Doomed Planet
“Today’s debate about global warming is essentially a debate about freedom. The environmentalists would like to mastermind each and every possible (and impossible) aspect of our lives.”
Vaclav Klaus
Blue Planet in Green Shackles
Crisis in New Zealand climatologyby Barry Brill
May 15, 2010
The warming that wasn't
The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92°C.
The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6°C +/- 0.5°C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.
The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.
For nearly 15 years, the 20th-century warming trend of 0.92°C derived from the NSS has been at the centre of NIWA official advice to all tiers of New Zealand Government – Central, Regional and Local. It informs the NIWA climate model. It is used in sworn expert testimony in Environment Court hearings. Its dramatic graph graces the front page of NIWA’s printed brochures and its website.
Internationally, the NSS 0.92°C trend is a foundation stone for the Australia-New Zealand Chapter in the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1994, it was submitted to HadleyCRUT, so as to influence the vast expanses of the South Pacific in the calculation of globally-averaged temperatures.
The Minister of Research Science and Technology, the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, has finally become alarmed at the murky provenance of the NSS. The Government has directed and funded a 6-month project to produce a new national temperature record, with published data and transparent processes. The replacement record is to be the subject of a scientific paper, which is to be peer-reviewed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.
Hon Rodney Hide, a climate sceptic who is a Minister in the current Government and leader of the junior coalition partner, the ACT Party, has called upon his ministerial colleagues to formally repudiate the NSS and to withdraw all publications and formal papers which are based on the spurious warming trend of 0.92°C. The Government has not yet responded to this challenge.
New Zealand is a small country, with a strong tradition of open Government, and is not an easy place to keep secrets. The acceptance of the NSS for so long offers evidence of the dictum: “you can fool all of the people some of the time..” But if that can happen in New Zealand, how much greater is the probability that similar shenanigans could be happening in larger, more complex, jurisdictions?
BACKGROUND
The New Zealand Meteorological Service, with its forebears, has been measuring and recording our weather since 1861. In 1992, it published a booklet containing a detailed history of all its weather stations, along with 140 years of climate data. In that year, NIWA came into being and has now published most of the Met Service data online.
In 2007, the then Prime Minister announced her party’s intention that New Zealand should lead the world in fighting climate change, and aim to be the world’s first carbon-neutral country by 2025.
Earlier in 2007, NIWA produced a web page, followed by a printed brochure, with a graph showing that New Zealand had already warmed by an amount far in excess of global averages. The web page claimed a temperature increase of 1.1C during the 144 years of Met Service records, and a 0.92°C trend during the 20th century.
These are remarkable claims. They came out of the blue and do not accord with any written histories, or the personal impressions of our older generations. They don’t square with “hottest day” records held in provinces and city archives. They were not accompanied by big changes in rainfall or winds or sea levels. In these claims, NIWA is a very lonely orphan.
Global warming during the 20th Century was 0.6C, with a margin of error of +/-0.2C. The Southern Hemisphere warming was less than half that level. But New Zealand warming, according to NIWA, was almost twice the global average - and with no error margins mentioned.
Referring to the NIWA web page, one finds that this major warming trend is the product of a single study involving only 7 temperature stations - out of the 238 stations which currently report to NIWA. In response to a request under the Official information Act, NIWA has disclosed that this study was undertaken as part of a student’s thesis some 30 years ago.
NIWA has no record of how the NSS came to be in their computers. The only reasonable inference is that the student himself, one Jim Salinger, must have added it when he became NIWA’s Principal Scientist many years later.
How do we know the NSS is wrong?
EXTERNAL REASONS
First, we know what New Zealand’s average temperature was in 1867. The predecessor of the Royal Society of New Zealand (The New Zealand Institute) made a formal minute in 1868 of:
“Tables, which form the most reliable data for judging of the Climate of New Zealand, are extracted
from the Reports of the Inspector of Meteorological Stations, for 1867”.
The mean annual temperature was 55.6F - the equivalent of 13.1C.
Now consider this extract from NIWA’s “Climate Summary for 2005”:
The national average temperature of 13.1°C made 2005 the fourth warmest year nationally since reliable records commenced in the 1860s.
No change whatever in 138 years! In fact, if 2005 was warmer than most 21st century years, New Zealand has obviously experienced some cooling during the past century or so.
Secondly, the University of California Libraries has a booklet “Climate and Meteorology of New Zealand” prepared by Lt-Colonel DC Bates for the “New Zealand Official Year Book 1920” (also available on the web). This sets out the mean temperature records for the seven-station series over the 56-year period from 1863 to 1919 - showing the average over that period as being 12.67C.
The author, who was the Dominion Meteorologist, claims that “Wellington, the Capital City, has a mean climate for the whole Dominion”. Wellingtonʼs mean temperature over the period 1863-1919 was 12.94C.
The NSS graph directly contradicts this official contemporary record.
Thirdly, the there are the Met Service records themselves. Their data have been downloaded and graphed in a document by the New Zealand Science Coalition entitled “Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?” Some excerpts from that document:
“Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.
Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on? Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!”
It turned out that NIWA had undertaken some internal and undisclosed adjustments to the Met Service data:
“About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.
The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming..”
So the NIWA warming trend was revealed as entirely man-made, and all within NIWA’s own office. There was no external peer-review. To this day there hasn’t even been an internal review or any form of quantity control. There is no documentation. Since November, the ACT party has been trying to obtain details and/or justification for these extraordinary adjustments - but forty Parliamentary Questions later, we still don’t have that information.
There is a fourth basis for knowing this SSS is wrong. NIWA have said that they regularly send their station data to the compilers of the three international temperature series - HGCN, NASA and HadleyCRUT. These three operate independently and make their own adjustments if they believe any station data is suspect or unrepresentative. Although HadCRUT has followed some of NIWA’s adjustments, none of the international series show New Zealand as having warmed substantially prior to 1975.
In the case of HGCN, whose computer code is publicly available, there is no material New Zealand warming during the last 100 years, except for the increase arising when Campbell Is was dropped from the dataset.
The fifth reason for rejecting this NIWA series is that the Met Service itself had considered but rejected the option of adjusting its own records, at the very time that young Jim Salinger was a student. Mr Jim Hessell, probably New Zealand’s most senior meteorologist, found the raw data from many New Zealand stations to be so flawed as to be quite unreliable. Writing in the New Zealand Journal of Science (1980) Mr Hessell concludes:
“A systematic analysis of all New Zealand climatological stations with sufficient length of record reveals that no important change in annual mean temperatures since 1930 has been found at stations where the above factors [shelter, screenage and urbanization] are negligible. Neighbour station comparisons support these findings.”
When views differ, it is is customary to prefer the judgment of the experienced practitioner over that of the student. It is certainly sensible to prefer a peer-reviewed paper published in a reputable journal (which has never been challenged) over that of an unpublished private document - especially where obvious conflicts of interest arise.
Sixthly, and finally, the notion that New Zealand would suffer global warming at twice the Global rate has been rejected by the Minister of Climate Change Issues himself. In November, the Hon Dr Nick Smith assured Parliament (and I quote from Hansard):
“What Dr Wratt has consistently said is that, because New Zealand is surrounded by oceans, all the modelling indicates that the temperature impacts of climate change are most likely to be less for New Zealand than for other parts of the globe.”
So the NSS claims New Zealand has warmed much more than the global average, while the NIWA climate chief cites the theory that our warming should be one-third less than the global average. They can’t both be right.
If the NSS is right, then not only Nick Smith and David Wratt are wrong. Mr Jim Hessell is wrong, the 1920 Dominion Meteorologist is wrong, the Royal Society is wrong, HGCN, NASA and HadCRUT are wrong, and the Met Service records are wrong.
So we have six very good external reasons why this SSS should be regarded as wrong, and formally repudiated by the Government.
INTERNAL REASONS - DOCUMENT
Let me turn to internal reasons why the SSS should go - first internal to the document itself, and then internal to NIWA.
The methodology used in the NIWA adjustments allowed the key inputs to be chosen subjectively, so one needs to look at outputs to judge their credibility. “By their fruits you shall know them!” The outcomes of the NIWA adjustments are totally implausible:
•As previously mentioned, the consequent warming trend is well above the global average for the century, and even further above the Southern Hemisphere average;
•Even greater discrepancies from global movements appear when the record is broken down to its 3 component periods: 1909-50,1950-75 and 1975-2009; The third quarter of the 20th century was a cooling period all over the globe, but the NSS shows the fastest warming in New Zealand history (0.24C per decade).
•According to the Schedule of Adjustments tabled by the Minister in February 2010, the seven stations have been adjusted no less than 34 times. In a normal unbiased series, one might expect that about half of these amendments would be favourable to a warming trend, and half would be unfavourable.
•Pre-1950, 21 movements were negative and only 5 positive; post-1950 there were 2 negative and 6 positive movements. So, by number, 80% of the NIWA ‘corrections’ favoured an upwards trend.
•Pre-1950 the downward adjustments (unweighted) summed to 11.3C whilst 2.7C (all in Dunedin) went the other way. So, by temperature, 80% of the NIWA ‘corrections’ were trend-favourable.
•Over the entire series, a total of 515 years were adjusted. Of these, no less than 467 years contributed to an upward-sloping trend line. So, by year, 90% of the NIWA corrections leaned in the same direction.The ratio of 9 out of 10 adjustments being ‘helpful to the hypothesis’ could surely not have occurred in the absence of bias.
These over-the-top outcomes reek of bias and data manipulation, robbing the series of any vestige of scientific plausibility.
INTERNAL REASONS - PROCESS
I will turn now to the internal workings of NIWA. Consider the following four points:
1.The SSS is an official national temperature record. S 17 of the Public Records Act 2005 requires NIWA to “create and maintain full and accurate records of its affairs, in accordance with normal, prudent business practice”;
2.NIWA is accredited under ISO9002, which requires that the steps in each process be fully documented.
3.When the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition made a formal request under the Official Information Act for either paper or computer records relating to the construction of the SSS, they received NOTHING in response.
4.In answers to Parliamentary Questions, NIWA was unable to produce any internal records whatever. Even when they referred to losses of computer data, it was somebody else’s computer and happened 28 years ago.
How could NIWA defend this graph, or the causative adjustments, in the event of a challenge in any Court proceedings? It has no paper trail, and no supporting documents. NIWA don’t really know how it got there, and they can’t reproduce it or the reasoning behind it.
For that matter, how can they defend using the graph as the basis for advice in Parliamentary proceedings?
NIWA has no record of any discussion or decision regarding adoption of the seven-station series. It obviously existed by 1994, because NIWA sent it to the UK Hadley Centre in that year. But in 1997, it is mentioned in a paper published by NIWA employees (Zheng et al) as being the property of Dr Salinger personally.
It then burst into the public arena in 2007, first on NIWA’s website and then in the printed brochure, at a time when the Climate Group’s principal scientist was none other than Dr Salinger. There is no record of Salinger declaring a conflict of interest, or excusing himself from any NIWA process for selecting a national temperature series or an iconic graph. There is not even any record of a process or a decision. It was just done.
If this view is correct, the SSS is irretrievably tainted by self-interest, personal bias and abuse of trust - and is wholly illegitimate. It should never have been used on a government website in the first place and it should now be formally repudiated.
SALINGER
In the face of all these obstacles, why has NIWA persevered with the 30-year-old Salinger methodology - which they never agreed to adopt in the first place? Could it be that Dr Salinger was so well-trusted by his peers and superiors that they could simply accept his bare assurance that all was well?
Well, no. He isn’t held in high regard by NIWA:
First, they fired him for his persistent refusal to accept direction, or to follow company policy, or to cease talking to the media. He appealed to the Employment Court for reinstatement, but NIWA fought that hard for most of last year, and were ultimately successful.
Secondly, when the SSS was criticised in “Are We Feeling Warmer Yet”, Dr Wratt did not respond with a Salinger argument. Instead, he invented a whole web page describing how the Wellington record had been adjusted for altitude changes, and had a Minister table that in the House. Wratt’s misleading conduct, which is a serious matter, seems to have been motivated by his distrust of the Salinger method.
Thirdly, NIWA published a new paper called “The NIWA ‘Seven-Station’ Temperature Series” on 3rd February, written by Dr Brett Mullan, which sets out details of 34 temperature adjustments. These have been compared with their counterparts in the Salinger thesis and only one adjustment is the same! This new Schedule of Adjustments does not even pretend to follow the 1981 Salinger precedent - but avoids disclosing that fact.
The NSS has not been retained out of respect for Salinger. The only remaining explanation is that NIWA and the Climate Ministers are attempting to save face rather than confess that they have been running their policies on the basis of bogus data for many years.
CONCLUSION
Piecing together the provenance of the New Zealand historical temperature record has been no easy task. Much of the detail is set out in the Climate Conversation blog. It has involved a myriad of investigative methods but the most productive has been the placement of nearly 50 Parliamentary Questions for Written Answer, for which credit must go to John Boscawen MP. The New Zealand mainstream media, all highly partisan on climate change matters, have evinced little interest in the scandal to date.
Science claims a special place in the trust of the public because of its unswerving adherence to certain objective methodologies, involving transparency, peer review, replicability and honest purpose. NIWA has forfeited that trust in so many ways.
Hon Barry Brill OBE is a New Zealand barrister and solicitor. He is a former Minister of Science & Technology, and Minister of Energy, and is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.
Printable versionCopyright ©2008 Quadrant Magazine Ltd. All rights reserved.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Toothless Truth Dialogue
Rejecting a Toothless Dialogue
by Baron Bodissey
Bishop Emanuel Aydin of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Austria spoke last week at a conference in Macedonia. The conference was one of the usual ecumenical feel-good “dialogues” which are so beloved by the Vatican, Reformed Jews, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Bishop Aydin’s message, however, was tough and uncompromising in its stance about Islam. One suspects that many of the delegates to the conference were not at all happy with what he had to say.
Many thanks to JLH for translating the speech from the original German:
Address on the Occasion of the Conference
“Dialogue of Religions and Cultures”
Ohrid, Macedonia May 6-9, 2010
Emanuel Aydin
Chorepiskopos
Syrian Orthodox Church of Austria
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost of the one God. Amen.
Bism al-Ab wa al-Ibn wa al-Ruhulqudus, Ilah wahid. Amin.
Mr. President, Madame Cultural Minister, honored officials, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
In the framework of this conference with a circle of outstanding personalities, we have the marvelous opportunity to discuss the dialogue of religions and civilizations. I thank UNESCO for making this task its own. I especially thank the Macedonian government for enabling us to take up this difficult task in such a welcoming atmosphere and inspiring surroundings. In an area where civilizations have encountered one another for millennia, the world community can justifiably be called upon to seek what we all have in common.
So much more is it our responsibility that our answers not remain stuck on the surface as formulas and attractive mottoes. Many here are depressed by the possibility that the oft-expressed desire for “dialogue” will rigidify into mere ritual and cover over the actual problems of people with varying religious backgrounds living together.
Therefore, we should honestly confront some central questions: What is the nature of the dialogue and what does it consist of? What is the meaning and goal of the dialogue? Who are the parties, that is, the partners to the dialogue?
In answer to the first question: The paradigm, the example and the prototype for the “dialogue,” the Socratic dialogue as described for us by Plato. It is the cooperative struggle for truth, for insight into reality. Socrates attempts to draw perception from his interlocutor just as the midwife tries to help the mother at birth. The basic requirement is that both partners of the conversation are guided entirely by reality. In other words, they must both be concerned only with the truth. In regard to questions of justice, piety, and bravery, Socrates and his outstanding student, Plato, try to do just that: recognize and formulate truth. An insight must never be imposed.
The Platonic dialogues instruct us that it is difficult to achieve the truth by natural means. In the dialogue “Phaidon,” Plato expresses the hope that God himself will come to our aid. We find a masterful example of genuine dialogue in the dialogues of Justin the Martyr (Dialogue with the Jew, Tryphon) and the debates of St. Ephraim of Syria with the opponents of his time, especially Neo-Paganism under Emperor Julian Apostata.
Plato’s concern was captured masterfully by the African church father Augustinus in his dialogue “On the Teacher” (De Magistro). St. Augustinus tells us that true insight can never be imposed or “taught.” Individual insight is necessary, which is gladly vouchsafed to each honest seeker.
Concerning the second question about the meaning and goal of the dialogue: The meaning of the dialogue is in the classical sense simply directed at gaining understanding. What could this comprise? With great aspiration, “absolute understanding” could be the goal: insights which lie beyond the insights of the partners to the dialogue and which, at best, even overcome these positions. Is that a realistic demand in the “dialogue of religions” which is consciously committed to differing principles of faith and realities of manifestation? I think not, for it would radically oppose the self-image of all religions, so as to comprehend what each “Other” thinks and wants. Only in a following step could the modalities of a peaceful and fruitful togetherness be considered, by asking whether there are rules seen from a third standpoint — for instance that of the secular state — which are compatible with the convictions of all partners to the dialogue.
Even such an “unambitious” goal assumes at a minimum that one partner to the dialogue not imply that the other would not know or understand his own position.
Today, we Christians must take note that many of the public dialogue forums held worldwide, in which “commonalities,” “solidarity” and “cooperation” are invoked, have not contributed to a better understanding of the Christian faith. In publications from Islamic countries, in concord with Islamic source texts, Christians are still condemned as “polytheists” or “infidels.” The Christian belief in the most sacred Trinity is misrepresented. We Christians believe in Father, Son and Holy Ghost, not in Allah, Isa and Maryam!
We Christians are not “people of the Book.” We are “people of Jesus Christ.”
We think of ourselves as “Christianoi” — “those who belong to the Messiah, as it was expressed for the first time in Syrian Antioch in the time of St. Peter, the first of the apostles.
There must be no Islamic prerogative of interpretation about the Christian faith. It would dramatically contradict the basic principles of dialogue as just delineated.
- - - - - - - - -
It is even more destructive when one partner to the dialogue is deemed unworthy of protection as a person or a subject in a common regime. This point is mostly omitted, but it cannot be denied that such an attitude is set down in numerous Koranic verses.
a. Sura 2, 191 Pa: And kill them (infidel opponents) wherever you find them and drive them out of where they have driven you out.
b. Sura 2, 193 Pa: And fight them until no one any longer tries to seduce (believers to leave Islam) and only Allah is worshipped!
c. Sura 8, 12 Pa: Strike (them [the infidels] with the sword) on the neck and strike at each of their fingers.
d. Sura 8, 39 [textually equivalent to Sura 2, 193] Pa: And fight against them until no one (else) tries to seduce (the faithful to leave Islam) and only Allah is worshipped.
e. Sura 9, 5 Pa: And when the sacred months have passed, kill the infidels where you find them, seize them, surround them and ambush them everywhere.
f. Sura 9, 123 Pa: You faithful! Fight against those of the infidels who are close to you! They shall see that you can be hard!
g. Sura 47, 35 Pa: Do not falter (in your combativeness) and do not offer (the enemy) peace too early where you will (ultimately) have the upper hand.
h. Sura 9, 55 Pa: Those who do not believe and will not believe are to Allah as the worst of the animals.
i. Sura 47, 12 Pa: The infidels however enjoy (their short existence) and thoughtlessly take in (literally eat) their sustenance as the animals do. They will have their place in the fires of Hell.
To this day, Muslims have not distanced themselves from such Koranic statements in any conference I know of.
We are also quite far from the second possible goal of the dialogue.
One could also set a more modest goal for the dialogue. “The path is the goal” is a not-infrequent stylish motto. If at the time a goal of perception cannot be realized, the dialogue is justified by the fact that people are dealing peacefully with one another as long as they are speaking and abjure violence as long as they are sitting together at the conference table.
But even this hope proves deceptive.
As we are speaking of dialogue here, Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia, the lands of the Arabian Peninsula and many other countries. Muslims are emboldened to overreaching violence by calling upon the authority of their sacred writings.
It is a certainty that there is no one in this hall who does not condemn such acts of violence and believe that they are incompatible with his basic beliefs.
This problem brings us to our third question, about the partners to this dialogue. The question can be formulated differently. Who speaks for whom and with what authority and degree of representation? And who distances himself from what and with what responsibility and gravity? What Islamic dignitary has rejected the demand of head-of-state Gadhaffi that all Muslims enter into jihad against Switzerland? How does it happen that in the parliament of EU candidate country, Turkey, Christians are called “infidels” and in Turkish religious publications Christians are described as second-class human beings? What sense does it make to speak about dialogue with representatives of Al-Azhar University in Cairo who, on other occasions, describe terror attacks as justified self-defense?
There are admittedly always people at work here who can be said not to be representative of the religion as a whole. What does it signify when religions and cultures, not persons, want to enter into dialogue? How can a dialogue, whose subjects are world-wide collectives or intellectual-spiritual concepts, be shaped? The requirements for answering such question are too complex to allow answers. This shows us that we are standing at the beginning of a long path in the dialogue of religions and cultures. And it shows us that we should be very cautious in how we deal with the expectation that dialogue would be a universal cure for the conflicts of this world.
Is there not even a danger that a toothless dialogue will nourish and strengthen the conflicts it conceals or create a sympathetic alibi for those who regard dialogue as a weapon?
To be sure, there are also moments if hope and confidence. The new president of the Council of Europe, the Turk Mevlut Cavusoglu said in his inaugural address that intercultural and interreligious dialogue must be strengthened. All sorts of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and similar phobias which lead to discrimination and intolerance must be stamped out. I would like to believe that President Cavusoglu included among these phobias anti-Christian sentiment, which we experience daily.
An understanding of this kind would indicate acceptance of comprehensive human rights, which should be the basis of or policy. It is an understanding that points to the “Assumption of Naum,” which was chosen as one of the guidelines of this conference. It is a vantage point out of which the life model of Europe, to which we owe our freedom, was developed.
This life model also constitutes the principle of free practice of religion in the framework of a legally anchored religious freedom, which includes individual freedom, freedom of religious affiliation, freedom not to affiliate, freedom to change affiliation. Naturally, religious freedom must also include the freedom to criticize religion.
What dialogue must under no circumstances encourage are cultural relativism and double standards in human rights.
For us as Christians and for me as a priest of the Syrian Orthodox Church, there is of course more to declaim, namely Jesus Christ, the savior of humanity. He is the prototype of any dialogue, since he has told us in many conversations with friend and foe:
The truth shall make you free.
That is the source and the zenith of the dialogue: not just the Socratic, philosophical insight into intellectual truth, as good and valuable as it is, but the encounter with the word-become-flesh in freedom and truth. We don’t give it cheaper. That is the message we have received and that we offer here.
That is what I would like to proclaim here.
I would also like to proclaim this message everywhere, unimpeded, without being sentenced to inhumane punishment for “upheaval” (al-fitna).
That is why I have come here.
God bless you all, the hospitable citizens of Macedonia, and the dedicated representatives of all the earth.
Thank you for your attention.
by Baron Bodissey
Bishop Emanuel Aydin of the Syrian Orthodox Church in Austria spoke last week at a conference in Macedonia. The conference was one of the usual ecumenical feel-good “dialogues” which are so beloved by the Vatican, Reformed Jews, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Bishop Aydin’s message, however, was tough and uncompromising in its stance about Islam. One suspects that many of the delegates to the conference were not at all happy with what he had to say.
Many thanks to JLH for translating the speech from the original German:
Address on the Occasion of the Conference
“Dialogue of Religions and Cultures”
Ohrid, Macedonia May 6-9, 2010
Emanuel Aydin
Chorepiskopos
Syrian Orthodox Church of Austria
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost of the one God. Amen.
Bism al-Ab wa al-Ibn wa al-Ruhulqudus, Ilah wahid. Amin.
Mr. President, Madame Cultural Minister, honored officials, excellencies, ladies and gentlemen.
In the framework of this conference with a circle of outstanding personalities, we have the marvelous opportunity to discuss the dialogue of religions and civilizations. I thank UNESCO for making this task its own. I especially thank the Macedonian government for enabling us to take up this difficult task in such a welcoming atmosphere and inspiring surroundings. In an area where civilizations have encountered one another for millennia, the world community can justifiably be called upon to seek what we all have in common.
So much more is it our responsibility that our answers not remain stuck on the surface as formulas and attractive mottoes. Many here are depressed by the possibility that the oft-expressed desire for “dialogue” will rigidify into mere ritual and cover over the actual problems of people with varying religious backgrounds living together.
Therefore, we should honestly confront some central questions: What is the nature of the dialogue and what does it consist of? What is the meaning and goal of the dialogue? Who are the parties, that is, the partners to the dialogue?
In answer to the first question: The paradigm, the example and the prototype for the “dialogue,” the Socratic dialogue as described for us by Plato. It is the cooperative struggle for truth, for insight into reality. Socrates attempts to draw perception from his interlocutor just as the midwife tries to help the mother at birth. The basic requirement is that both partners of the conversation are guided entirely by reality. In other words, they must both be concerned only with the truth. In regard to questions of justice, piety, and bravery, Socrates and his outstanding student, Plato, try to do just that: recognize and formulate truth. An insight must never be imposed.
The Platonic dialogues instruct us that it is difficult to achieve the truth by natural means. In the dialogue “Phaidon,” Plato expresses the hope that God himself will come to our aid. We find a masterful example of genuine dialogue in the dialogues of Justin the Martyr (Dialogue with the Jew, Tryphon) and the debates of St. Ephraim of Syria with the opponents of his time, especially Neo-Paganism under Emperor Julian Apostata.
Plato’s concern was captured masterfully by the African church father Augustinus in his dialogue “On the Teacher” (De Magistro). St. Augustinus tells us that true insight can never be imposed or “taught.” Individual insight is necessary, which is gladly vouchsafed to each honest seeker.
Concerning the second question about the meaning and goal of the dialogue: The meaning of the dialogue is in the classical sense simply directed at gaining understanding. What could this comprise? With great aspiration, “absolute understanding” could be the goal: insights which lie beyond the insights of the partners to the dialogue and which, at best, even overcome these positions. Is that a realistic demand in the “dialogue of religions” which is consciously committed to differing principles of faith and realities of manifestation? I think not, for it would radically oppose the self-image of all religions, so as to comprehend what each “Other” thinks and wants. Only in a following step could the modalities of a peaceful and fruitful togetherness be considered, by asking whether there are rules seen from a third standpoint — for instance that of the secular state — which are compatible with the convictions of all partners to the dialogue.
Even such an “unambitious” goal assumes at a minimum that one partner to the dialogue not imply that the other would not know or understand his own position.
Today, we Christians must take note that many of the public dialogue forums held worldwide, in which “commonalities,” “solidarity” and “cooperation” are invoked, have not contributed to a better understanding of the Christian faith. In publications from Islamic countries, in concord with Islamic source texts, Christians are still condemned as “polytheists” or “infidels.” The Christian belief in the most sacred Trinity is misrepresented. We Christians believe in Father, Son and Holy Ghost, not in Allah, Isa and Maryam!
We Christians are not “people of the Book.” We are “people of Jesus Christ.”
We think of ourselves as “Christianoi” — “those who belong to the Messiah, as it was expressed for the first time in Syrian Antioch in the time of St. Peter, the first of the apostles.
There must be no Islamic prerogative of interpretation about the Christian faith. It would dramatically contradict the basic principles of dialogue as just delineated.
- - - - - - - - -
It is even more destructive when one partner to the dialogue is deemed unworthy of protection as a person or a subject in a common regime. This point is mostly omitted, but it cannot be denied that such an attitude is set down in numerous Koranic verses.
a. Sura 2, 191 Pa: And kill them (infidel opponents) wherever you find them and drive them out of where they have driven you out.
b. Sura 2, 193 Pa: And fight them until no one any longer tries to seduce (believers to leave Islam) and only Allah is worshipped!
c. Sura 8, 12 Pa: Strike (them [the infidels] with the sword) on the neck and strike at each of their fingers.
d. Sura 8, 39 [textually equivalent to Sura 2, 193] Pa: And fight against them until no one (else) tries to seduce (the faithful to leave Islam) and only Allah is worshipped.
e. Sura 9, 5 Pa: And when the sacred months have passed, kill the infidels where you find them, seize them, surround them and ambush them everywhere.
f. Sura 9, 123 Pa: You faithful! Fight against those of the infidels who are close to you! They shall see that you can be hard!
g. Sura 47, 35 Pa: Do not falter (in your combativeness) and do not offer (the enemy) peace too early where you will (ultimately) have the upper hand.
h. Sura 9, 55 Pa: Those who do not believe and will not believe are to Allah as the worst of the animals.
i. Sura 47, 12 Pa: The infidels however enjoy (their short existence) and thoughtlessly take in (literally eat) their sustenance as the animals do. They will have their place in the fires of Hell.
To this day, Muslims have not distanced themselves from such Koranic statements in any conference I know of.
We are also quite far from the second possible goal of the dialogue.
One could also set a more modest goal for the dialogue. “The path is the goal” is a not-infrequent stylish motto. If at the time a goal of perception cannot be realized, the dialogue is justified by the fact that people are dealing peacefully with one another as long as they are speaking and abjure violence as long as they are sitting together at the conference table.
But even this hope proves deceptive.
As we are speaking of dialogue here, Christians are being persecuted for their beliefs in Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Iraq, Malaysia, the lands of the Arabian Peninsula and many other countries. Muslims are emboldened to overreaching violence by calling upon the authority of their sacred writings.
It is a certainty that there is no one in this hall who does not condemn such acts of violence and believe that they are incompatible with his basic beliefs.
This problem brings us to our third question, about the partners to this dialogue. The question can be formulated differently. Who speaks for whom and with what authority and degree of representation? And who distances himself from what and with what responsibility and gravity? What Islamic dignitary has rejected the demand of head-of-state Gadhaffi that all Muslims enter into jihad against Switzerland? How does it happen that in the parliament of EU candidate country, Turkey, Christians are called “infidels” and in Turkish religious publications Christians are described as second-class human beings? What sense does it make to speak about dialogue with representatives of Al-Azhar University in Cairo who, on other occasions, describe terror attacks as justified self-defense?
There are admittedly always people at work here who can be said not to be representative of the religion as a whole. What does it signify when religions and cultures, not persons, want to enter into dialogue? How can a dialogue, whose subjects are world-wide collectives or intellectual-spiritual concepts, be shaped? The requirements for answering such question are too complex to allow answers. This shows us that we are standing at the beginning of a long path in the dialogue of religions and cultures. And it shows us that we should be very cautious in how we deal with the expectation that dialogue would be a universal cure for the conflicts of this world.
Is there not even a danger that a toothless dialogue will nourish and strengthen the conflicts it conceals or create a sympathetic alibi for those who regard dialogue as a weapon?
To be sure, there are also moments if hope and confidence. The new president of the Council of Europe, the Turk Mevlut Cavusoglu said in his inaugural address that intercultural and interreligious dialogue must be strengthened. All sorts of racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and similar phobias which lead to discrimination and intolerance must be stamped out. I would like to believe that President Cavusoglu included among these phobias anti-Christian sentiment, which we experience daily.
An understanding of this kind would indicate acceptance of comprehensive human rights, which should be the basis of or policy. It is an understanding that points to the “Assumption of Naum,” which was chosen as one of the guidelines of this conference. It is a vantage point out of which the life model of Europe, to which we owe our freedom, was developed.
This life model also constitutes the principle of free practice of religion in the framework of a legally anchored religious freedom, which includes individual freedom, freedom of religious affiliation, freedom not to affiliate, freedom to change affiliation. Naturally, religious freedom must also include the freedom to criticize religion.
What dialogue must under no circumstances encourage are cultural relativism and double standards in human rights.
For us as Christians and for me as a priest of the Syrian Orthodox Church, there is of course more to declaim, namely Jesus Christ, the savior of humanity. He is the prototype of any dialogue, since he has told us in many conversations with friend and foe:
The truth shall make you free.
That is the source and the zenith of the dialogue: not just the Socratic, philosophical insight into intellectual truth, as good and valuable as it is, but the encounter with the word-become-flesh in freedom and truth. We don’t give it cheaper. That is the message we have received and that we offer here.
That is what I would like to proclaim here.
I would also like to proclaim this message everywhere, unimpeded, without being sentenced to inhumane punishment for “upheaval” (al-fitna).
That is why I have come here.
God bless you all, the hospitable citizens of Macedonia, and the dedicated representatives of all the earth.
Thank you for your attention.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Wallis Sojourners
Barack Obama's "Red" Spiritual Advisor
By David A. Noebel
El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that's because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red.
According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of the nation of El Salvador. Behind Funes "is a party of former Marxist guerrillas that fought to overthrow U.S.-backed governments in the 1980s and whose rise to power has raised fears of a communist regime in the war-scarred Central American country."
The AP admits "ex-guerrillas will almost certainly form part of the Funes government, including Vice President-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander-turned-congressman."
And then there's the "drug" connection! Investor's Business Daily (IBD) reports that "last May, the FMLN confessed to 'a relationship' with Colombia's drug-trafficking FARC Marxist terrorists after documents found on the computer of dead FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, killed in a 2008 raid, proved it" (March 16, 2009).
Funes, of course, says he'll "govern moderately, more like Brazil 'socialist' President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than Venezuela's radical [communist] Hugo Chavez." Of course, this is what the Nicaraguan communist Daniel Ortega said, too, before he displayed his Communist "proletariat morality" by hugging the Communist dictators Castro and Chavez. Ortega and all his South American pals are hardcore Marxist-Leninists.
While all of this, of course, is relevant to an ardent free-market capitalist, what really frightens me is that Obama's latest announced "spiritual advisor" has had connections with all these Marxist regimes. And who is the President's latest advisor? The Rev. Jim Wallis!
FrontPageMagazine (March 17, 2009) reports, "The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis." Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have "been talking faith and politics for a long time." He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado in 2008. Why should this alarm us?
First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
Second, his "Witness for Peace" was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor of 20 years) "rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels" (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).
Third, Wallis and his Sojourners community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro's Cuba, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, and the other revolutionary forces "restructuring socialist societies" are the Communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish "social justice." Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, "Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of Communist revolutions in Central America" (Laksin, "Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas" in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).
The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place "a radical nonconformist community" patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.).
"The Sojourners community," says Laksin, "actively embraced 'liberation theology,' rallying to the cause of communist regimes that had seized power with the promise of bringing about a revolutionary restructuring of society." Clark Pinnock, a disaffected former member of Sojourners, said that the community's members were "100 percent in favor of the Nicaraguan [communist] revolution" (Laksin, Ibid.).
All this revolutionary activity in spite of the fact that today's Cuba, for example, has to import 84 percent of its food supply due to the socialistic mess of the agricultural system (150,000 oxen till the ground because tractors represent capitalism). However, in a move that looks more like capitalism than Marxism's state farms, "Raul Castro is moving to boost food production by putting more land under the control of private farmers" (The Weekly Standard, March 23, 2009, p. 13).
It appears that Raul Castro is learning what America's early pilgrims learned back in the 1620s! William Bradford noted in his History of Plymouth Plantation that once he canceled the pilgrims' socialistic experiment and provided each settler with a piece of property to till, starvation was averted. We can hope and pray that Raul Castro continues to implement more capitalistic policies and will learn firsthand the economic system that has brought more people out of poverty than any other in the history of the world. (See Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason.)
Of course, Rev. Wallis should have learned the lessons of Plymouth Plantation early in his education, but may not have because our Secular Humanistic K-12 curricula deletes most of the history of the pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact in an attempt to avoid acknowledging its "advancement of Christianity." (Sadly, one first grade textbook that does include the pilgrims has them "praying to the Indians.")
For years, Wallis has been in the forefront of the "evangelical" left and has been fêted at numerous evangelical colleges and seminaries. That seems to be the "in" thing right now! His publication Sojourners is piled high on these campuses for the reading pleasure of the naïve and foolish.
Unbeknown to these colleges and seminaries is Wallis' Red background. He was the president of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at Michigan State University. The SDS was the youth arm of the League for Industrial Democracy-the American counterpart to the British Fabian Society founded to promote socialism throughout the West. One of the League's mentors for years was Norman Thomas, who argued that "the American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened" (Google, Norman Thomas quotes). Another prominent League mentor was John Dewey, a signatory of the atheistic, socialistic 1933 Humanist Manifesto. The SDS actually merits a chapter in Richard J. Ellis's work The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America published by the University of Kansas Press.
In October of 1969, SDS original organizer Tom Hayden directed his followers to "set off on a rampage, smashing windows of parked cars, hurling rocks and bricks through apartment windows, and fighting with police." Hayden blamed the police for his violence even though later his followers "comforted themselves, because theirs was a violence to end all violence, a liberating and righteous violence that would rid the world of a system that deformed and destroyed people. Such glorious ends justified, even ennobled, violent means" (Ellis, p. 137).
Ellis insists that the language of revolution and violent confrontation was evident throughout the ranks of the SDS. Jim Wallis was part and parcel of this pro-communist group of radicals and revolutionaries.
Wallis' Sojourners enterprise has been a radical, socialistic undertaking from the start. FrontPageMagazine (March 17, 2009) says, "As one of its first acts, Sojourners formed a commune in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Southern Columbia Heights, where members shared their finances and participated in various activist campaigns that centered on attacking the U.S. foreign policy, denouncing American 'imperialism,' and extolling Marxist revolutionary movements in the Third World."
Sojourners contributing editors included the radical Daniel "Plowshares"" Berrigan, Walter Brueggemann, James Hal Cone (author of the racist Black Theology and Black Power in which the white race is depicted as devils), Rosemary Radford Ruether (Professor of Feminist Theology, Catholics for Choice, God is the feminine Gaia), Ron Sider, Cornel West, and Garry Wills. Today, Sojourners' Board of Directors includes Wallis, Ron Sider, Brian McLaren, and Bart Campolo.
Over the years, Wallis has been pro-Vietcong and actually gloried in America's defeat in Vietnam. He said, "I don't know how else to express the quiet emotion that rushed through me when the news reports showed that the United States had finally been defeated in Vietnam" (Ronald H. Nash, Why The Left Is Not Right, p. 58).
However, like Jane Fonda, Wallis said next to nothing about the Communist genocide that followed the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. In fact, in a typical communist response, he criticized those fleeing Vietnam by boat as somehow attempting "to support their consumer habits in other lands" (Nash, p. 59).
Wallis has been closely associated with Richard Barnet (former contributing editor of Sojourners) and the Institute for Policy Studies, a radical leftwing think tank supporting socialist revolutionaries around the world; Wallis had his book The Soul of Politics published by Orbis Books in 1994, a radical leftwing Roman Catholic publishing arm of the radical leftwing Maryknollers; Sojourner magazine has been a strong supporter of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and, indeed, has supported every leftwing, liberation theology cause around the world.
And yes, Wallis portrays the evangelical right that happens to be pro-American and anti-Communist "as members of the forces of darkness" (Nash, p. 66, 71). For Wallis, a good Christian is someone who is pro-Communist and socialist, while a bad Christian is someone who is anti-Communist and pro-capitalist. The cry of the Sojourners crowd is "social justice" for the poor and downtrodden-social justice being code for socialism/communism.
I could not disagree more strongly. I contend that the Marxist-Leninist worldview is 100 percent contrary to Biblical Christianity, and I document this extensively in my book Understanding the Times. Further, Communism is directly responsible for the murder of tens of millions of human beings, a slaughter documented by Stephane Courtois, et. al. in their 1999 book The Black Book on Communism (Harvard University Press).
I will attempt to be as kind and gentle as humanly possible and break the news to the Rev. Wallis and his "spiritual" advisee Barak Obama- socialism has never lifted the poor out of poverty. It has equally distributed poverty, but it has never been able to create the wealth that is partially responsible for lifting the poor out of poverty.
I say "partially responsible" because one's worldview is even more important than wealth in reducing poverty. But socialism is a flawed idea, and it poisons the worldview of the people it influences. Our brothers on the evangelical left, who are concerned with the poor, need to read Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. Although not a Christian, Dalrymple understands perfectly the importance of a proper worldview and its role in combating poverty, drugs, crime, and broken families.
Can we admit a hard truth? Christian capitalist Truett Cathy's Chic-fil-A has done more to fight poverty and help the poor than all the pronouncements of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Daniel Berrigan, Brian McLaren, Tony and Bart Campolo, and their entire crew of leftwing sociological and economic friends combined.
Thomas Sowell explains, "It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately, it is only wealth that can reduce poverty and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth" (Capitalism Magazine, May 9, 2005).
In fact, the intellectuals are the very ones who complain about those who do increase wealth. Again, Thomas Sowell speaks to this issue: "Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century-medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer revolution. The people who created these things-the doers-are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers."
Socialism is built on a slogan: "What can government do for me today?" instead of "What can I do to better prepare myself to take care of myself in order to be a better Christian and servant of my Lord?" Preparation involves individual responsibility, traditional family values, education, love of God and neighbor, and compassion for the up-and-outers as well as the down-and-outers.
Socialists stand against nearly every Christian, conservative principle imaginable. Compare the socialist agenda with Yale professor David Gelernter's summary of the conservative position- "the freedom of every American to make his own way, free speech on the radio and everywhere else, free elections for workers and other people . . . freedom to acknowledge and celebrate the nation's rootedness in Christianity, Judaism, and the Bible . . . love of liberty, and love of God" (National Review, March 23, 2009, p. 32).
In 2006, Barak Obama was the keynote speaker at Jim Wallis' Call to Renewal conference, "Building a Covenant for a New America." Following his address, in an interview by the United Church News, he cited "the teachings of the UCC (United Church of Christ) as foundation stones for his political work." He said, "Just as my pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago welcomed me as a young man years ago, UCC churches across the country open their doors to millions of Americans each Sunday . . .. I believe that democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal values. Social justice and national security are both universal values, values that may originate for some in their religious beliefs, but are shared by us all."
What Americans can look forward to now that Rev. Wallis has the ear of the President is what Sojourners magazine has been pedaling since 1971-"advocating America's transformation into a socialist nation" (Accuracy in Media Research Report, May 1983, Section 19).
Could it be that America, who turned her back on God by deciding that prayer and the Bible can no longer grace her public schools, but homosexuality (indeed the whole GLBTQ rainbow), abortion counseling, and condoms in school colors are welcomed, is experiencing the very judgment of God? There are consequences for "forgetting God" as Solzhenitsyn noted about his mother country, Russia! These same consequences are piling up on the metrosexual West in general and on the United States in particular.
David A. Noebel
Summit Ministries
719.685.9103
By David A. Noebel
El Salvador has officially joined the Red regimes of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia. South America is turning Red, dark Red, and little is being said to alert North Americans of the encroaching Red plague. Perhaps that's because North America is moving in the same direction. The President of the United States has surrounded himself with socialists, and some of those closest to him have had a part in turning South America Red.
According to the Associated Press (March 17, 2009), Mauricio Funes, the presidential candidate of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) is the new head of the nation of El Salvador. Behind Funes "is a party of former Marxist guerrillas that fought to overthrow U.S.-backed governments in the 1980s and whose rise to power has raised fears of a communist regime in the war-scarred Central American country."
The AP admits "ex-guerrillas will almost certainly form part of the Funes government, including Vice President-elect Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander-turned-congressman."
And then there's the "drug" connection! Investor's Business Daily (IBD) reports that "last May, the FMLN confessed to 'a relationship' with Colombia's drug-trafficking FARC Marxist terrorists after documents found on the computer of dead FARC chieftain Raul Reyes, killed in a 2008 raid, proved it" (March 16, 2009).
Funes, of course, says he'll "govern moderately, more like Brazil 'socialist' President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva than Venezuela's radical [communist] Hugo Chavez." Of course, this is what the Nicaraguan communist Daniel Ortega said, too, before he displayed his Communist "proletariat morality" by hugging the Communist dictators Castro and Chavez. Ortega and all his South American pals are hardcore Marxist-Leninists.
While all of this, of course, is relevant to an ardent free-market capitalist, what really frightens me is that Obama's latest announced "spiritual advisor" has had connections with all these Marxist regimes. And who is the President's latest advisor? The Rev. Jim Wallis!
FrontPageMagazine (March 17, 2009) reports, "The most notable of [Obama's] spiritual advisors today is his friend of many years, Rev. Jim Wallis." Rev. Wallis admits that he and Obama have "been talking faith and politics for a long time." He was picked by Obama to draft the faith-based policies of his campaign at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado in 2008. Why should this alarm us?
First, Jim Wallis has had relationships with the communist Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).
Second, his "Witness for Peace" was an attempt to defend the Nicaraguan Sandinistas! Wallis, together with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright (Obama's former pastor of 20 years) "rallied support for the communist Nicaraguan regime and protested actions by the United States which supported the anti-communist Contra rebels" (Family World News, February 2009, p. 7).
Third, Wallis and his Sojourners community of fellow-travelers believe Fidel Castro's Cuba, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, Daniel Ortega's Nicaragua, and the other revolutionary forces "restructuring socialist societies" are the Communist paradises the United States needs to emulate in order to establish "social justice." Writing in the November 1983 issue of Sojourners, Jacob Laksin notes, "Jim Wallis and Jim Rice drafted what would become the charter of leftist activists committed to the proliferation of Communist revolutions in Central America" (Laksin, "Sojourners: History, Activities and Agendas" in Discoverthenetworks.org., 2005).
The ugly truth is Wallis wishes to see the destruction of the United States as a nation and in its place "a radical nonconformist community" patterned after the progressive, socialist commune he established in Washington, D.C., in 1971 (Laksin, Ibid.).
"The Sojourners community," says Laksin, "actively embraced 'liberation theology,' rallying to the cause of communist regimes that had seized power with the promise of bringing about a revolutionary restructuring of society." Clark Pinnock, a disaffected former member of Sojourners, said that the community's members were "100 percent in favor of the Nicaraguan [communist] revolution" (Laksin, Ibid.).
All this revolutionary activity in spite of the fact that today's Cuba, for example, has to import 84 percent of its food supply due to the socialistic mess of the agricultural system (150,000 oxen till the ground because tractors represent capitalism). However, in a move that looks more like capitalism than Marxism's state farms, "Raul Castro is moving to boost food production by putting more land under the control of private farmers" (The Weekly Standard, March 23, 2009, p. 13).
It appears that Raul Castro is learning what America's early pilgrims learned back in the 1620s! William Bradford noted in his History of Plymouth Plantation that once he canceled the pilgrims' socialistic experiment and provided each settler with a piece of property to till, starvation was averted. We can hope and pray that Raul Castro continues to implement more capitalistic policies and will learn firsthand the economic system that has brought more people out of poverty than any other in the history of the world. (See Rodney Stark, The Victory of Reason.)
Of course, Rev. Wallis should have learned the lessons of Plymouth Plantation early in his education, but may not have because our Secular Humanistic K-12 curricula deletes most of the history of the pilgrims and the Mayflower Compact in an attempt to avoid acknowledging its "advancement of Christianity." (Sadly, one first grade textbook that does include the pilgrims has them "praying to the Indians.")
For years, Wallis has been in the forefront of the "evangelical" left and has been fêted at numerous evangelical colleges and seminaries. That seems to be the "in" thing right now! His publication Sojourners is piled high on these campuses for the reading pleasure of the naïve and foolish.
Unbeknown to these colleges and seminaries is Wallis' Red background. He was the president of the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) while at Michigan State University. The SDS was the youth arm of the League for Industrial Democracy-the American counterpart to the British Fabian Society founded to promote socialism throughout the West. One of the League's mentors for years was Norman Thomas, who argued that "the American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened" (Google, Norman Thomas quotes). Another prominent League mentor was John Dewey, a signatory of the atheistic, socialistic 1933 Humanist Manifesto. The SDS actually merits a chapter in Richard J. Ellis's work The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America published by the University of Kansas Press.
In October of 1969, SDS original organizer Tom Hayden directed his followers to "set off on a rampage, smashing windows of parked cars, hurling rocks and bricks through apartment windows, and fighting with police." Hayden blamed the police for his violence even though later his followers "comforted themselves, because theirs was a violence to end all violence, a liberating and righteous violence that would rid the world of a system that deformed and destroyed people. Such glorious ends justified, even ennobled, violent means" (Ellis, p. 137).
Ellis insists that the language of revolution and violent confrontation was evident throughout the ranks of the SDS. Jim Wallis was part and parcel of this pro-communist group of radicals and revolutionaries.
Wallis' Sojourners enterprise has been a radical, socialistic undertaking from the start. FrontPageMagazine (March 17, 2009) says, "As one of its first acts, Sojourners formed a commune in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood of Southern Columbia Heights, where members shared their finances and participated in various activist campaigns that centered on attacking the U.S. foreign policy, denouncing American 'imperialism,' and extolling Marxist revolutionary movements in the Third World."
Sojourners contributing editors included the radical Daniel "Plowshares"" Berrigan, Walter Brueggemann, James Hal Cone (author of the racist Black Theology and Black Power in which the white race is depicted as devils), Rosemary Radford Ruether (Professor of Feminist Theology, Catholics for Choice, God is the feminine Gaia), Ron Sider, Cornel West, and Garry Wills. Today, Sojourners' Board of Directors includes Wallis, Ron Sider, Brian McLaren, and Bart Campolo.
Over the years, Wallis has been pro-Vietcong and actually gloried in America's defeat in Vietnam. He said, "I don't know how else to express the quiet emotion that rushed through me when the news reports showed that the United States had finally been defeated in Vietnam" (Ronald H. Nash, Why The Left Is Not Right, p. 58).
However, like Jane Fonda, Wallis said next to nothing about the Communist genocide that followed the wars in Vietnam and Cambodia. In fact, in a typical communist response, he criticized those fleeing Vietnam by boat as somehow attempting "to support their consumer habits in other lands" (Nash, p. 59).
Wallis has been closely associated with Richard Barnet (former contributing editor of Sojourners) and the Institute for Policy Studies, a radical leftwing think tank supporting socialist revolutionaries around the world; Wallis had his book The Soul of Politics published by Orbis Books in 1994, a radical leftwing Roman Catholic publishing arm of the radical leftwing Maryknollers; Sojourner magazine has been a strong supporter of the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and, indeed, has supported every leftwing, liberation theology cause around the world.
And yes, Wallis portrays the evangelical right that happens to be pro-American and anti-Communist "as members of the forces of darkness" (Nash, p. 66, 71). For Wallis, a good Christian is someone who is pro-Communist and socialist, while a bad Christian is someone who is anti-Communist and pro-capitalist. The cry of the Sojourners crowd is "social justice" for the poor and downtrodden-social justice being code for socialism/communism.
I could not disagree more strongly. I contend that the Marxist-Leninist worldview is 100 percent contrary to Biblical Christianity, and I document this extensively in my book Understanding the Times. Further, Communism is directly responsible for the murder of tens of millions of human beings, a slaughter documented by Stephane Courtois, et. al. in their 1999 book The Black Book on Communism (Harvard University Press).
I will attempt to be as kind and gentle as humanly possible and break the news to the Rev. Wallis and his "spiritual" advisee Barak Obama- socialism has never lifted the poor out of poverty. It has equally distributed poverty, but it has never been able to create the wealth that is partially responsible for lifting the poor out of poverty.
I say "partially responsible" because one's worldview is even more important than wealth in reducing poverty. But socialism is a flawed idea, and it poisons the worldview of the people it influences. Our brothers on the evangelical left, who are concerned with the poor, need to read Theodore Dalrymple's Life at the Bottom: The Worldview That Makes the Underclass. Although not a Christian, Dalrymple understands perfectly the importance of a proper worldview and its role in combating poverty, drugs, crime, and broken families.
Can we admit a hard truth? Christian capitalist Truett Cathy's Chic-fil-A has done more to fight poverty and help the poor than all the pronouncements of Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Daniel Berrigan, Brian McLaren, Tony and Bart Campolo, and their entire crew of leftwing sociological and economic friends combined.
Thomas Sowell explains, "It would be devastating to the egos of the intelligentsia to realize, much less admit, that businesses have done more to reduce poverty than all the intellectuals put together. Ultimately, it is only wealth that can reduce poverty and most of the intelligentsia have no interest whatever in finding out what actions and policies increase the national wealth" (Capitalism Magazine, May 9, 2005).
In fact, the intellectuals are the very ones who complain about those who do increase wealth. Again, Thomas Sowell speaks to this issue: "Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century-medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge increases in consumer goods, dramatic improvements in housing, the computer revolution. The people who created these things-the doers-are not popular heroes. Our heroes are the talkers who complain about the doers."
Socialism is built on a slogan: "What can government do for me today?" instead of "What can I do to better prepare myself to take care of myself in order to be a better Christian and servant of my Lord?" Preparation involves individual responsibility, traditional family values, education, love of God and neighbor, and compassion for the up-and-outers as well as the down-and-outers.
Socialists stand against nearly every Christian, conservative principle imaginable. Compare the socialist agenda with Yale professor David Gelernter's summary of the conservative position- "the freedom of every American to make his own way, free speech on the radio and everywhere else, free elections for workers and other people . . . freedom to acknowledge and celebrate the nation's rootedness in Christianity, Judaism, and the Bible . . . love of liberty, and love of God" (National Review, March 23, 2009, p. 32).
In 2006, Barak Obama was the keynote speaker at Jim Wallis' Call to Renewal conference, "Building a Covenant for a New America." Following his address, in an interview by the United Church News, he cited "the teachings of the UCC (United Church of Christ) as foundation stones for his political work." He said, "Just as my pastor the Rev. Jeremiah Wright from Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago welcomed me as a young man years ago, UCC churches across the country open their doors to millions of Americans each Sunday . . .. I believe that democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal values. Social justice and national security are both universal values, values that may originate for some in their religious beliefs, but are shared by us all."
What Americans can look forward to now that Rev. Wallis has the ear of the President is what Sojourners magazine has been pedaling since 1971-"advocating America's transformation into a socialist nation" (Accuracy in Media Research Report, May 1983, Section 19).
Could it be that America, who turned her back on God by deciding that prayer and the Bible can no longer grace her public schools, but homosexuality (indeed the whole GLBTQ rainbow), abortion counseling, and condoms in school colors are welcomed, is experiencing the very judgment of God? There are consequences for "forgetting God" as Solzhenitsyn noted about his mother country, Russia! These same consequences are piling up on the metrosexual West in general and on the United States in particular.
David A. Noebel
Summit Ministries
719.685.9103
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