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TechnoratiThe Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC), which has yet to recover from its 1970’s era infatuation with Liberation Theology, recently sent a solidarity delegation to the U.S. to investigate America’s “violence.” Predictably, the “violence” includes the lack of gun control, U.S. international arms sales, and the war in Iraq.
According to the pacifist assumptions of the Religious Left, all “violence” is equally reprehensible, but violence perpetrated by American injustices is among the most insidious.
This international ecumenical team was called “Living Letters” and was formed as part of the WCC’s “Decade to Overcome Violence,” a goal that evidently will be achieved in 2011. The 4-member team included a South African ecumenical official, a Lebanese hospital executive, a Brazilian ecumenist and a Pakistani human rights lawyer. They visited Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York and New Orleans.
"We need your help," National Council of Churches President Michael Livingston implored of the WCC’s “Living Letters” team while they were in Washington, D.C. "We need your help to turn around this terrible situation we have." No doubt sincerely, he told the ecumenical group: "We want to learn from you, and from our own stories, to make this world a world of peace."
Mostly Livingston wanted the “Living Letters” to help advocate stricter gun control in the U.S. He was joined by Ladd Everitt of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, who bewailed: "We have a real pride in violence in our country." He likewise exclaimed, "We also profit from it,” fingering the U.S. films that “glorify violence and promote vigilante justice,” according to a WCC account.
More revealingly, Everitt insisted that “the government must have a monopoly on force,” according to an account by my assistant Rebekah Sharpe, who attended the meeting. He identified the obstacles to fuller gun control as “hardcore gun owners” who have a “profoundly, virulently anti-government attitude.” Many of these hardcore zealots adhere to the National Rifle Association’s ostensible belief that “if our government becomes tyrannical they have a right to take over that government, our democratically elected government!”
Apparently uninformed about the political thought behind America’s founding, Everitt cluelessly asked: “If we love to say that we’re the freest country, then why [do]… our elected representatives… talk about getting government out of people’s lives? If you’re so proud of democracy then acknowledge that government had some role in that.” Undoubtedly, the “Living Letters” must have been nodding their heads. The South Africa “Letter” responded: “Yes… the right wing out there wants to de-legitimize government… [If we give in to them] we are playing into the hands of the forces of chaos.”
NCC “peace” executive Antonios Kireopoulos boasted to the “Living Letters” of the NCC’s strong opposition to the U.S. led overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He admitted that members of the NCC’s denominations had not bee supportive of the NCC’s zealous anti-war stance, but he insisted that the NCC was obliged to “teach” and “speak prophetically.” While many church congregants “did support the war, that was because of the fear of 9/11; it was a manipulation of that fear by this government,” he explained.Continue »
