ECUMENICITY-AND POLITICS
With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.
—Rev. 17:2
1323 New Army Hymn
The U. S. Army now has a hymn—and its composer, Sergeant Ralph Lee Bowerman, is $7,500 richer. His three-stanza hymn, “Mighty Is Our Army,” was selected by six final judges from more than 1,200 civilian and military entries in a competition that was part of the Army Chaplain Corp’s 200th birthday observance this year. Bowerman, who was drafted in 1957 soon after immigrating from Canada, has an Assemblies of God background but attends an independent church in Norfolk, Virginia. He is a librarian at the Armed Forces School of Music in Norfolk. The first stanza: “Mighty is our Army and mighty is our Lord. We stand for peace and liberty, our histories record. Each soldier is a fortress; united we defend. The rights our fathers died for, eternal without end.” The refrain: “One nation, one Army; one people strong and free; tho’ worshipping in different ways; one God eternally. Amen.”
1324 Mary, Queen Of Heaven
The United States Postal Service issued in 1972 two Christmas stamps, one with a secular (Santa Claus) and one with a religious theme. The religious stamp depicts a detail from a National Gallery of Art painting, “Mary, Queen of Heaven,” by an unknown sixteenth-century painter. The print order calls for one billion stamps each, the largest ever for Christmas stamps or any other commemorative issue.
—Glenn D. Everett
1325 Church Control of U.S. Economy
Not long ago Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, former president of the National Council of Churches, made a startling statement: “In view of their favored tax positions, with reasonable prudent management, American’s churches ought to be able to control the whole economy of the nation within the predictable future.”
Thirty years ago, about 12 percent of real property in the United States were tax-exempted and belonged to government property, such as post offices, parks, military posts, state universities, city halls, and public schools. Next come churches and other organizations, accounting for about one-third of all exempt properties. While exemption from property taxes for religious organizations is not a great burden on any community, the rub comes when a church with its favored tax status embarks upon business for profit.
—Christianity Today
1326 WCC Helping The Guerillas
In October and November of 1971, The Reader’s Digest published two articles by Clarence W. Hall on the activities of the World Council of Churches. In the first article Mr. Hall made this statement: “Preaching the gospel of racial justice, the World Council of Churches is using church power and church funds to back insurrection in the United States and Africa. In the early 1970s hundreds of thousands of dollars were given by the council to terrorist groups, some of them avowedly Communists who were engaged in guerrilla activity. While supporting such radical activities, it is a well-known fact that the council did everything in its power to hinder the American government in its involvement in the Vietnam war.”
1327 Pope John Paul’s U. S. Pilgrimage
When Pope John Paul II visited the U. S. in 1987, he was greeted at Miami’s airport by President and Mrs. Reagan. His very first words reflected the theme of unity: “I come as a pilgrim,” said the Pontiff, “a pilgrim in the cause of justice and peace and human solidarity to build up the one human family.”
The pope called on the U. S. to share its wealth with poorer countries. “The more powerful a nation is,” he said, “the greater is its responsibility.”
1328 Surprising Statement By Blake
The Tulsa Daily Word, reporting on the meeting of the Central Committee of the WCC in Geneva on Feb. 13, 1966, noted: “Dr. Eugene Carson Blake, newly-named head of the World Council of Churches, said Saturday an American victory in Vietnam would cause long-range difficulties … ”
This Central Committee meeting then called for the admission of Red China into the UN.
1329 Churches To Support Violence
In May of 1969 the World Council of Churches, for instance, recommended that the churches should support violence if it is the last way to overthrow political and economic tyranny. This group recommended that churches confess that they are “filled with blatant and insidious institutional racism.”
1330 Brief Sketch Of WCC
Notice how the WCC embroiled herself in politics: In 1948, the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Then organic unity was not its established goal, from the pronouncement: “The Council exists to serve churches and not to control them … All ideas of a unified ecclesiastical structure dominated by a central administrative authority must be put away.” Dr. W. A. Visser’t Hooft, past General Secretary of the WCC said: “Our Council represents the emergency solution—a stage on the road—a bridge between the time of complete isolation of the churches from each other, and the time—on earth or in heaven—when it will be visibly true that there is one Shepherd and one flock.”
On August 1954, the Second Assembly of the WCC was held at Evanston, Illinois. Its Central Committee, which directs its affairs between assemblies, was expanded. Communist-dominated ministers on that committee doubled from two to four.
From Nov. 18 to Dec. 6, 1961, the Third Assembly met at New Delhi, India. This Assembly admitted the Russian Orthodox Church to membership.
On July 1968,240 denominations representing most of the world’s non-Roman Christians gathered for the Fourth Assembly of the WCC at Uppsala, Sweden. Let Rev. Knut Norberg, president of a consistory of the Lutheran Church in Sweden tell it:
“Problems related to race, violence and oppression were discussed freely and passionately. But as soon as prevailing conditions behind the Iron Curtain became the order of the day, stony silence reigned.” Norberg asked: “How can an ecclesiastical universal assembly refuse to take notice of the ever-growing appeals from deportation camps, prison cells and torture chambers where fellow-Christians are suffering and even dying? Is it a mat ter of tactics? If so, it means total capitulation to the Soviet Union and its Marxist-Leninist religion.”
See also: Apostasy ; Evangelicals ; Liberal Theology ; World Church.