40 years ago: A secular columnist attacks the hypocrisy of the World Council of Churches

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.
Ye shall know them by their fruits. Matthew 7:15-16a

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. II Timothy 3:5

The best comment I've ever seen about the World Council of Churches came from Malcolm Muggeridge many years ago, when he said they were like a row of drunks holding one another up, lest alone they each fall into the gutter. By 1978 the WCC was already apostate, and that apostasy became clearer when they used their Program to Combat Racism to give financial support to black terrorists in Rhodesia--evidence from 40 years ago that "anti-racist" really means "anti-white." Gorde Hunter, a former sportswriter with the Calgary Herald, was a columnist with the Victoria Daily Colonist when he called the WCC on their hypocrisy on October 25, 1978:

It becomes a splitting of fine hairs when a prestigious body like the World Council of Churches can justify the giving of money to guerrilla fighters in Africa with the argument it cannot condone racism.

It is like offering money to the Mafia, because that organization has promised to get prostitution off the street and behind closed doors.

In a recent letter to a newspaper, the Rev. R.G. Attwell of the Victoria Presbytery, stated that the World Council of Churches allocated $85,000 to the guerrillas in Rhodesia and another $125,000 to the guerrillas in South Africa for "humanitarian purposes."

As a rather strong supporter of God, I have to feel that somewhere along the line either Attwell or myself has been getting the wrong message from the Good Book.

And one of us has been getting the wrong connotation from the "Thou shalt not kill" commandment.

Correct me if I am terribly wrong, but isn't the whole message of Christianity "Love thy neighbour"? and giving great gobs of money to a bunch of killers doesn't quite fall either into the love category or into the humanitarian category.

Now the church rationalization is that the money allocated will go for social, medical and educational services, or for food and shelter and clothing--not, heaven-help-us, for arms and ammunition.

The fly in this ointment is that the allocation merely frees other money to be spent on arms and ammunition which, you must surely understand, will be used for the killing of human beings.

The propaganda mills would have us believe that all whites in Rhodesia and South Africa are no-good racist thugs and that all blacks are good guys who kill to stop the injustices heaped upon them.

And so, it is perfectly Christian-like to send them money to continue the freedom fight.

Attwell stated that if the churches don't help them in their hour of need, the gospel of love and justice will be seen by them as irrelevant and impotent, leaving them to seek assistance from the Communist nations.

What a crock of sanctimonious bilge.

The commies are going to help at every turn anyway--not because of any deep-seated love of oppressed people, but for the foothold of power they seek in every section of the world.

The worst part is that the majority of those church folk who voted such funds did so without first-hand, personal knowledge of the situation.

I suggest to them and to you that if Canada found itself in the same position with,say, a majority of Indian and Eskimo populations, the whites of this land would use every method at their disposal to keep the status quo just as the whites of Rhodesia and South Africa are doing.

But these countries were brought to present-day status by the whites, albeit with the physical help of the blacks.

They cannot see turning over their land to the largely-uneducated blacks for governing. Unless I'm badly mistaken, the white population of Canada would react the same way if the Indians and Eskimos had the numerical strength to take over.

The rights or wrongs of the case are not really important in this church issue, however. The only bona fide issue must be the allocation of funds that will most certainly cause death to people, many of whom are of the same Christian faith.

The church people who back such killings are no better than those who eventually pull the triggers at the other end of the church offering.

I have talked to church ministers who have thought the same way--who feel their churches have completely abdicated their teachings and responsibilities.

They see it as an absolute opposite to what Christ tried to instill in all of us.

Many theologians can recite chapter and verse showing that Christ did condone wholesale murder, but I somehow doubt it.

It also seems strange that the WCC donation is given to a guerrilla group which seeks to change a situation through violent means but that nothing is given to the black group in Rhodesia which is attempting to change the situation through peaceful means.

Finally, the racism aspect.

How can the WCC, with any form of honesty, condone the killing of blacks by blacks, as is happening, without any argument whatsoever? And how can it condone the killing of its own missionaries by the blacks they support with hard cash that buys the wherewithal for the carnage?

The church loses respect for its action--and, I hope, will lose financial backing for its parishioners as a direct result.

Mr. Hunter was actually more charitable toward the World Council of Churches than they deserved, when he referred to those "of the same Christian faith." The reason the WCC didn't have a problem with financing terrorists who were killing Christians is because the WCC was, and remains, an organization of people who aren't actually Christians.

In the fall of 1978, this blogger was a first-year student at the University of Calgary, where the Student Union voted a donation--$1,000, I think--to Zimbabwe African National Union terrorists in Rhodesia. Jeff Proudfoot, the Student Union's Vice President--External, courageously refused to send the donation, arguing that ZANU was a Communist terrorist organization. Although Mr. Proudfoot was required by the terms of his office to comply with the vote of the executive, he held firm. If I recall correctly, he kept his job, and ZANU never got the money.

In the 40 years since this column appeared, Rhodesia has become a murderous and incompetently-governed abomination called Zimbabwe. South Africa, now under black rule, has recently passed a law allowing for wholesale theft of lands owned by whites--lands that were never settled by blacks. The situation will end in genocide of whites, to the applause of "anti-racist" churches.