
...in view of the
Secretary's repudiation of the information conveyed respecting the
National Council of Churches of Christ in America, the
chairman issued a statement to the effect that the leadership of the
[N.C.C.] had hundreds or
at least over a hundred affiliations with Communist fronts and
causes. Since then we have made careful, but yet incomplete checks,
and it is a complete understatement. Thus far of the leadership of
the National Council of Churches of Christ in America, we have found
over 100 persons leadership capacity with either Communist-front
records or records of service to Communists causes. The aggregate
affiliations of the leadership, instead of being in the hundreds as
the [H.C.U.A.] chairman. first indicated, is now, according to our
latest count, into the thousands, and we have yet to complete our
check....
Another matter raised
by the Air Reserve Center Training Manual was the fact that on
September 30, 1952, the National Council of Churches had published a
"Revised Standard Version" of the Bible in which many
beloved passages were altered, and adulterated phrases substituted to
fit the social gospel of the N.C.C. Of the ninety translators named in
a brochure issued by the N.C.C. at least thirty have been affiliated
with ninety major Communist Fronts or projects.
Several months later,
on April 20, 1960, Congressman Donald Jackson read into the
Congressional Record (Pages 7842-7846) a shocking exposé of
the pamphlet The Negro American A Reading List, published in
1957 by the Department of Racial and Cultural Relations of the
National Council of Churches. This pamphlet was a bibliography of 260
books on "Negro history," many of which had been written by
identified Communists. The Foreword to that reading list, by Alfred S.
Kramer, slated: "We of the National Council . . .
consider ... these books ... safe to recommend for
children." Among the Communist authors recommended were: Victor
Perlo, former head of a Soviet espionage ring operating within the
U.S. government; Herbert Aptheker, chief theoretician for the
Communist Party, U.S.A.; W.E.B. DuBois, an admitted Communist in whose
honor the Party later named its youth affiliate; Shirley Graham,
DuBois' Communist wife (who was in charge of all radio and television
propaganda in Ghana when it was controlled by the Communists); and,
Langston Hughes, whose blasphemous poem, "Goodbye Christ,"
scrapes the bottom in Communist sacrilege (Hughes had nine books on
that reading list). A committee of ten clergy and laymen, headed by
Dr. J. Oscar Lee (an N.C.C. Executive Director), had approved this
N.C.C. reading list.
Obviously we will not
be able to go into many more of the hundreds of subversive operations
of the National Council of Churches because of limitations on our
space. But, ever so briefly, let us touch on a few additional items of
major importance.
On June 7, 1963, the
N.C.C. created an Emergency Commission on Religion and Race headed by
Dr. Martin Luther King, Walter Reuther, and Eugene Carson Blake. It
was a Major coalition of Leftist forces run by Dr. Robert W. Spike,
who after successfully leading the attack on the South during the
N.C.C.'s Delta Project was murdered at Columbus, Ohio, in 1966 in
circumstances which led police to believe that he had been a
practicing pervert. Lewd pictures of homosexuals, names and addresses
of known deviates, and addresses of homosexual hangouts in several
cities were found in his possession.
Working with Spike in
that N.C.C. Delta Project (which included the Reds' march on Selma,
Alabama, in 1965) were Bayard Rustin, a convicted sexual deviate and
former organizer for the Young Communist League; Myles Horton, Marxist
director of the notorious Highlander Folk School; and, the Delta
Ministry's associate director, the Reverend Warren McKenna. The
Reverend McKenna was photographed in 1957, sitting during a visit to
Red China with Communist Premier Chou En-lai, and has been referred to
by Herbert Philbrick (in a government document called Communist
Passport Frauds) as "one of the leading collaborators of, and
apologists for, the Soviet Union."
In March and April of
1964 the Communist Worker announced an N.C.C. coalition to
create a March on Washington — a march officially designated as a
project of the Communists Party.
Then there is the
Sixth Triennial Conference of the National Council of Churches held at
Detroit during the first week in December 1969. On December fifth the
Communist Daily World carried an article by Communist William
Allen reporting that:
By unanimous vote,
the 790 delegates at the convention here of the National Council of
Churches condemned the massacre of Vietnamese civilians by U.S.
troops.
On that same page,
immediately following Comrade Allen's account, appeared a shorter item
reporting yet another N.C.C. resolution which recommended "that
U.S. churches raise 'substantial' funds to support 60,000 American
military deserters and draft resisters who have taken refuge in
Canada."
The Daily World report
also named Dr. Cynthia Wedel, "an outspoken advocate of women's
rights," as having just been elected the first woman President of
the National Council of Churches. The New York Times noted on
December fifth that the new N.C.C. President now occupies the
"highest symbolic post in American Protestantism." Devoting
a quarter of a page to the background of Mrs. Wedel, it revealed that
she maintains the position of Associate Director of the wildly Leftist
Center for Voluntarism in the Institute for Applied Behavioral Science
in Washington, "the pioneering body in sensitivity training
formerly known as the National Training Laboratory." In
addition, she is a leading member of the "Jeanette Rankin
Brigade" — a subversive group made up largely of the wives and
daughters of Communists and fellow travelers.
After receiving her
doctorate in psychology from George Washington University in 1935, we
are told, Mrs. Wedel "took charge of youth work for the Episcopal
Church in New York." There she met and married the Reverend
Theodore O. Wedel. The Times somehow failed to mention that the
Reverend Theodore Wedel is listed in Appendix IX of the Dies
Committee on Un-American Activities as having begun his career of
support for Communist causes as early as 1940 by sponsoring a
"Conference On Civil Rights" held under the auspices of a
Communist Front called the Washington Committee for Democratic Action.
His wife, Cynthia, was listed in the Communist Worker of July
14, 1957, as a signer of a Communist petition to President Eisenhower
calling for a ban on H-bomb testing.
What plans have Mrs.
Wedel and the leaders of the National Council for rendering further
aid to the Communists? For one thing, they called on member churches
at their Detroit conference to "organize the collection of funds
in the churches over the Christmas season for distribution among the Committee
of Responsibility, the American Friends Service Committee, Vietnam
Christian, Service and Caritas, for emergency medical relief to
civilian Vietnamese casualties....To participate in the continuation
of the March Against Death in communities around the country...."
In short, the N.C.C. called for the collection of money for subversive
agencies which have given material aid to the Communist Vietcong, and
for the promotion of the Communists' continuing "Vietnam
Moratorium" project.
During the course of
the N.C.C.'s week-long conference, some three thousand "church
leaders" were treated to the stirring words of Marxist James
Forman, militant leader of the Black Nationalist movement in America.
Referring to his "Black Manifesto," Forman called for
"a transfer of power," asserting the hoary Communist canard
about the "right of self-determination" for blacks in
America.
Commenting on Forman,
syndicated columnist Tom Anderson has noted:
On May 2, 1969,
Marxist-anarchist James Forman presented a list of demands, called a
Black Manifesto, to the
General Board of the National Council of Churches. This manifesto
demands that United States churches pay 500 million dollars as
"reparations" to Negroes for past
"exploitation." The money would be paid to Forman's
National Black Economic Development Conference to help finance a
nationwide guerrilla war. The Manifesto clearly, expressed
N.B.E.D.C.'s intention to overthrow the U.S. government by force and
violence.
And, believe it or
not, the General Board of the N.C.C., after voting in favor of
Foreman's plan, declared that it desired "to record its deepest
appreciation to Mr. James Forman for the presentation of, and
explanation concerning, the Black Manifesto...."
So you see, there is
little wonder that in its issue of July 15, 1968, Approach magazine
(a publication of the National Council of Churches) devoted
considerable space to an exclusive interview with Gus Hall, General
Secretary of the Communist Party, U.S.A. During that unprecedented
interview, Comrade Hall declared that Communism and the church share
so many goals that "they ought to exist for one another."
Hall, said the N.C.C. article, "cited current red goals for
America as being 'almost identical' to those espoused by the liberal
church....
'We can — we should
— work together for the same things,'' he said." You see.
Communist leader Gus Hall concluded: "We can live
together in a Socialist nation."
If the National
Council of Churches has its way, that's just the way it will
be!
Footnotes:
1
The Methodist Federation for Social Service, which later changed its
name to become the Methodist Federation for Social Action, admitted
its cooperation with the Communists in its Bulletin number
eight for 1932. It was subsequently cited as a Communist Front by
the 1948 Report of the California Committee on Un-American
Activities. On February 17, 1952, the House Committee on Un-American
Activities Issued an 87-page document detailing the Red activities
of the M.F.S.A. and its Communist personnel. Among those in this
Front cited as active Communists posing as church leaders was one
Winifred Chappell, a Soviet agent who was assigned by Harry Ward to
do "youth work" for the Methodist Church. As Secretary of
M.F.S.S. for ten years, she counseled young draftees to commit
wholesale sabotage and treason against the United States. Writing in
the Methodist weekly, Epworth Herald, Comrade Winifred
advised youth to: "Accept the draft, take the drill, go into
the camps and onto the battlefield, or into the munitions factories
and transportation work — but sabotage war preparations and war.
Be agitators for sabotage. . . ."
Another Communist in
this outfit was the Reverend Jack McMichael, the first clergyman
ever subpoenaed by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He
was Executive Secretary for the M.F.S.A. Then there was Dr. Charles
C. Webber, M.F.S.S. Co-Secretary, who told an audience at Rochester
Divinity School: "Capitalism is un-Christian and unethical,
and must give way, to Socialism and Communism, and the missionaries
of the future must be social revolutionists." There was
also Jerome Davis, identified twice under oath as a Communist, with
a record of Communist activities that takes eight full pages. The
current Executive Secretary of the Methodist Federation for Social
Action is Communist Lee H. Ball of Chicago.
Communist Party
founder Benjamin Gitlow revealed during testimony given in 1953 that
the objective of M.F.S.A. "was to transform the Methodist
Church and Christianity into an instrument for the achievement of
Socialism." The Communists in this organization, said Gitlow,
"posed as religious reformers fighting orthodoxy and reaction
in religion."
2
Approximately one-third of those elected to the General Board of the
National Council of Churches have had similar Communist records.
while at least seven hundred officers, denominational
representatives, and other N.C.C. officials also have Communist
Front records.
3
Dr. Arthur S. Flemming, currently President of the University of
Oregon, served as N.C.C. President from 1966 to 1969. He was a U.S.
Civil Service Commissioner in Washington during the Administration
of President Franklin Roosevelt. In that strategic
position, Flemming had ruled that Soviet agent Nathan Gregory
Silvermaster, head of a Communist spy ring operating within our
Government, was "eligible" to retain his key post. Dr.
Flemming ruled favorably in behalf of a number of such Communist
agents.
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