The wolves are at the door
by Charles Biggs
The assault on our traditional and Christian values is in full swing at the international, federal, state and local level.
The Oklahoma Family Policy Council, an Oklahoma-based offshoot of Focus on the Family, came out with a disturbing report this month. The “Religious Left” is targeting churches in our state in an effort to realign religious thought to philosophies with a Communist basis.
That’s right - the dreaded “c” word.
OFPC reported that at least 25 Oklahoma City-area churches, through November, 2008, have agreed to pay between $1,500 and $7,500 each year to align themselves with the OKC Metropolitan Area Interfaith Sponsoring Committee. The purpose of such alignment is for the churches to participate in Congregation Based Community Organizing (CBCO), an innocuous-sounding Oklahoma project of the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).
That doesn’t sound so bad so far.
According to a letter OFPC has obtained that was written by Richard Klinge, an attorney with Oklahoma City-based Catholic Charities, these 25 Oklahoma City-area churches, which include Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Unitarian, Baptist, and United Church of Christ congregations, will receive training and assistance from IAF experts in CBCO methods. OKC organizers hope that as many as 40 local churches will eventually join the CBCO effort, and IAF expects to have 5,000 “home meetings” by the end of 2009.
OFPC has also learned that similar IAF projects have been organized in other cities nationwide.
So, why is this a problem?
OFPC refers to the Chicago-style politics of President Obama and where he draws his inspiration. It’s not from the Bible or America’s Founding Fathers.
Someone who significantly influenced his thinking and methodology was author-activist Saul D. Alinsky, a radical Marxist, who died in 1972, and never met Obama. In the late 1930’s, Alinsky developed his techniques of “community organizing” as a way to help build an army of poor, minority, disenfranchised Chicagoans, who could be successful at challenging the existing power structures in a corrupt, post-Al Capone urban environment, which would eventually come to be ruled politically beginning in 1955 by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
In 1946, Alinsky wrote Reveille for Radicals and he outlined his political techniques. In 1971, he followed with Rules for Radicals, a book that begins by paying homage to Lucifer as the first radical, who “did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom.” Alinsky taught that “politics was about moving from the world as it is to the world as it should be.” He also allegedly coined the term, “think globally, act locally.” And, as a Marxist (Communist), Alinsky naturally believed the world to be a place constituted by power and domination. Likewise, IAF teaches its disciples how to skillfully manufacture and manage political power. Obama liked this philosophy so much that he even taught Alinsky’s concepts of “power analysis” at The University of Chicago.
In his book, Obama was influenced by and thought well enough of Alinsky to write a chapter in a book entitled, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. At Wellesley College, Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, senator, and now, U.S. secretary of state, wrote her senior honors thesis in political science, entitled There Is Only the Fight…’: An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.
According to the OFPC, “This explains the significance of Alinsky, who originally founded the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute, and through it, influenced so many others, including activist Cesar Chavez, with his Marxist organizing principles.
“Saul Alinsky used the poor to further a radical agenda, while ostensibly helping them. Although the IAF has disavowed some of Alinsky’s more extreme views, they still use his methods and seek to work within unsuspecting Catholic and Protestant congregations, and among other constituencies, to further a decidedly liberal agenda. From our research, you won’t ever see IAF working with its protégés to encourage conservative principles in public policy.”
OFPC has learned that a battle is now raging privately between conservatives and liberals, priests and parishioners, within Catholic parishes in central Oklahoma. The Most Reverend Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, acknowledged as much in a recent article in The Sooner Catholic.”
Some well-intentioned Catholics are pursuing “social justice” and encouraging churches to get behind IAF’s efforts. How they are being used for Leftist purposes was described by the late Balint Vazsonyi, a Hungarian immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, in Chapter 7 of his 2000 book, America’s Thirty Years War: Who is Winning?
There are other reasons to oppose the IAF.
It is IAF’s effectiveness and skill that is the real danger for unsuspecting Oklahomans.
“Most Oklahomans very much like our conservative, pro-life, family-friendly, faith-based, 101-year-old ‘red’ state rather than the socialist, big-government, class-based utopia which IAF activists are so passionately trying to arrange for us,” the OFPC states. ”Wake up, fellow Oklahomans! The wolf is at our doors, dressed in sheep’s clothing.”
That sheep’s clothing is wrapped around some unsuspecting churches.
• A man wanders around the campus of a college looking for the library. He approaches a student and asks, “Excuse me ,young man. Would you be good enough and tell me where the library is at?”
The student, in an arrogant and belittling tone, said, “I sorry, sir, but at this school, we are taught never to end a sentence with a preposition!”
The man, in an apologetic tone replied, “I beg your pardon. Please allow me to rephrase my question. Would you be good enough to tell me where the library is at, you big jerk?”
• A renowned philosopher was held in high regard by his driver, who listened in awe at every speech while his boss would easily answer questions about morality and ethics.
Then one day the driver approached the philosopher and asked if he was willing to switch roles for the evening’s lecture. The philosopher agreed and, for a while, the driver handled himself remarkably well. When it came time for questions from the guests, a woman in the back asked, “Is the epistemological view of the universe still valid in an existentialist world?”
“That is an simple question,” he responded. “So simple, in fact, that even my driver could answer that, which is exactly what he will do.”
• A little 9-year-old girl was in church with her mother when she started feeling ill.
“Mommy” she said, ” Can we leave now?”
“No.” her mother replied.
“Well, I think I have to throw up!”
“Well, then go out the front door and around to the back of the church and throw up behind a bush.” In about 2 minutes the little girl returned to her seat. “Did you throw up?” her mother asked.
“Yes,” replied the little girl.
“Well, how could you have gone all the way to the back of the church and returned so quickly?”
“I didn’t have to go out of the church, Mommy,” she replied. “They have a box next to the front door that says ‘for the sick.’”