In Political Ads, Christian Left Mounts Sermonic Campaigns [Beware Wolves In Sheep's Clothing]

Randy Brinson, a conservative political consultant in Alabama, has been fielding anxious calls for weeks from business interests across the South.

Their concern is massive ad blitz on Christian and country-music stations across 10 states.

The ads, funded by a left-leaning coalition, urge support for congressional legislation to curb greenhouse-gas emissions -- by framing the issue as an urgent matter of Biblical morality.

"As our seas rise, crops wither and rivers run dry, God's creation cries out for relief," begins one ad, narrated by an evangelical megachurch pastor. Another opens with a reference to the Gospel of John, slams energy interests for fighting the bill, and concludes: "Please join the faithful in speaking out against the powerful."

Dr. Brinson tells his clients they are right to be worried. Such an aggressive political campaign by the religious left is unexpected, he says, and could prove powerful. "This is the first time I've seen a moderate group of evangelicals come together and do a coordinated campaign," said Dr. Brinson. He is warning clients: "You're going to hear a lot more of this."

Emboldened by what they see as a kindred spirit in the White House, progressive and liberal Christians are stepping up their political activism in a big way.

A religious coalition called the American Values Network spent nearly $200,000 placing the global warming ads. Some political analysts credit the campaign with boosting support for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, which narrowly passed the House last week.

“I’m not sure I’m buying the existence of a “Christian left”. I think it is more likely that these are just clever leftists trying to pander to the Christian right.” ~ SnakeDoctor

Don’t kid yourself.

Liberals Strategize With Wallis

In January 2005, Democrat Senators met in a closed session with Wallis to figure out how they could use religious language to pull evangelical voters away from the Republican Party to vote Democratic. In addition, 15 Democrat House members made Wallis their guest of honor at a breakfast. His topic was how to turn religious voters in to Democrats. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NM) admitted that Wallis was working closely with the leadership to lure religious voters to the Democrat Party.

In 2005, Wallis was appearing on TV and radio talk shows all over the U.S. and was being interviewed by the mainstream print media as well.

The New York Times reported that Democrats in the House has picked Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) to establish a “faith working group” that would “encourage lawmakers to sprinkle references to God and religion into their speeches.” Jim Wallis was their pick to help them devise clever ways to fool Americans into believing secular liberals had found “religion.”

TVC’s Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon debated Wallis on “ABC World News Tonight” in February 2005. During the interview, Rev. Sheldon made the following observations about Wallis and the Democrats:

Mr. Wallis and the Religious Left are trying to train liberals to speak like religious Americans.

No matter how well you train a wolf to say “BAAAAA,” it doesn’t change an important facthe is still a wolf.

Liberals are the sworn enemies of religious Americans.

Evangelical Christians do not believe God is on our side but we listen for His voice to make sure that we are on His side.

Liberals don’t care whose side we are on. They want to keep religious people on the outside.

Wallis will undoubtedly be trotted out by liberals and the mainstream media during upcoming elections.

To learn more about the efforts of liberals to use “religious” language to lure voters to the Democratic Party and about Jim Wallis’ radical background by reading FrontPageMagazine’s feature on Jim Wallis at: www.discoverthenetworks.org.

A short item from the ACLU web site (Jim Wallis in bed with the ACLU and the RAT party)

http://www.aclu-nj.org/issues/freespeechexpression/withinthechurchnotagainstt.htm
Within the Church, Not Against the Church

A critical battle has taken hold between progressive and conservative Christians. For decades, the far right has dominated the image of American Christianity, but as political frustration has mounted, and as the war in Iraq continues to cost lives, more and more people are speaking out as Christians whose liberal political beliefs have been shaped by the lessons of Jesus Christ.

Signs of this trend come in the form of religious veterans and military families speaking out against the war as Christians, the publication of books like Jim Wallis’ “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It” and increased civil liberties and anti-war activism among churches and congregations.

The interest of moderate and liberal Christians in civil liberties and human rights issues is something that all civil libertarians should obviously embrace.

The ACLU has long fought for religious freedom, for the right of each and every American to practice his or her own religion, or no religion at all. Our support for the separation of church, for example, is not a position against religion. The framers of the Constitution were right: religious liberty can flourish only if the government stays out of the religion business. Religious liberty needs more than that to flourish, however.

In some liberal circles, people whose beliefs are based in Christianity are reluctant to share such personal information because they fear the judgment of those who have a distaste for religion.

Some free-speech loving civil libertarians openly criticize all kinds of religious beliefs and those who embrace them, confidently assuming that everyone present shares their viewpoints (or not caring if they don’t).

Among the ACLU-NJ leadership, for example, we have deeply religious members who are Christians, Muslims and Jews. However, they typically leave out any mention of the religious foundation for their civil liberties beliefs for fear of how their fellow liberals will respond. Consequently, some people cannot feel fully comfortable in a “liberal” setting, and others do not learn from hearing about the diverse paths that lead people to a love of liberty and commitment to justice.

This tension has played a role in allowing the right to be perceived as the home of religious values and the left as anti-religion, which has only helped the right build its religious base.

Now is the time for secular civil libertarians to relinquish stereotypes of Christians and embrace their involvement in the fight for civil liberties and human rights.

It’s a win-win situation. Our cause is strengthened, our circles are inclusive and comfortable, our understanding of one another is enhanced, and progressive Christians gain more power and momentum in their effort to reclaim Christianity as a liberal, humanitarian belief system.

-By Deborah Jacobs ACLU-NJ Executive Director

Special Report: Pastor Jim Wallis: Liberalism’s ‘Religious’ Strategist

March 30, 2006 - Pastor Jim Wallis, founder of the leftist Sojourners organization is a darling of secularist liberals who attempted to use him in the 2004 elections to seduce evangelical Christians into voting for presidential candidate John Kerry.

Wallis is also a darling of the liberal media. He is often quoted in articles critical of conservative Christians or of President Bush’s faith.

“Mr. Wallis and the Religious Left are trying to train liberals to speak like religious Americans.” TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
For example, in October 2004, Wallis published a commentary in his magazine, Sojourners, claiming that the “The Religious Right Era Is Over.”

In his March 2006 Sojourners email newsletter, he penned the essay: “The Religious Right Is Losing Control.” In this attack on religious conservatives, Wallis made the questionable claim that his religious right enemies have lost the battle over the environment. He praised the efforts of the Evangelical Environmental Network and expressed support for its “Evangelical Climate Initiative.”

TVC opposes the EEN and has published a lengthy report on where this group receives its fundingand what the real objectives may be: to disrupt America’s economy through a series of environmental treaties: “Environmental Group Funded By Pro-Abort, Pro-Homosexual Foundation.”

In his commentary, Wallis observed: “The best news of all for the American church and society is this: The monologue of the Religious Right is over, and a new dialogue has just begun.” Wallis, of course, is incorrect as he has been in his support for Communist regimes during the past 30 years.

Why Do Liberals Love Wallis So Much?

The question conservative Christians should ask is why is a pastor so popular among secularist liberals who routinely vilify Christians for their involvement in political issues.

The answer is to be found in Jim Wallis’ consistently radicaland even Marxistworldview.

FrontPageMagazine.org has published a lengthy expose on Jim Wallis’ far-left background, including his anti-capitalist views and his support of Communist or terrorist regimes throughout the history of Sojourners.

While Wallis was in seminary, he founded an anti-capitalist magazine called Post-American. In it, Wallis called for the redistribution of wealth and government-managed economies. This anti-capitalist worldview is expressed in religious terms as a quest for “social justice.”

In 1971, Wallis moved his Post-American operation to Washington, DC and renamed it Sojourners.

Throughout the history of Sojourners, Wallis has taken a consistently left-wing and anti-American stance. He was an anti-war activist against the Vietnam War.

After the fall of Vietnam to the North Vietnamese Communist tyrants, Wallis actually criticized the refugees fleeing from that nation. He claimed they were leaving Vietnam “to support their consumer habit in other lands.” In short, they were leaving Vietnam because they had become greedy capitalists who didn’t wish to live under a socialist dictatorship.

Wallis support the Sandinista Communists when they sought to take over Nicaragua in the 1980s. He also whitewashed the cruelty of this revolutionary movement in Latin America. Wallis also supported liberation theology and sided with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, the public relations arm of an El Salvadoran terrorist group known as the FMLN.

Since the slaughter of millions under Communist rule in Vietnam and Cambodia, Wallis has recanted some of his more obvious pro-Communist viewpoints, but he claims that both Communist and Capitalist systems are equally to blame for world poverty: “Our systems have failed the poor and they have failed the earth. They have failed the creation,” said Wallis.

In 1983, Joan Harris with Accuracy in Media, published a lengthy book on the far-left policies of Sojourners and Jim Wallis.

In The Sojourners File, Harris took 53 political positions of Sojourners on such issues as the right of Israel to exist, human rights, terrorism, socialism, capitalism, etc., and compared those positions to the official positions of the Soviet Union.

In all 53 position statements, Sojourners’ views were in line with the positions of the Soviet Union.

Harris observed: “Sojourners never criticizes a Marxist state. … The United States and the West are the only violators of human rights to Sojourners because they are the capitalists. Marxists, by Sojourners definition, cannot violate human rights.”

This is an amazing discovery. Yet, it is not so surprising given Jim Wallis’ consistent support for socialism and against capitalism or the American way of life throughout his writings. In fact, in 1979, the journal Mission Tracks published an interview with Wallis. He told the reporter it was his hope that “more Christians will come to view the world through Marxist eyes.”

http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=2664

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