[(Continued from p.11)]
The bureaucracies of the mainline Protestant churches have confused being prophetic and being anti-American for over thirty years. Kenneth Billingsley, author of a book on the warped "social witness" of the National Council of Churches, has zeroed in on the response of these bureaucracies to September 11. The September 11 perpetrators were not terrorists at all, declared Vernon Broyles III, associate director for social justice and associate for corporate witness in the National Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. -- the very titles are revealing of the church's mindsetbut "part of a guerrilla fighting force that uses the methods typical of every guerrilla army in history that is fighting against a force far superior to their own." The real problem was that "we have ignored many people suffering injustice at the hands of those we support" (notice the swipe at Israel). The United Methodists avoided directly condemning those responsible for the September 11 attacks, but had no trouble, within a month, rejecting the use of U.S. military force to fight terror.
Notes Billingsley: "Protestant bureaucracies remain a kind of interlocking directorate of the religious left, for whom anti-Americanism is more theological than political....During the Cold War, this mode of discourse was a fact-free zone that featured a moral equivalence between freedom and unfreedom. Now it features a moral equivalence between terror and its victims."
Daniel Pipes chronicles the newest in political correctness: teaching seventh graders to see themselves as Muslim warriors. A three week curriculum produced by Interaction Publishers for classrooms across the country has students fighting mock jihads against Christian crusaders and assorted infidels. While Interaction says it merely teaches students to "respect Islamic culture," the Thomas More Law Center, a public interest firm in Michigan, is suing in federal court to prohibit use of the curriculum in the Byron, California public school (and by extension in any other public school). The lawsuit argues the curriculum presents Islamic faith as if it were historical fact, contradicting Supreme Court rulings which permit public schools to teach about religion on condition they do not promote it.
Richard Thompson of the center noted that the school district "crossed way over the constitutional line when it coerced impressionable 12-year-olds to engage in particular religious rituals and worship, simulated or not." Pipes sums up: "Americans and other Westerners face a choice: They can insist that Islam, like other religions, be taught in schools objectively. Or, as is increasingly the case, they can permit true believers to design instruction materials about Islam that serve as a mechanism for proselytizing. The answer will substantially affect the future course of militant Islam in the West."
Americans For a Safe Israel
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Outpost - 12 - July-August 2002