Holy Warriors
Diamond, Sara
AS SHE ESCORTED REPORTERS TO HER booth at the 1988 National Religious Broadcasters convention, Beverly LaHaye crowed, "Let me tell you what we're doing in Costa Rica." A decade ago, the Concerned...
...Colbert says the Salvadoran government has provided CACC with helicopters to deliver thousands of pieces of literature in FMLN-held territories...
...9. As quoted in Paralife Ministries newsletter, "Living Words," Sept./ Oct...
...Washington Post, Feb...
...LaHaye's recent meetings with La Prensa editor Violeta Chamorro and other opposition leaders in Managua...
...foreign policy...
...At the end of 1987-after the scandal of TV preacher Jim Bakker's sexual improprieties and financial mismanagement-religious broadcasting was still a $2 billion a year industry...
...According to the Post, the Embassy in Managua included on its staff a political officer who "cultivates and organizes Protestant religious resistance to the Nicaraguan govermment and keeps track of the activity of church figures who favor the government...
...Until January 1986, that embassy official was Jessica Le Croix, who was then replaced by T.J...
...The sheer number of U.S.-based "ministries" makes for difficulty in monitoring their activity...
...10, 1975...
...Although the spring 1988 demise of Jimmy Swaggart's TV empire dealt a serious blow to the prestige of religious broadcasting in the eyes of secular society, neither the Swaggart nor the PTL scandal seems to have hurt the industry as a whole...
...In the same way, the authoritarian "cell groups" used by Christian Right shepherds mirror the democratically constructed "base communities" and Bible study groups spawned in Latin America by Vatican II...
...Wall Street Journal, Aug...
...Beginning in the early 1960s, Graham encouraged his colleagues at Christianity Today magazine to criticize the policies of the World Council of Churches, the largest Protestant umbrella organization...
...One of the U.S...
...The Gospel and Society," Christianity Today, Sept...
...Shepherding churches got involved in politics precisely to counter the grass-roots success of liberation theology...
...2 2 In 1976, amid general public outcry over CIA abuses, the Agency released a carefully worded statement at a joint National Association of Evangelicals/ National Religious Broadcasters meeting: that the CIA would no longer initiate contacts but "would listen if a missionary or clergyman volunteers information...
...Among the Christian contra aid groups left intact-and therefore potentially useful in the future-is the Christian Emergency Relief Teams (CERT), based in southern California...
...These figures exclude the many local TV stations that broadcast only one or two religious programs daily and several on Sundays...
...8390...
...6. See Bill Bright, Come Help Change the World (San Bemrnardino, Califomrnia: Campus Crusade for Christ, 1985), and Richard Quebedeaux, I Found It: The Story of Bill Bright and Campus Crusade, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979...
...7 Beyond mere growth, there has been a shift in the theo-political orientation of those in the field...
...Christian Anti-Communism Crusade's Latin America director James Colbert works with the Duarte government to blanket San Salvador with anticommunist messages on state-owned radio stations...
...50 (1988), p. 159...
...Leaders of the Christian Right undoubtedly recognized Armageddon theology's limited potential to mobilize activists for the long haul...
...government, another is ready to take its place...
...government, have targeted the collective psyche of Third World and North American communities...
...According to Bible Literature International, Rios Montt is currently "smuggling" Bibles into Nicaragua, where Bibles are sold freely throughout the country...
...Coerced confessions of sin, all night "prayer cell" meetings and large financial commitments are commonplace in shepherding churches...
...CERT's self-promotional packet includes a congratulatory May 1986 mailgram from President Reagan and a photocopy of a February 4, 1986 White House schedule for a National Religious Broadcasters briefing featuring presentations from CERT's David Courson and Oliver North...
...Pickle (D-TX) went through the motions of investigating the major TV ministries, following widespread concern over the PTL network's dubious fundraising ethics...
...Ibid...
...Contrary to popular stereotypes generated by the preacher scandals of 1987 and 1988, evangelical missionary strategists display a remarkable degree of inter-organizational cooperation, often with overlapping high-level personnel...
...We don't want to make a lot of publicity about what we're doing or how we do it," says Chapel Hill's international director and CNPEN coordinator Pedro Torres, who is Puerto Rican.' However, he admits to providing CNPEN President Felix Rosales with money, video tape players, video teaching tapes and books in Spanish...
...In June 1988, Chapel Hill sponsored a four-week training institute for selected Third World leaders...
...The dramatic entrance of conservative Christians into the political arena during the 1970s became a crucial factor in the rise of the New Right...
...Sundseth worked as Joseph Coors' chief administrative assistant and helped Coors and Weyrich establish these right-wing organizations...
...The church is part of the shepherding movement...
...Christian Right activists are less than enthusiastic about George Bush and worry that he will not even give lip service to their social agenda...
...A more dramatic rise was seen in the number of "short-term" missionaries, which grew from 5,764 to 27,933 during the same ten-year period...
...foreign policy...
...Woodbridge, Connecticut: Research Publications, Inc., 1984).24...
...15, 1988...
...2 6 Pollster Louis Harris estimated that white fundamentalist voters accounted for two thirds of Reagan's 10 point margin over Jimmy Carter...
...AntiSandinista ministers who said they received assistance from the Embassy included Rev...
...Even after the contras signed a ceasefire agreement in March 1988, CERT circulated a "thank you" note from Adolfo Calero and continued delivery runs to contra camps in Honduras...
...As one "dominionist" puts it, "bugout theology does not produce armies, only refugees...
...Even with the encouragement of the White House, evangelicals have failed to legislate the supremacy of the traditional nuclear family...
...It is agency policy not to divulge the names of cooperating Americans...
...Will it be President Robertson in 1992...
...Paralife is assisted by the Church on the Rock in Rockwall, Texas, whose senior pastor Larry Lea doubles as Dean of the Oral Roberts School of Theology...
...Though not always as crassly political as the "700 Club," televangelism has been the single most important ingredient in the rise of the Christian Right...
...CNPEN's membership is theologically and politically diverse, though generally far more critical of the government than the other leading evangelical umbrella group, CEPAD...
...Quoted in John Pollock, Billy Graham: Evangelist to the World, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), pp...
...There, 4,000 evangelical leaders from 150 countries-including 1,000 from the Third World-concluded that political action was consistent with the Biblical mandate to evangelize the world...
...In fact, dominion theologists see themselves as an on-the-ground combat force against liberation theology...
...For example, Jim Wallis and Wes Michaelson, "The Plan to Save America," Sojourners, April 1976...
...Meanwhile, in the United States, the Christian Right uses broadcast media and "parachurch" organizations to rally ideological support for interventionism...
...6 In 1985, World Vision's Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center (MARC) reported 764 U.S...
...Center for World Missions booklet, 1988...
...A far more subtle and insidious attack against the liberal church is in the making and its targets seem blissfully unaware of it all...
...Peacocke and his associate Michael Bresnan make frequent trips to Central America and have recruited CNPEN pastors to be trained in Costa Rica...
...The first sign was the 1981 formation of the Institute for Religion and Democracy which had its roots in the "Good News" movement, a right-wing sector of the United Methodist church...
...Christian Right groups, but said that North kept that information compartmentalized...
...One soldier in particular was an evangelical and he said that he didn't know if God could on the "liberal" Council on Foreign Relations...
...At the top of the pyramidical chains of command are a group of Protestant and Catholic "apostles" who have worked together for nearly a decade...
...For years, the National Association of Evangelicals has been concerned that the loudest Christian voices on arms control and peace issues are on the Left...
...In 1981, Moral Majority's Tim LaHaye became the first president of the Council for National Policy, a secretive organization modeled REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 34PREACHING FORGIVENESS E FRAIN RIOS MONTT, THE BORN-AGAIN GUAtemalan general whose 1982 coup turned him into Latin America's first evangelical head-of-state, is still a darling of the Christian Right, even though he established one of the worst human rights records in recent history...
...We intend to use the current relaxed circumstances to beef up the evangelical church in Biblical world and life view teachings which will give them the ability to discern between satanic 'liberation theology' and the true liberating Gospel...
...The committee was undisturbed by testimony that on 85 of Pat Robertson's programs alone, a total of 122.5 minutes of air time were spent lobbying for aid to the contras...
...1 2 Beginning in 1966, Graham sponsored a series of evangelical conferences to address this concern, culminating in the 1974 International Conference on World Evangelism in Lausanne, Switzerland...
...In 1986, the Washington Post reported that CNPEN was the primary vehicle through which the United States coordinates anti-government Protestants in Nicaragua...
...While non-religious shows would continue to be held to a specified proportion of air time for commercials, paid-time religious programs were allowed to become essentially program-long fundraisers...
...2 9 Should PFSS be successful in propagating a rightwing worldview on national security issues, the IRD's sporadic propaganda blitzes against the National Council of Churches may well be replaced by a greater threat to progressive church politics: a network of educated, committed church ideologues prepared to mobilize their constituencies in favor of U.S...
...5, 1988...
...Christianity Today, Feb...
...However vicarious, the experience of a born-again Christian shepherding an entire nation reinforced the notion that they could seize the reins of power and install-by force if necessary-their version of the kingdom of God on earth...
...At the touch of a button, missionary strategists can retrieve color-coded up-to-theminute statistics on the language, culture, political attitudes and natural resources of ethnic groups from Papua New Guinea to the Amazon jungles...
...Private foreign policy practiced by right-wing evangelicals, with veiled encouragement from the national security establishment, is likely to be repeated as the Bush Administration confronts liberation movements (and Congressional restrictions) in southern Africa, the Philippines and, most imminently, El Salvador...
...T HE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIAN RIGHT activists to the concept and logistics ofcounterinsurgency warfare-first on behalf of Guatemalan dictator Rios Montt and later as part of the private contra aid network-established a very dangerous precedent...
...While statistics on audience size vary, millions of American television viewers do watch the TV preachers regularly...
...media outlets during the 1970s...
...T HE LAUSANNE EMPHASIS ON CULTURally relevant evangelism inspired the creation of the U.S...
...A decade ago, the Concerned Women for America exhibit might have featured a life-size display model of an aborted fetus...
...HIS is organizing teams of short-term missionaries to do construction work...
...Just as control of the secular media has become increasingly monopolized by several dozen corporations, the executive committee of the National Religious Broadcasters Association and the leaders of the major religious cable networks are in a position to determine what kind of broadcast message sinks or swims...
...Within weeks of the Sapoa truce agreements, Donnan travelled to Nicaragua, opened a center in Managua, and hired an Atlantic Coast Creole, Rev...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 36to embrace them...
...Ward boasts of his close relationship with the Salvadoran military and President Jos6 Napole6n Duarte, claiming that Duarte was having dinner with him on the December 1980 night when four U.S...
...Missionary outfits working through CNPEN hope to gradually siphon off public support for the government's fledgling social services infrastructure by offering a private alternative, thereby undermining the Sandinistas' legitimacy...
...See John S. Saloma III, Ominous Politics (New York: Hill and Wang, 1984), pp...
...Some would argue that the recent relocation of the Presbyterian Church's national office from the NCC building in New York to Louisville, Kentucky was one of the consequences...
...Oscar Humberto Mejia Victores...
...World Vision president emeritus Ted Engstrom, for example, uses his WV office to direct Campus Crusade's "Global 2000" project...
...In this regard CIA will not make public, now or in the future, the names of any cooperating journalists or churchmen...
...CBS' "60 Minutes" then broadcast the smear in prime time...
...Should the Bush Administration decide to pull out all the stops to "save" El Salvador, the Christian Right's broadcasters, ideologues and hands-on counterinsurgency operatives may prove to be irresistible assets...
...In September, CERT announced that FDN leader Joseph Douglas had joined the California office staff...
...The WCC, Graham argued, was downplaying global evangelism in favor of assisting progressive political movements around the world, when "the task is to relate the changeless gospel to a changing world...
...How many "freedom fighters" will they arm...
...I've talked to soldiers who participated in this [war]," says Ronny Gilmore in a tape distributed to U.S...
...The rough proportions also do not account for relative signal areas, which vary greatly for Christian radio stations...
...What is clear is that the Christian Right intends to take advantage of the government's respect for religious freedom to sow subversion...
...When Jimmy Swaggart took his roadshow to Nicaragua in February 1988shortly before his infamous public confession of sexual sin-some evangelical leaders thought their careful work had finally paid off...
...n SD through President Reagan's first term realized that some of Reagan's promises-ending abortion, instituting school prayer, etc.-would not be fulfilled...
...mSD SF'tlEMtER/( (T()BEtR 1988THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN 26 percent, growing from 31,186 to 39,309 full-time missionaries in the field...
...Institute of Peace, a government-linked organization similar to the National Endowment for Democracy, for a project to "profile" the movements against intervention in Central America and against apartheid...
...This set off an organizing drive by conservatives within the mainstream Protestant churches to challenge the NCC's progressive posture on U.S...
...It maintains an ongoing campaign to counter progressive church activism...
...In 1967, it formed a countercultural "front" organization on the University of California, Berkeley campus and launched a "Revolution Now" campaign to siphon off anti-Vietnam war protesters...
...You've got the CIA...
...Trinity Broadcasting, the second largest of the religious networks (which owns and operates 130 stations in the United States), continues to expand and, in fact, recently became the first religious network to broadcast in the South African bantustans...
...In effect, the U.S...
...At that time, Christian broadcasters controlled more than 1,000 full-time radio stations and more than 200 full-time TV stations, about 10% of radio and 14% of all television stations in the United States.' Except for the corporate network owners, evangelical Christians are the only political constituency to enjoy such unrestrained access to TV and radio airwaves, a literal license to bombard the U.S...
...Jim Woodall.' Woodall is the former Costa Rica director for Trans World Missions, which has been active in the region since the early 1960s...
...Hiding behind the facade of good intentions, Christian Right activists, in tandem with secular rightists and often with direct support from the U.S...
...Press accounts of Gen...
...In the 1960s, Pickus was the mentor of David Jessup who went on to found the IRD...
...Prior to the 1960s, the mainline denominations were fairly well represented on the screen, as government regulations required that churches and other public groups be provided with a weekly allotment of free air time...
...This contrasted with 7-12% of contributors to other GOP contenders...
...ideological warriors active in Nicaragua is Rev...
...Paralife staff also provide "ministry" to Salvadoran soldiers at the El Paraiso army base...
...Coors provided seed money, but over the years an even larger contribu- tor has been Richard Mellon Scaife...
...missions agencies, including the Wycliffe Bible Translators and World Vision...
...lower among missionaries in urban areas, where information is readily obtainable...
...Rothmeyer notes Scaife's business ties with Forum World Features, a CIA media proprietary, and later his joint ventures with Michigan newspa- per publisher John McGoff who received millions of dollars of South Afri- can "Information Project" money to purchase U.S...
...An estimated one million U.S...
...In 1987, Donnan began organizing anti-Sandinista clergy using Nicaragua's existing private Christian schools as bases of operation...
...Not all right-wing missionaries have given up on the Sandinistas...
...It then concentrated on drawing young people from the 1960s counterculture into the born-again "Jesus People" movement...
...Despite the growing secularization of society, the marriage of evangelical religion and right-wing poliJimmy Swaggart in Managua's Carlos Fonseca Plaza REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 28 F7U...
...Even if Congressionally approved military funding for Central America were to dry up tomorrow, the "private" networks now in place would take it upon themselves to carry forth Reagan's crusade against change...
...The same survey found that Robertson backers were as concerned about fiscal and foreign policy issues as the more traditional Republicans...
...Through its newsletter, it continues to play watchdog on "religious persecution" in the Soviet Union and Cuba, and has focused on the need to prevent "violent revolution" in South Africa, financing "democratic" church and development organizations in that country...
...Winter's most prized contribution to world evangelism is the "Global Mapping Project," a computer data bank that compiles field data gathered by dozens of U.S...
...But how much damage will they do in pursuit of the "kingdom...
...Most of Paralife's church sponsorship comes from Larry Lea's 13,000 member Church on the Rock in Rockwall, Texas, which is closely affiliated with Oral Roberts University...
...Divided into regional "institutes," the Center's 300 researchers are engaged in sophisticated studies of as yet unevangelized "people groups...
...He later trained the IRD's current director Kent Hill...
...Interview with Wycliffe, July 27, 1988: also Wilson and Siewart, Missions Handbook, p. 313...
...Eman Savery, as local director...
...27 (Spring 1987), p. 35...
...3, 1988 with Carolyn Sundseth, head of Americans for Robertson and President Reagan's former Associate Director for the Office of Public Liaison at the White House...
...By October 1988, TBN had opened new stations in the United States, completed construction on a station in El Salvador, received permission to broadcast in Honduras, and begun plans for stations in Bolivia and Brazil.' F OR ALL ITS MEDIA POWER, THE CHRIStian Right represents a disproportionately small slice of North American Christianity...
...Author's interview with Gary North, March 2, 1988...
...and Canadian missions agencies supporting 67,200 overseas representatives and spending in excess of one billion dollars in a single year...
...Pickus and his prot6g6 George Weigel were among a small group who promoted the formation of the National Endowment for Democracy...
...Now they have come up with a detailed long-term strategy to counter that by instituting programs of "Peace, Freedom and Security Studies" (PFSS) in churches, evangelical colleges and seminaries...
...In addition to teaching some of the seminars, shepherding movement leader Dennis Peacocke paid the travel expenses for two CNPEN pastors...
...The more than $400,000 this cost the Christian SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 29THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN Broadcasting Network (not counting the expense of flying film crews to Central America) was paid for out of tax-deductible donations, in an apparent violation of CBN's tax-exempt status.' A PAIR OF 1984 STUDIES, CONDUCTED BY the Gallup Organization and the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communications concluded that, contrary to popular belief, religious television viewing does not decrease church attendance nor donations to churches, but rather inspires activism...
...2 ' Overseas Crusades, until recently headed by Argentine evangelist Luis Palau, reported that at one time virtually all of its personnel were regularly debriefed by the CIA...
...Robertson claimed that 13% of all the delegates, though committed to vote for Bush, were Robertson workers in their home states...
...With a growing proportion of the Church residing in underdeveloped nations, they noted, to be at all effective evangelists have to address in some way the real human needs of their potential converts...
...I think you can be a genuine missionary to the United States by coming and giving your testimony," NRB executive director Ben Armstrong told the General, who in 1984 appeared on the Christian Broadcasting Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and on Jimmy Swaggart's program...
...2. TBN newsletter Oct...
...PHIL DERSTINE OF GOSPEL CRUSADE, Inc...
...W HILE CHRISTIAN ACTIVISTS WERE GETting hands-on experience in Guatemala, another form of low intensity warfare was being waged against liberation theology here at home...
...In one session, Paralife's "Brother" John Steer explained to the troops that "killing for the joy of it was wrong, but killing because it was necessary to fight against an anti-Christ system, communism, was not only right but a duty of every Christian...
...However, the political lessons drawn by dominionists and liberationists are totally at odds...
...Despite disappointment over Ronald Reagan's social policy and distrust of establishment cabinet members like George Shultz and Frank Carlucci, the President's persona appealed to the Christian Right and kept it publicly loyal to the GOP...
...One of these groups is the pentecostal Chapel Hill Harvester Church in Atlanta, Georgia, pastored by Bishop Earl Paullk...
...The study also found that Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network-with its programming focus on news and public affairs instead of religious instruction-tended to attract more educated urban young adults than any of the other TV ministries.' While religious broadcasting was still in its infancy, politically minded evangelicals were already capitalizing on the link between TV preaching and activism to launch a movement...
...Derstine confirmed that North had made similar arrangements for other U.S...
...In El Salvador, they blanket the airwaves with pro-government diatribes, build medical clinics and minister to army troops about the ordained right to kill communists...
...We are protected by the freedom fighters...
...The mainline denominations, with their staid Sunday morning inspirationals and public affairs talk shows, simply could not or would not compete with the more zealous fundamentalist broadcasters who seemed not the least bit squeamish about passing the proverbial collection plate on the air...
...CNP brought together an impressive array of TV preachers, corporate executives and government and military leaders...
...3 The Salvadoran government also works with Assemblies of God minister John Bueno to provide New Testaments to Salvadoran school children...
...They will w 0. ini w 02 U) z Cd 0 REPORT ON THE AMERICAS not allow us in areas that are not safe," a CERT spokesperson told me last January...
...In the rest of Central America, Christian Right "civic action" projects work closely with governments to achieve precisely the opposite objective...
...12, 1988...
...Gary North, Backward Christian Soldiers: An Action Manual for Christian Reconstruction, (Tyler Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1984), p. 107...
...C. Peter Wagner, "The Greatest Church Growth is Beyond our Shores, " Christianitys Today, May 18, 1984, p. 2 5 . 20...
...Trans World Missions President John Olson produces virulent pro-contra radio broadcasts syndicated throughout the United States...
...The number of conservative Christians who registered to vote for the first time in 1980 has been estimated at two million, a sizeable proportion of the 26% of the electorate who voted for Reagan...
...Besides, if anything might arouse public outcry over the political clout of the Christian Right, it would REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 30be the realization that millions of born-again Christians might be eagerly awaiting their fellow citizens' bloody demise...
...Members of the Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International and World Vision have begun a campaign to proselytize Nicaraguan leaders, including Daniel Ortega and Tomas Borge...
...1217002, dated Feb...
...The policy is contained in a declassified CIA memo, dated Feb...
...Dozens of independently produced daily and weekly programs are syndicated on these three big networks...
...advocates Gen...
...It played a major role in the burgeoning "charismatic renewal movement," unifying classical pentecostals and denominational Christians who were discovering the "spirit baptism...
...13, 1974...
...One of the lasting legacies of the Reagan era is the involvement of Concerned Women for America and scores of like-minded organizations in U.S...
...13, 1974...
...By the late 1960s, less than half the total missionary force was represented by these "mainline" churches.'" According to missionary strategist C. Peter Wagner, the NCC's Division of Overseas Ministries had 8,279 missionaries in the field in 1969...
...In many ways, the Rios Montt tenure marked a turning point for Christian Right activists,- who mid-way Gen...
...Philips, Post-Conservative America, p. 91...
...After the sense of urgency fades, it produces, at best, a contented fatalism...
...After a dramatic pause, he continues...
...evangelical support for his regime as a fluke involving only that isolated pertecostal "sect...
...Following his ouster by coup in 1983, the usually centrist evangelical magazine Christianity Today argued that Rios Montt had been undeservedly libeled in the press, and the National Religious Broadcasters Association organized a speaking tour for the former dictator...
...Ignacio Hernaindez and Rev...
...The eschatology of Lausanne left no room for such farfetched and unrealistic dreams...
...churchwomen were murdered by a death squad...
...On the surface, dominion theology rhetoric sounds like the pronouncements of liberation theologians...
...Despite their unpolished demeanor, Christian Right activists offer the GOP something it has lacked this century: a grass-roots constituency through which the party can expand its base beyond the wealthy and replace the Democrats as the majority party...
...By 1988, Wycliffe Bible Translators was sponsoring 5,500 linguists and missionaries in the field...
...Often as soon as we get out of Nicaragua, there's somebody at the door with a tape recorder in Honduras trying to get intelligence...
...World Relief maintains numerous projects in Central America, largely funded by U.S.AID...
...2 x In fact, CNP would soon become responsible for coordinating private aid to the contras...
...But the Congressional committees investigating the Iran-contra scandal apparently were not among those "trying to get information...
...Rios Montt on Pat Robertson's "700 Club" forgive him because he had taken children and their mothers and put them into a house and then set them on fire, under orders from the captain...
...THROUGHOUT THE 1980s, VIEWERS OF PAT Robertson's "700 Club" witnessed frequent cameo appearances by contra leaders Adolfo Calero, Steadman Fagoth, Enrique Bermlidez, and their U.S...
...Out of the reach of Congressional control, missionary organizations can pursue foreign adventures that the government is prevented from engaging in directly, and they can use their media power to build support for such activities...
...New CIA Policy," Christianity Today, March 12, 1976...
...As their leaders intended, shepherding dramatically increased rates of evangelism...
...Dale Kietzman, who spent decades as Wycliffe Bible translator coordinator for anthropology and community development, now heads the U.S...
...LaHaye's table was piled high with recruitment literature for CWA's upcoming pilgrimages to Nicaraguan refugee camps...
...In July 1988, the Federal Communications Commission reported a total of 10,348 radio stations and 1,381 TV stations in the United States...
...His field director, Luis Mejfa, coordinates medical missions in the Nicaraguan countryside.' T IS NOT KNOWN TO WHAT EXTENT THE REligious opposition in Nicaragua receives CIA funding, nor how much of it instead relies on "private" donations from the Christian Right...
...The lack of government regulation allows religious broadcasters to sidestep normal prohibitions on political lobbying by non-commercial, tax-exempt organizations...
...Efrain Rios Montt's membership in the Verbo church portrayed U.S...
...But a little over a year later, Donnan was more blunt: Our plan is simple...
...The sheer number of individual missionaries and missionary projects offers a feast for U.S...
...And they've shared with me the anguish in their hearts for these crimes that they committed, and said many times it was in defense and many times that they were battling the Marxists...
...Should one small operation be exposed for wrongdoing and/or direct links with the U.S...
...When Carter ran for reelection in 1980, 17% fewer white Protestants voted for him, and traditional Democratic Southern and border states swung to the 32...
...Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network is the largest, followed by Trinity Broadcasting Network and the Inspirational Network (formerly PTL...
...In spite of the Christian Right's considerable strengths-its phenomenal media access, missionary infrastructure and value to the Republican Party-victory at home and abroad remains a far-off vision...
...16, 1974, p. 23...
...Boanerges Mendoza, Rev...
...Christian Science Monitor, Aug...
...Rolando Mena...
...The committee spent much of the hearing day reassuring representatives of the National Religious Broadcasters that Congress had no intention of interfering with their tax-exempt status...
...A survey of Republican party voters conducted in 1987 showed that almost 30% of Robertson's donors had become politically active only within the previous ten years...
...The rules of the game changed dramatically in 1960 when the Federal Communications Commission decided that no public interest was served by distinguishing between "sustaining time programs"-those using air time offered free by the networks-and "commercially sponsored programs," in evaluating a station's commitment to the public interest...
...He then flew on to Honduras where he was saluted by a unit of contra fighters he helped feed and clothe...
...The CIA will continue to welcome information volunteered by such individuals...
...First came a number of influential "parachurch" organizations...
...By 1980, a panoply of Christian Right groups-most prominently the Moral Majority, the Religious Roundtable and Christian Voice-took credit for defeating liberal Congressional incumbents, including Senators George McGovern (D-SD), John Culver (DIA) and Birch Bayh (D-IN) (who lost his seat to Dan Quayle), and for sending Ronald Reagan to the White House...
...12, 1976, which reads: "CIA recognizes that members of these groups may wish to provide information to the CIA on matters of foreign intelligence of interest to the U.S...
...How many converts will be persuaded to accept the status quo and wait for their just rewards in the hereafter...
...200-201...
...In fact, Rios Montt drew material support and good press from small shepherding sects like Verbo, from the large, well-heeled broadcast networks, and even from the usually centrist Christianity Today magazine...
...Regardless of the diversity of the CNPEN pastors themselves, U.S...
...Even assuming that the religious broadcasters preach to the already converted, they hold enormous power to mobilize the faithful...
...3 Since the late 1970s, whether to work within the Republican Party has been a major question for Christian Right leaders...
...The National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) is in the process of recruiting a PFSS contact at each of the scores of evangelical colleges in the United States to, as Pickus says, "find people who want to make part of their portfolio the understanding of these problems," to recruit evangelical professors and university students, and to arrange fellowships for the promotion of their careers...
...In this version of eschatology, or "endtimes" teaching, through social activism the Body of Christ gradually takes over secular institutions and ushers in Christ's millennial reign on earth...
...Council for World Missions' short-term missionary project...
...IRD SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 35 m z C,, C: U-) m 35 SEFPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988THE RIGHT AFTER REAGAN was the brainchild of a coterie of intellectuals linked to the Reagan Administration, mostly "neoconservatives" from Social Democrats U.S.A...
...Conversing with the CIA," Christianity Today, Oct...
...After each appearance, the preacher-emcee urged his audience to lobby Congress in favor of aid to the contras...
...Declassified CIA cable, No...
...government informed of his activities in support of the contras...
...Rose...
...All of the proceedings were duly filmed and aired for the home audience...
...Yet by 1988, the IRD was all but invisible to those not on its short mailing list...
...militarism and political subversion abroad...
...for a time they met secretly and called themselves "The Council...
...12, 1976...
...1987, pp...
...government agencies...
...2 This trend toward dominance by conservative evangelical missionaries is certainly due in no small part to the ideological fervor and commitment induced by the shepherding movement's tight organizational structures...
...With private funding World Relief will hire a coordinator to involve village churches in the project...
...Thousands of Christians faithful to Lausanne will meet in Manila in the summer of 1989...
...In recent years Rios Montt and missionary Ronny Gilmore, of the California-based Verbo community, organized "Operation Whole Armor...
...Christians belong to shepherding churches...
...6 Today, it is one of the most important missionary organizations in Latin America...
...What we hope to do is assist teachers to work within the guidelines of the government so that they're legal, but at the same time promoting a Biblical world and life view of Christianity," he explained in early 1987...
...In the Lausanne Covenant, a 15-point doctrinal treatise, the conference participants adopted a social mandate that read: Although reconciliation with man is not reconciliation with God, nor is social action evangelism, nor is political liberation salvation, nevertheless we affirm that evangelism and socio-political involvement are both part of our Christian duty...
...Until World War II, Protestant missionary activity was dominated by denominations belonging to the National Council of Churches (NCC), such as the United Methodists and the Presbyterian Church, USA...
...In Nicaragua, they run anti-Sandinista schools and study groups to fight "satanic" liberation theology...
...Though Pat Robertson did not come close to winning his party's presidential nomination, his forces gained valuable campaign skills and penetrated state and local Republican parties, re-registering thousands of Democratic evangelicals to vote for their candidate in Republican primaries.32 The head of the Robertson campaign in Nevada became the state party chair and, at the GOP convention in New Orleans, Robertson supporters dominated the national delegations of Alaska, Georgia, Hawaii and Washington...
...John C. Green and James L. Guth, "The Christian Right in the Republican Party: The Case of Pat Robertson's Supporters," The Journal of Politic s, Vol...
...Unreached peoples: a movement-a strategy," The U.S...
...It was Ocshner who recruited Louisiana State legislator Louis "Woody" Jenkins into the contra cause and helped him start Friends of the Americas...
...Full Gospel Businessmen's Fellowship International was conceived in 1952 by founder Demos Shakarian as a means to bring middle class businessmen to Christ...
...In shepherding circles, dominion has gradually displaced Armageddon theology-the notion that immediately prior to Christ's return believers will be "caught up in the air" and spared seven years of "tribulation" climaxing in the Battle of Armageddon...
...Rather, there was the warning of the coming of false christs and false prophets before the advent of the Antichrist.'" Since 1974, countless evangelical organizations have adopted the Lausanne Covenant as their own statement Evangelical faith healing in El Salvador of faith...
...But in the long run, the success of the religious Right will be determined by the response of progressive forces to the ideological warfare being waged against them...
...Christianity Today, May 15, 1987...
...Center for World Missions in Pasadena, California in 1975...
...Armed with Bibles supplied by Bible Literature International of Ohio, they toured Guatemalan military bases to put a copy of the New Testament in the hands of 70,000 military, civil patrol, and police officers...
...2 Paralife has constructed medical clinics in San Salvador, Colima and other parts of the country with financial assistance from the Tear Fund in England and from U.S.AID, channeled through the Missionary Assistance Program (MAP) of Georgia...
...Protestantism's Foreign Legion," Time, Feb...
...The World Without War Council receives the largest chunk of its funding from the U.S...
...Organizationally, the private aid campaign to Rios Montt was a dry run for later involvement in funneling aid to the Nicaraguan contras...
...The average would be higher among missionaries serving in rural areas-where reli0 0 0 C0 w z 02 0, w :5 Swaggart meets with Daniel Ortega able information is hard to come by-and in places where there is social and political unrest...
...Geoff Donnan of Caribbean Christian Ministries...
...They are our guides...
...Cubie Ward of Texas...
...Though George Bush is probably less enamored of the religious Right than Ronald Reagan, its political influence will not be toppled simply because Reagan leaves office, a TV network goes bankrupt, a preacher is disgraced, or a political candidate fails in his bid for office...
...supporters last fall...
...So World Relief works with a local association of evangelical churches to provide spiritual as well as physical ministries...
...Donnan spoke with a number of Nicaraguan Christians about his plan to publish a "Christian" history of Nicaragua to be used as a textbook in antiSandinista schools...
...See Michael O'Brien, "The Christian Underground," Covert Action Information Bulletin, No...
...5 This social science approach to evangelism has coincided with the growth of the Protestant missionary force...
...The ability to buy air time, then, became the primary factor behind the spread of a particular brand of Christianity...
...3 Even before the convention was over, Robertson established a political action committee to bankroll voter registration and education efforts, groom right-wing candidates for local, state and federal races, and lay the groundwork for his own future presidential campaigns...
...But no, speculation to the contrary, Daniel Ortega had not been "born again...
...Joyce Shotwell organizes Paralife's ten-day medical brigades to El Salvador...
...Samuel Wilson and John Siewert, eds., Mission Handbook: North American Protestant Ministries Overseas, (Monrovia, California: Missions Advanced Research and Communications Center, a division of World Vision, 1985, 13th edition), p. 11...
...2 According to Carolyn Sundseth, former assistant to beer magnate Joseph Coors, it was with the intention of organizing the political yearnings of evangelicals, that Coors and his junior associate Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation in 1973 and the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress a year later...
...James K. Guth, "The New Christian Right," in Robert C. Liebman and Robert Wuthnow, eds., The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Le- gitimation (New York: Aldine Publishing Co., 1983), p. 37...
...2 FTER BILLY GRAHAM AND HIS ASSOCIates propagated the Lausanne Covenant, Christian Right politics in the United States went bigtime...
...16, 1987, p. 6 2 . 19...
...Author's interview Feb...
...3. Peter Horsfield, Religious Television: The American Experience (New York: Longman, 1984), p. 13...
...Among other supplies, CERT has given contra fighters specially designed hot-weather boots, donated by High Tech boots, a company owned by Youth With a Mission missionaries...
...A World Relief project report on the resettlement of Salvadoran refugees since 1985 explains the process: Funds for the project come from U.S.AID and cannot be used for Christian activities...
...She later assisted Weyrich and his colleagues Richard Viguerie and Howard Phillips to persuade Jerry Falwell to set up the Moral Majority...
...In 1982, IRD provided Reader's Digest with material for a hit piece on the WCC and the U.S.-based National Council of Churches...
...Ten years later, that figure- had dropped 40% to 4,817...
...4. U.S...
...24-32...
...1981...
...Author's interview with Pickus, Aug...
...Bueno's Centro Evangelistico sponsors a network of grade schools attended by 30,000 students.' Denver-based Harvesting in Spanish (HIS) sponsors a Christian school for 1,000 children near La Libertad...
...One of the largest projects there Is Paralife Ministries headed by Dr...
...Between 1975 and 1985, that force expanded by SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1988 31THE RIGHT, AFTER REAGAN THE RIGHT AFFER REAGAN THE CONTRAS' CHAPLAINS Evangelicals reading scripture to the contras R EV...
...Christian Right groups see CNPEN as the primary means through which to "pressure" Nicaraguan society now that the shooting war is largely over...
...A LITTLE MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER Reagan's inauguration, the Christian Right saw its first major victory when a military coup in Guatemala brought a "brother in the Lord" to power...
...5 Also active in El Salvador is World Relief, an arm of the National Association of Evangelicals...
...16, 1988...
...National Religious Broadcasters figures as of Feb...
...public with their theo-political message...
...A NUMBER OF FACTORS MAKE THE CHRIStian Right's decentralized Central America projects ideal for low intensity warfare...
...in Bradenton, Florida keeps the U.S...
...W HILE THE CHARISMATIC WING OF THE evangelical movement experimented with authoritarian group dynamics and developed a rigid, dichotomous worldview, political commitment also intensified among the more moderate evangelicals affiliated with Billy Graham...
...shepherds is the Texas-based Paralife Ministries, which conducts "civic action" projects in El Salvador-including mobile health and dental clinics, construction of schools, seminars for evangelical pastors and Sunday preaching at Salvadoran military bases...
...Donnan said he would finance the production and distribution but the text would be written by Humberto Bell whose book, Nicaragua: Christians Under Fire , was financed by the CIA, according to excontra Edgar Chamorro...
...8. Sara Diamond, Spiritual Waifare, (forthcoming, Boston: South End Press, 1989...
...The most extreme groups require members to obtain approval from their leadership before buying a car, starting a new job or going out on a date...
...The war ideologically is being fought between the Protestant liberationists and us," says Dominion publisher Gary North, whose materials are now being incorporated into the training program for Youth With a Mission missionaries...
...Religious operations like Derstine's were left completely untouched, even though he told reporters that Oliver North had "set up" the logistics for him to bring tons of supplies to the contras, and that he "could have" received money from North's infamous safe at the National Security Council...
...7. See Andre McNicoll, Catholic Cults, (Toronto, 1982), and Vinson Synan, The Twentieth Century Pentecostal Explosion (Altamonte Springs, Florida: Creation House, 1987...
...By the early 1960s, clusters of straight-laced denominational Protestants found themselves speaking in tongues and challenging the mainstream view that supernatural "gifts of the spirit" were meant only for Christ's early disciples...
...Church on the Rock's Dr...
...On Scaife, see Karen Rothmeyer, "Citizen Scaife," Columbia Journalism Review, July/Aug...
...Holy Warriors 1. Alec Dubro, "All that Heaven Allows," Venture, Nov...
...And, as a steadfast minority block within the Republican Party, it pulls the nation's politics continually rightward...
...E L SALVADOR IS A FAVORITE TARGET OF the Christian Right...
...The PFSS project was dreamed up by veteran rightwing activist Robert Pickus, an early proponent of the IRD 3 o* who has spent most of his life working to undermine the peace movement, first during the Vietnam war and later through his World Without War Council...
...NE OF THE MISSIONARY GROUPS SPONsored by U.S...
...Overseas Missions: What Lies Ahead...
...taxpayer subsiWu cc I 32dizes World Relief's evangelical agenda: overhead costs are paid by the government, freeing privately solicited income for evangelism...
...This will depend, first of all, on the extent that evangelical leaders are able to consolidate the commitment of activists aroused by the leadership of Ronald Reagan...
...In May 1985, following a telethon on behalf of private contra benefactor the Knights of Malta, Robertson travelled to Guatemala to deliver nearly $2 million worth of supplies to chief-of-state Gen...
...In 1975, Christianity Today estimated that between 10 and 25 percent of America's 35,000 Protestant and 7,000 Catholic foreign missionaries have given information to intelligence authorities...
...At about the sanie time, the FCC also determined that religious programming should not be restricted by rules limiting the amount of commercial time for each broadcast hour...
...Incorporated as religious entities, they are exempt from financial disclosure requirements...
...In the aftermath of the second Vatican Council, with its emphasis on empowering laity, young Catholics active in the "Cursillo" movement (started in Spain under Franco) began experiencing the "charisms" and forged links with their Protestant pentecostal brethren.7 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, part of the charismatic movement adopted what is called "shepherding" or "discipleship" to offer Christians the close bonds, of a "spiritual family" in exchange for full-time commitment and "submission" to elders...
...2 7 It was their preoccupation with abortion and school prayer that brought fundamentalist and charismatic Christian voters to the polls, but leaders of the moral crusade quickly joined experienced activists on foreign and military policy issues...
...In Costa Rica, Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America sponsors a refugee camp project called "Amor de la Libertad," [sic] started in 1986 by Rev...
...They did, however, formally close ranks to campaign against Michael Dukakis...
...HIS has purchased 75 acres of ocean front land for what it describes as a model village that will include an orphanage, medical and dental clinic, drug/alcohol rehabilitation center, and occupational training center...
...as of 1985, Youth With a Mission (closely aligned with the shepherding movement) had 1,741 foreign missionaries...
...While in the country, they also travel to military bases to minister to Salvadoran troops...
...USCWM founder Ralph Winter teaches anthropology and linguistics at what he calls his "Missions Pentagon...
...According to one founder, Central America topped their agenda...
...John Singlaub, NSC consultants Constantine Menges and Michael Ledeen, and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams...
...CERT claims to have supplied 60,000 pounds of tools, medicine and seeds and to have constructed a 2,700 foot jungle warehouse with an adjoining 3,000 foot airstrip.' CERT teams have accompanied contra combatants during battles with Nicaraguan troops...
...In 1974, Bill Bright of Campus Crusade and several of his wealthy business associates started Third Century Publications and began issuing manuals for evangelical political activism...
...You've got the State Department and who knows who all trying to get information," he told me in early 1987...
...Operation Whole Armor" offers soldiers more than Bibles...
...He also heads his own refugee camp project near San Carlos, Costa Rica and maintains an anti-Sandinista center in Managua...
...This time Mrs...
...Christianity Today editor Harold Lindsell then threw down the gauntlet, promoting the Lausanne movement as an ideological alternative to the progressive direction taken by the World Council of Churches: It boldly challenges the increasing theological deviations of the WCC...theological compromise, syncretistic concessions, universalistic presuppositions, a radically changed view of the mission of the Church, and a commitment to revolution to break down political structures and to bring in socialism by the overthrow of capitalism....The conciliar movement and the Marxists both sound the note of a forthcoming man-made utopia...
...House of Representatives, Subcommittee on Oversight of the Committee on Ways and Means, Federal Tax Rules Applicable to TaxExempt Organizations Involving Television Ministries (Serial 100-43), Oct...
...LV I ILTIEtics remains a potent mix, one which-after eight years of official blessing-deeply infects the foreign policy of the United States...
...government...
...In 1976, the majority of evangelicals voted for Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter (himself a Baptist...
...5. Beth Spring, "A Study Finds Little Evidence that Religious TV Hurts Local Churches, Christianity Today, May 18, 1984...
...A television featured videotapes of Mrs...
...I shared with him God's love for him and [told him] that he could be forgiven...
...Until the NAE entered the debate on nuclear weapons, the major evangelical groups addressing the issue were Evangelicals for Social Action and Sojourners, both progressive outfits...
...and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (right-wing Democrats who split from the party in the wake of the McGovern candidacy in 1972...
...2 ? That same year, New Right direct mail expert Richard Viguerie launched Conse-rvative Digest magazine to bridge the gap between the "populist" Right in the southern states (including George Wallace's constituency) and the northeastern conservatives who dominated the Republican Party...
...Kevin Phillips, (Post-Conservative America) (New York: Vintage Books, 1982), p. 191...
...After its much publicized media attacks on the NCC, the IRD adopted the role of "religious" critic of Nicaragua's alleged persecution of the faithful...
...6, 1987, p. 360-368...
...IRD picked up in the United States where Billy Graham and the Lausanne movement left off, fueling long-standing charges that the World Council of Churches was aiding and abetting "terrorism" through its indirect support of Third World liberation movements...
...The Lausanne Covenant," and "The View from Lausanne," Christianity Today, Aug...
...NE RESULT OF THE NAE PROJECT IS LIKEly to be a continuing realignment of evangelicals toward the Republican Party...
...In 1987, a Congressional committee chaired by Rep...
...It is not likely that these zealots will actually "take dominion" over an increasingly secular North American society...
...That is, by getting involved in politics, evangelicals can build God's kingdom here on earth...
...In 1985, when a burned out transmitter tube knocked the evangelical radio station off the air, Le Croix reportedly offered her support in finding a replacement if the broadcasters would denounce the government for closing the station...
...Because of their ability to manipulate theology and ideology, missionary organizations can utilize humanitarian aid very effectively in the psychological operations characteristic of low intensity warfare...
...released September 28, 1978...
...1986, p. 8. Paralife leader Cubie Ward works with the shepherding umbrella organization Coalition on Revival...
...22, 1988...
...But many times they did not know whether they were killing these Marxist guerrillas or not...
...In 1951, Campus Crusade for Christ formed student "cell groups" on the UCLA campus...
...Local network affiliate managers began to include the air time sold to syndicated evangelical programmers in their weekly "public service" allotment...
...In Nicaragua, Donnan made contact with the Consejo Nacional de Pastores Evang6icos Nicaragtienses, a coalition of several hundred Nicaraguan evangelical leaders...
...The conviction that the ends justify the means is a component of "dominion" or "kingdom" theology, which shepherding leaders have been preaching since the early 1980s...
...The massive human rights violations which characterized the General's rule failed to diminish his stature among conservative evangelicals, who to this day consider him a hero...
...Author's interview, July 1987 with Alton Ochsner who claims he was the major organizer of the Council for National Policy...
...Harold Lindsell, "Lausanne '74: An Appraisal," Christianity Today, Sept...
...3 " The Republican establishment, though skeptical and more than a little nervous about letting a crop of zealous Christian crusaders join the ranks, has had no choice but *Former OSS officer Robert Pickus has served as a consultant to the State Department and to the USIA...
Vol. 22 • August 1988 • No. 5
