The Religious Left

From FrontPage Magazine:

The Religious Left has finally spoken out against the “violation of religious freedom” in Cuba.

No, these church officials were not condemning Fidel Castro’s 47-year war on religion. Instead, they were condemning U.S. regulations on religious groups traveling between Cuba and the United States.

In late May, officials of the National Council of Churches (NCC) and its $60 million relief arm, Church World Service (CWS), convened a press conference in Washington, D.C., to denounce U.S. travel restrictions on Cuba.

[Snip]

With few exceptions these groups have long ignored religious persecution and other human rights violations in Cuba. NCC and CWS are disturbed by U.S. restrictions on their own travel to Cuba and on the travel of a few officials from the Cuban Council of Churches into the United States. (Girton-Mitchell noted that the State Department considers the latter "agents of the Cuban government," a charge she disputed.) According to Girton-Mitchell, such intereference in the relationship between the Cuban Council of Churches and U.S. mainline agencies amounts to "a gross violation of religious freedom and a remarkably aggressive interference in religious matters for which the U.S. government has neither the right nor the competence." In a distributed statement, CWS official Rick Augsburger charged that these U.S. policies "strike at the heart of our religious identity and freedom." But the mainline officials are unconcerned that few grassroots Cubans have the freedom to leave their country. Nor do
the NCC and CWS appear concerned that Cuban churches are frequently subjected to monitoring, infiltration, harassment, and stifling regulation from the communist
authorities.

[Snip]

The mainline church record on Cuba is a sorry one. In 1983, renowned Cuban Catholic poet Armando Valladares, who had languished for two decades as a political prisoner, described the impact of church apologists for Castro by mainline denominational officials in the U.S. He testified that “[e]very time that a pamphlet was published in the United States, every time a clergyman would write an article in support of Fidel Castro’s dictatorship, a translation would reach us and that was worse for the Christian political prisoners than the beatings or the hunger.” With extreme sadness, Valladares recalled how “[w]hile we waited for the solidarity embrace from our brothers in Christ, incomprehensively to us, those who were embraced [by our U.S. co-religionists] were our tormentors.”

Little appears to have changed. Many Religious Left officials still perform PR work for the Castro regime. Last year, the the New York-based United Methodist Women’s Division endorsed Castro’s book, War, Racism, and Economic Injustice: The Global Ravages of Capitalism. Frank Griswold, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church traveled to Cuba in February, forcefully denouncing the “inhuman” policy of the United States towards Cuba. On a trip to Havana in April, Rick Ufford-Chase, the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), strongly defended the communist government’s record on religious
freedom.

The great Presbyterian theologian and teacher R. C. Sproul tells this story about his seminary days. As he began his studies he was shocked by the fact that some, in fact many, of his professors at the Presbyterian seminary did not actually believe the Bible. They believed that prophetic books like Daniel were actually written centuries later so that their “predictions” were really after-the-fact commentaries. They did not believe the miracles like Moses’ parting of the Red Sea or in a literal Adam and Eve.

When R. C. went home on his first break and told his family and hometown church members about this they refused to believe him. They said, “These men are doctors of theology and ordained ministers, how could they say things like this?”

Dr. Sproul says that he wanted to “. . . grab them by the throat and shake them and say, ‘Who do you think murdered the Lord?’”

With few exceptions the mainline denominations are, at the level of their national leadership, hopelessly apostate. The only thing left of Christianity in them is the hollow rhetoric which they use to clothe their Left-Liberal political agenda.

Their seminaries are poisoned with faculty which deny the Bible and turn out class after class of unregenerate “ministers” who have no spiritual truth to offer their congregations and so offer them left-wing socialism instead. There are multitudes of sincere Christian believers sitting in pews in these churches suffering in silence. In their hearts they know that they should leave, but family ties, friendships and tradition keep them there hoping and praying for a change.

If you are one of these people leave. Just get out now. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson may not be perfect, but if you go to their churches you will at least find out how to get to heaven.