(It is likely that, had Larry McDonald not died on KAL 007, the Birch Society would have gone in another direction, as the Congressman was Welch's heir apparent. Given McDonald's Reconstructionist leanings, the JBS may have shed its implicitly univeralist underpinnings and become a Calvinist version of the Christian Coalition or Moral Majority.)
To understand Robert Welch, we must analyze what he thought and how he derived his underlying principles.
Although Welch referred to himself and the John Birch Society as defenders of “Christian-style” civilization and he named the organization after an independent Baptist missionary turned intelligence officer (John Birch), Welch himself was a Unitarian, coming to that faith in adulthood after rejecting the Baptist faith of his family and childhood.
Several passages in Welch’s writings are revelatory of his worldview.
”We have to find something to live for, Gentlemen, that is greater than ourselves, or we surely fall back from the semi-civilized level of existence, which man has laboriously achieved, in to a moral jungle and its inevitably concomitant intellectual darkness . . . Before our very eyes lie all the incentives man needs to set him back on the road of striving towards moral perfection, true intellectual greatness, civilized relationships, and eternal hope for a still better and greater future, which seemed to him to be such natural goals a hundred years ago. Making those incentives understood, and giving contemporary man a renewed faith in himself, in his destiny and in a still greater God than was recognized and worshiped by his ancestors, is a task for myriads of dedicated individuals over generations of time.” (The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, 1961, 56-58.)
This statement stands at odds with Scripture and the teachings of historic and orthodox Christianity. One must wonder how the traditionalist Catholics and conservative Protestants who made up the majority of John Birch Society members reconciled their views with those of Welch. Scripture is replete with warnings against faith in one’s self or in humanity. It would appear that the impersonal, “watchmaker” God of Unitarianism is superior to the personal, omnipresent God of Welch’s Christian ancestors. Striving toward moral perfection is a desirable goal from a Christian standpoint, but it is one that cannot be accomplished apart from a relationship with Jesus Christ. Remember the apostle Paul’s relating of his previous “trusting in the flesh” as related in Philippians 3, which, in light of the excellence of his knowledge of Jesus Christ, he later regarded as “dung.” (Philippians 3:8) It is not our own righteousness, but the righteousness of God, which is by faith in Christ, that is effectual in obtaining personal salvation. Striving toward true intellectual greatness is again desirable, but again Scripture admonishes against metaphysical knowledge not grounded in divine revelation. “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; and before honor is humility.” (Proverbs 15:33) “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.” (Colossians 2:8) Welch’s views with regard to the perfectibility of man and the “tug or upward pull within humanity” are far closer to Carl Sagan or Ayn Rand than to Francis Schaefer or C. S. Lewis.
“Through many centuries Christianity, despite all of its splits and schisms, supplied the fabric of morality for the whole Western World - through its threats of punishment, promises of rewards, and the humanizing effect of its proffered love by and for a Divine Father. But despite all the billions of words that have been written to the contrary, that fabric is now pierced and torn and weakened beyond dependability. For a vast majority of those who proclaim themselves Christians today, and attend Church Services, do not really and literally believe in either the punishments, the rewards or even in the physical and biological existence of a Divine Father with any interest in their personal lives and actions. The momentum of a former belief, and the customs which grew out of it, still have great value. But the fabric is worn too thin to have its old effectiveness.” (The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, 1961,. 52)
According to Welch, the fabric of the Christian faith has worn too thin to be effective and is weakened beyond dependability. From a strictly secular standpoint, his statement that most Christians of the post-World War II era did not believe in the existence of Heaven or Hell, or a personal God, would contradict what we know of Americans’ beliefs at that time. After over 40 years of liberal, secular humanist dominance of public education and the mass media and more prominent aggressiveness of liberals within the mainline Protestant and Catholic churches since Welch penned these words, there is still widespread belief in the existence of Heaven, Hell, and a personal God. For example, per a 2003 Harris Survey, 90% of all Americans believe in the existence of God, 82% in heaven, and 68% in Hell. A Barna Poll in 2001 shows that 69% of all American adults believe that God is the all-powerful Creator. If there is inadequacy among Christian Americans, it is not a misunderstanding or disbelief in basic doctrine, but a failure to recognize the applicability of doctrine to their personal lives.
Welch’s words are also contradictory to the plain teachings of Scripture. To the Christian, the Bible is the Word of God, authoritative in all matters spiritual. John 1 identifies Jesus Christ as the Word. Hence, as II Timothy 3:16 states “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”
*God’s Word is incorruptible. “Every word of God [is] pure: he [is] a shield unto them that put their trust in him.” (Proverbs 30:5)
* God’s Word is ever penetrating of all human barriers. “For the word of God [is] quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and [is] a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12)
*God’s Word is superior to the traditions of men. “Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.” (Mark 7:13)
* God’s Word is the manner in which we come to understand the Christian faith. “So then faith [cometh] by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17)
* Those that accept God’s Word are adopted into the family of Christ, i.e., the church. “And he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.” (Luke 8:21)
Individuals may fail in “rightly dividing” Scripture and in applying its teachings to their lives. Whether or not Bromley Oxnam, Reinhold Niebuhr, Daniel Berrigan, et. al., were Communists* is not proven. They were, however, doubtlessly theological liberals who denied core Christian doctrines as expressed in the church creeds of the early ecumenical councils. They rejected those core doctrines as clearly as had Robert Welch himself. It is ironic that, respective to theology, Welch was more in line with the very theological liberals and political leftists whom he and his cohorts accused of being Communists than he was with the majority of the rank and file of the John Birch Society.
* I use “Communist” here in the sense the Birchers did in the 1959-65 period, i.e., not a member of the Communist Party, USA or other Marxist-Leninist groups like, say, the Socialist Workers Party (as might have J. Edgar Hoover or William Buckley) but as a member of a global conspiracy, operating on many fronts yet centrally coordinated, to impose totalitarian socialism on American and the rest of the world.