"For many Western church elites, there will always be harsh criticism of America, and endless excuses for tyrannies like North Korea."
Mark Tooley, IRD President
Despite a high level of engagement with North Korea, including t
he 2009 visit of an official delegation to the isolated country, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has said little about North Korea following the release of a report implicating the Communist nation in the sinking of a South Korean ship.
While the WCC has previously admonished South Korea for policies "hindering the efforts for peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula," the WCC has not and will not criticize North Korea's tyranny, one of the world's most oppressive. In a 2008 letter to the South Korean President, the WCC urged him "to take all possible measures to avoid any deterioration of inter-Korean relations." The WCC has 349 member denominations in 120 countries, and its next General Assembly will be in South Korea, in 2013.
Unfortunately, many other Western church groups share the WCC's moral blindness towards North Korea. A recent Presbyterian Church (USA) delegation to North Korea found no human rights problems. The National Council of Churches similarly has dispatched envoys to North Korea with nary a word of criticism, preferring to aim its fire at preferred targets like the United States or Israel.
Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley commented:
he 2009 visit of an official delegation to the isolated country, the Geneva-based World Council of Churches (WCC) has said little about North Korea following the release of a report implicating the Communist nation in the sinking of a South Korean ship. While the WCC has previously admonished South Korea for policies "hindering the efforts for peace and reunification on the Korean Peninsula," the WCC has not and will not criticize North Korea's tyranny, one of the world's most oppressive. In a 2008 letter to the South Korean President, the WCC urged him "to take all possible measures to avoid any deterioration of inter-Korean relations." The WCC has 349 member denominations in 120 countries, and its next General Assembly will be in South Korea, in 2013.
Unfortunately, many other Western church groups share the WCC's moral blindness towards North Korea. A recent Presbyterian Church (USA) delegation to North Korea found no human rights problems. The National Council of Churches similarly has dispatched envoys to North Korea with nary a word of criticism, preferring to aim its fire at preferred targets like the United States or Israel.
Institute on Religion and Democracy President Mark Tooley commented:
"Seemingly, Western church groups, especially, the WCC, always view South Korea or the U.S. as responsible for 'provoking' North Korean aggression.
"These church groups not only have been silent about North Korea's various aggressions, including the recent torpedo attack. Even more egregiously, they are silent or even make absurd excuses for North Korea's inhuman persecution of Christians. Western church groups often naively visit North Korea's handful of government-run show churches in Pyongyang.
"During the Cold War, international ecumenical elites heaped scorn upon the West while carefully avoiding critique of the totalitarian Soviet Bloc, betraying Christians and other victims of communism. Few lessons were learned, and those same church groups, despite their supposed 'prophetic witness,' withhold any criticism of repressive communist and Islamist regimes.
"Church members in the U.S. and around the world should demand more integrity from their church officials."
Of course the WCC, like its fellow-traveler the ECUSA, becomes more irrelevant by the minute.
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