I wrote in this space two weeks ago of two Canadian organizations that have developed intimate relations with terror-sponsoring Iranian Muslims, including an institute widely identified as a principal instigator of Palestinian violence and Shiite persecution of women, as well as other flagrant violations of fundamental human rights.
One is CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, the biggest government union in Canada, and the other the Canadian Mennonite Central Committee. The former had been plainly duped, I said, into betraying most of the principles of the Canadian labor movement. But the Mennonites were behaving in character, risking their lives, as they have for centuries, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Since then, I have been given good cause to believe I misled my readers. I have been sent an internal and obviously competent Mennonite report. It documents in convincing detail the sad probability that the Canadian Mennonite Central Committee has little interest in preaching the Christian Gospel. Instead, it has developed great interest in preaching the gospel of international socialism and “world government.”
The MCC “has done and continues to do much good work in the fields of disaster assistance and relief effort,” says the report. ” But along with this admirable work, it is treading some very, very risky waters.”
The report uses teaching materials and videos distributed by the MCC to demonstrate its unreserved advocacy of an international parliament that could override national governments on environmental matters, impose international taxes and create an international military force capable of enforcing these powers.
(Advocating any kind of military force will come as strange talk for traditionalist Mennonites whose pacifism over four centuries has on several occasions caused their expulsion by national governments.)
The report shows the MCC deeply involved in “earth-first principles, eastern mysticism, and the assertion that all religions are equally valid.” To people with such an attitude, it observes, “Christianity becomes the main enemy.”
It quotes in their entirety two litanies used by the MCC to express pseudo-feminist nature worship, both of which were withdrawn from the MCC catalogue not long after the report was made available to Mennonite churches.
The report notes a video on Christian martyrdom focuses solely on Mennonite martyrs of the Reformation era, totally ignoring the martyrdom of tens of thousands of Christians today by Muslims in the Sudan, Indonesia and other parts of the world, and by the Communist government in China.
Exhaustive detail is given on the MCC’s support of Palestinian groups and Islamist spokesmen, several of whom have declared a determination to work the total destruction of the state of Israel. Israel is routinely blamed for Palestinian suicide bombers, and Israeli militarism for the continuing conflict in the Middle East. At the same time, Christian support of Zionism is jeered and deplored.
“By using the resources provided for humanitarian activities to promote extremist political campaigns,” the report concludes, “the MCC has violated its mandate. … Either the MCC needs to drastically reform towards a biblically discerning mandate, or it needs to drop its pretext and proclaim itself multi-faith.”
The report, originally made in 2005 and updated since, has caused great controversy among Canadian Mennonites, though as yet no specific action has been taken against the MCC. Curiously, the MCC has not denied it. How could it, since almost everything in the report was taken from its own records?
Yet this wayward departure from religious faith into political dogmatism was certainly not confined to the Mennonites. In the 1960s, “liberation theology” swept through the Catholic Church in Latin America until the Vatican put a stop to it. Perhaps far more persuasive was the alarming spread of Pentecostal Christianity and charismatic Catholicism, both of which tended to produce economic prosperity as a byproduct of religious faith, with help from neither Marxism nor the United Nations.
Mainline Protestantism suffered similar misadventures, and more than one wealthy congregation was appalled to discover that its funding, long directed to “missions,” was in fact buying weapons for African rebel groups with dubious reputations, corrupt leadership, Marxist leanings and no interest at all in the Christian Gospel.
However, this diversion of the MCC from the biblical traditions of their faith will come as heartbreaking to many Mennonites. They believe strongly in helping the helpless. That’s why, prior to its venture into political ideology, the MCC enjoyed wide, warm and lavish support from nearly all Mennonite groups. Their dismay is altogether understandable.
Related offer:
Definitive work on Mideast – available only here!
