The Gospel - According to 60 Minutes

...He has been a leader of the Good News Movement within the United Methodist Church, formed to combat theological liberalism...

...The focus of 60 Minutes' inquiry was certain governments, political movements and organizations to which the various church bodies had given money: specifically those which correspondent Morley Safer variously described as "terrorist," "anti-capitalist," or "leaning toward Marx and/or the Soviet Union and/or Cuba," suggesting that the terms were interchangeable...

...journalism has waxed sentimental about simple virtues and the downtrodden little guy even as the media have become exemplary institutions of monopoly capitalism...

...This World, a new religious journal...

...Leaning Toward Marx The church community had been waiting for weeks for the 60 Minutes report...

...Soup and soap, as Rev...

...I think the time has come for me to support your organization...

...The opening shot set the tone: Fidel Castro exhorting a crowd...

...NACLA Reportupdate . update * update * update The Institute on Religion and Democracy's theological voice, Lutheran pastor, Rev...

...Philip A. Potter, secretary general of the World Council, told 60 Minutes in a reference to the Salvation Army's emphasis on "soup, soap and salvation," is "not enough...

...Despite attempts to distance itself from the Right, 90% of IRD funding, according to a recent article in the National Catholic Reporter, comes from foundations that have been active in the support of rightist causes, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Smith Richardson Foundation...

...that capitalism promotes democracy and socialism, dictatorship...

...What the effect will be of this latest controversy within the Protestant churches is not clear...

...Its objectives are "to promote democratic values" within the established churches and "to restore a needed emphasis on spiritual concerns...

...Yes, Paul, we do accept dona- tions, and welcome to our reader- ship...

...We hope 60 Minutes will send a few more readers our way...

...The segment ex- ploited a familiar U.S...

...The Public Interest, a political journal...

...In the on-going cultural war over what is acceptable discourse in this country...

...Neo-conservative sources in-their-own-words include Commentary magazine...

...But 60 Minutes' muckracking style precludes such examination...

...economy has been pronounced a failure, but the battle for the return of traditional ideas, the struggle for dominance within the cultural institutions of American society continues...

...The calumny reached its zenith with the suggestion of Rev...

...The producers appear to have decided beforehand what they were going to say and edited the facts to those conclusions...

...women's liberation and gay rights and the destruction of the family...

...For a number of years now I have noticed that many of the au- thors I read have been quoting NACLA as an authoritative source...

...Speaking of the IRD, Claire Randall, general secretary of the National Council of *The quote is from Peter Steinfels' book The Neo-Conservatives (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979), an excellent introduction to the neo-conservatives...

...Protestantism is no stranger to controversy and its leadership in no sense unwitting dupes of sinister forces, as 60 Minutes suggested...

...Politically, neo-conservatives can be found among the Social Democrats, U.S.A...

...With his son on the local baseball team, the Indiana preacher was presented as the "mainstream" church...

...More to the point, they didn't even feel compelled to argue their own position, opting instead for groundless red-baiting and fear-mongering through emotionally charged language...

...The snake has crept into the garden...

...was prototypical 60 Minutes: frustrated Indiana preacher turns to crusading reporter to find out what the big city sharpies and bureaucrats of the National and World Council of Churches are doing with his parishoners' hardearned money...

...foreign policy and the domestic economy-"unless, that is, this new class can be isolated, browbeaten, discredited, lured or taught its true interests in a well-financed 'war of ideas' ".* For the neo-conservative, Steinfels charges, "Every logical link must be made between opposition and extremism...

...Within Protestant Christianity this view is not universal, though by no means is it limited to an elite few in New York City...

...In the weeks following the 60 Minutes broadcast, the offices of the National Council of Churches were a flurry of activity as personnel responded to inquiries from member churches and their parishoners...

...radical criticism and anti-Americanism...

...and The New Criterion, an arts magazine...

...Do you accept donations from the public or do you have mem- berships or what...

...Responding that the Gospel of Jesus Christ requires a commitment to the salvation of both individuals and the societies in which they live, church leaders have set about educating 2 Christians to this different sense of mission...

...Founded in 1981 by an amal60 Minutes Sends NACLA New Reader "Well 60 Minutes sure did a hatchet job on you," wrote Paul Lucic of Mansfield, OH shortly af- ter CBS aired The Gospel Accord- ing to Whom...

...Richard Neuhaus...

...politics and culture, a growing network of intellectual institutions whose function, according to Peter Steinfels, editor of the Catholic magazine Commonweal and an IRD critic, is "to dampen fundamental criticism...

...stereotype of small town Midwesterners: honest, hymn-singing folk conned by smooth-talking Eastern sophisticates...

...In preparing its report, 60 Minutes might have chosen to examine critically why church organizations give money to such projects, a journey that would have led them into serious philosophical and theological discussions about Christian mission, the meaning of religious salvation, the nature of the modern world...

...With those whose views it champions, 60 Minutes is noticeably sycophantic...

...In a statement responding to both the television program and the IRD accusations, the National Council charged that such emphasis on a few controversial projects ignored the millions of dollars that Protestant churches spend to feed the hungry and help the poor-a responsibility even more demanding since Reagan budget cuts--as well as dollars spent on economic development and support for human rights...

...Its annual budget is approximately $300,000...

...organizations like the Ecumenical Program 39update . update . update * update for Interamerican Communication and Action (EPICA), the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), the Cuba Resource Center and, closer to home, NACLA...

...The Mar/Apr 1983 t the National called The Gospel According To of Churches] Whom?, and the message was larx when it simple: money from the Sunday tain financial offering plate is going to support e things they left-wing-implicitly anti-AmeriNACLA, the can-causes...

...his periodic articles in Commonweal are a good way to keep up with their activities...

...the Left and terrorism...

...foreign policy with extremism and communism...

...Un-American Activities An organization like EPICA was "leaning toward Karl Marx" because it published a book-one of the few to date-on "Cubasupported" Grenada...

...Please send in- formation...

...Presbyterian For Protestant church leader'lped NACLA ship, these kinds of charges are agribusiness in not new...

...Many who had been interviewed feared a hatchet job...

...Yet a resolution-to pull the United Methodists out of the World Council because of its support for African liberation movements-that he is shown presenting to a regional church conference is overwhelmingly defeated, a fact that 60 Minutes notes very much in passing...

...The pro- gram's heroes, meanwhile, were sentimentalized...

...In the best tradition of the sensationalist tabloid press, 60 Minutes offered a one-sided picture of complex and fundamental conflicts within the U.S...

...and the Coalition For A Democratic Majority...

...That commitment springs from the belief that Christian faith requires more than prayer, attendance at Sunday service and five dollars in the offering plate...

...The attacks will undoubtedly create new tensions and open old wounds within congregations, between congregations and the national leadership and within the national leadership itself...

...Further, this is hapigress on La- pening behind the backs of milin New York...

...Salvation, for these believers, is collective as well as personal...

...The Gospel According to Whom...

...Christian church, within the United States over foreign policy and within the world about the relationship of the developing to the developed world...

...The opponents of change have center stage in the media today," said Harriet Ziegler of the National Council...

...Since the days of William Randolph Hearst, U.S...

...Church leaders acknowledge that at times they have been remiss in not fully explaining how this belief is transformed into money for a particular project...

...On Sunday even 23, 60 Minutes, the watched TV news p United States, featur the National Counci the World Council and several major U denominations...

...lions of churchgoing Americans...

...that the democratic values of the United States are part of "God's promises and purposes" and that church bureaucrats, especially of the mainline Mar/Aprl 1983 churches, have a leftist bias...

...poverty programs and looting...

...The World Council of Churches sought equal time from CBS-TV, but in mid-February, the network refused...

...From an unsubstantiated statement that church money buys Soviet assault rifles, to the repeated use of words like "terrorist," "Soviet," "Cubanbacked," "violent," the cumulative effect blurred distinctions, linking fundamental criticism of U.S...

...Neo-conservatives fear that this culture will sap the foundations of U.S...

...Recipients included Vietnam, Nicaragua and African liberation movements in Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Angola and Namibia as well as U.S...

...gam of ministers and rightist intellectuals and political activists, the IRD exists, according to its literature, to "combat leftist bias" within the major Protestant denominations...

...Well-Financed War of Ideas But the IRD and many of its leaders are also part of a larger movement within U.S...

...CBS's 60 Minutes, with its audience of 40 million, was a major step-up of this attack...

...It is not paranoid to say that an important battleground in their "war of ideas" is the mainline Protestant churches...

...Carefully distinguishing itself from the Moral Majority, it offers itself as the "middle" between Jerry Falwell's "Right" and the National Council's "Left...

...42 Churches told the New York Times, "They have set out to do us in, and they must be taken seriously...

...Satan walks in the House of the Lord...

...Joseph McCarthy-and 60 Minutes exploited it shamelesly...

...Though most reject the label, the neo-conservatives are a remarkably self-conscious group, and their activities, like the Institute on Religion and Democracy, more planned than one might suppose...

...Rev...

...Since then, there have most widely been frequent cries from religious rogram in the and political forces on the right ed a report on that the established church leadI of Churches, ership has fallen under leftist influof Churches ence...

...An actor of growing importance in that struggle is the Institute on Religion and Democracy, (IRD) whose representatives 60 Minutes consulted for The Gospel According to Whom...

...Opportunity To Be Heard Criticizing 60 Minutes for its failure to produce even a "shred of evidence" to substantiate its suggestions that church money had gone to the Cubans and Soviets, the National Council also charged that despite its talk about democratic values, the IRD would have the church censor points of view which were controversial or unpopular...

...Michael Novak, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism is a founding member of the IRD as are Penn Kemble and David Jessup, both active in the Social Democrats, U.S.A., a small anticommunist political party influential with the leadership of the AFLCIO...

...One can legitimately denounce powerful persons and institutions that abuse power but never is it permissable to criticize the system itself...

...His opposition to Vietnam's post-war government caused him to re-think earlier loyalties...

...Defending its support of groups like EPICA and NACLA, the church body declared that the ideas presented by these groups, though not necessarily accepted in this country, are widely held "by people in Central America and Latin America who are expressing deep concern for human need and calling for change to meet that need...

...But throughout the country, there are many churchgoers who not only understand, but endorse these priorities...

...IRD argues that Christians should support the West in the Cold War...

...We are trying to give a balance by giving those who are calling for change an opportunity to be heard...

...Ed Robb, a Methodist evangelist from Marshall, Texas, heads the IRD executive committee...

...The Reverends Ed Robb and Richard Neuhaus of the Institute on Religion and Democracy are presented as concerned citizens, thoughtful men whom Safer treats courteously, allowing them to develop their arguments free from interruption, quips and provocation...

...It followed by only a few weeks a similar effort in another of the organs of mass culture, Reader's Digest...

...Safer asks ominously, trusting 20 years of conditioning that Castro equals evil...

...Doing Fidel's Work Innuendo is a basic technique of yellow journalism-borrowed occasionally by demagogic politicians like Sen...

...criticism of defense spending and communism...

...41update . update * update * update Dubbed "neo-conservatism" by the media, its theory postulates the existence of a new class of educated "brain workers" who are infected with what neo-conservative intellectuals describe as the "adversary culture...

...That culture is a product, in Steinfels' sarcastic phrase, of the "hundred toxic residues of the New Left and the counterculture...

...the program ratified the Cold War ideology of the Reagan Administration...

...Those that do are to be discredited, ridiculed, scorned...

...As a consequence, the 1.S...

...Among the object to: money to North American Con tin America based Money from the Hunger Program he publish this book, Ag the Americas, an i capitalism and Amer tural corporations...

...Protestant churches have long been in the vanguard of struggles for human rights and social justice in the United States as well as the Third World...

...The causes for the need for soup and soap are deeply important...

...The IRD's most effective theological voice is Richard Neuhaus, a Lutheran pastor who worked actively in the civil rights and antiwar movements...

...They were not disappointed...

...Protestant church's traditional ministry to the program was spiritual needs of individual Christians has been abandoned in favor of social action...

...What if some of that money is doing this man's work...

...In the early 1960s, mainndictment of stream Protestantism-the United rican agricul- Methodist Church, the United Presbyterian Church, the EpiscoMorley Safer palian Church, the United Church 60 Minutes of Christ-pledged support to the civil rights and anti-war movening, January ments...

...But U.S...

...IRD's Neo-Conservatlves In the third year of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the promised overhaul of the U.S...

...For millions it also means a commitment to change the economic and political structures which inhibit social justice...

...Richard Neuhaus, a representative of the conservative Institute on Religion and Democracy, and 60 Minutes' chosen expert on church funding, that church support of these causes 40 was somehow "evil...