The following was published by the Oklahoma Family Policy Council, but the Marxist activity they highlight is occurring throughout the nation among Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish congregations. We would paraphrase the Policy Council's concluding call to their fellow Oklahomans by saying "wake up, fellow Americans! The wolf is in the White House."
Some have worried about the influence of the "religious Right." Well, it now appears we can all be concerned about the growing influence of the "religious Left" in Oklahoma.
OFPC has learned that at least 25 Oklahoma City-area churches, through November, 2008, have agreed to pay between $1,500 and $7,500 each year to align themselves with the OKC Metropolitan Area Interfaith Sponsoring Committee. The purpose of such alignment is for the churches to participate in Congregation Based Community Organizing (CBCO), an innocuous-sounding Oklahoma project of the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation.
According to a letter OFPC has obtained that was written by Richard Klinge, an attorney with Oklahoma City-based Catholic Charities, these 25 Oklahoma City-area churches, which include Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Unitarian, Baptist, and United Church of Christ congregations, will receive training and assistance from IAF experts in CBCO methods. OKC organizers hope that as many as 40 local churches will eventually join the CBCO effort, and IAF expects to have 5,000 "home meetings" by the end of 2009.
OFPC has also learned that similar IAF projects have been organized in past years in both Dallas and Austin, Texas, as well as in other U.S. cities nationwide. What's the big deal, you may ask?
Well, as we know, President Barack Obama learned his organizing and campaign skills--which he has used to pass his so-called "Economic Stimulus" measure in Congress--in the rough-and-tumble of south-side Chicago politics. One person who significantly influenced his thinking and methodology was author-activist Saul D. Alinsky, a radical Marxist, who died in 1972, and never met the Harvard-educated Mr. Obama.
In the late 1930's, Alinsky developed his techniques of "community organizing" as a way to help build an army of poor, minority, disenfranchised Chicagoans, who could be successful at challenging the existing power structures in a corrupt, post-Al Capone urban environment, which would eventually come to be ruled politically beginning in 1955 by Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley.
Many, though not all, of Alinsky's organizational and political techniques were explained in his 1946 book, Reville for Radicals, and in his better known 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, a book that begins by paying homage to Lucifer as the first radical, who "did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom."
Alinsky taught that "politics was about moving from the world as it is to the world as it should be." He also allegedly coined the term, "think globally, act locally." And, as a Marxist, Alinsky naturally believed the world to be a place constituted by power and domination. Likewise, IAF teaches its disciples how to skillfully manufacture and manage political power.
Many Alinsky students have learned well, including Barack Obama, who is shown in this photo teaching University of Chicago law students Alinsky's concepts of "power analysis."
Mr. Obama was influenced by and thought well enough of Alinsky to write a chapter in a book entitled, After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois. At Wellesley College, Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady, senator, and now, U.S. secretary of state, wrote her senior honors thesis in political science, entitled 'There Is Only the Fight...': An Analysis of the Alinsky Model.This explains the significance of Alinsky, who originally founded the Industrial Areas Foundation Training Institute, and through it, influenced so many others, including activist Cesar Chavez, with his Marxist organizing principles.
Saul Alinsky used the poor to further a radical agenda, while ostensibly helping them. Although the IAF has disavowed some of Alinsky's more extreme views, they still use his methods and seek to work within unsuspecting Catholic and Protestant congregations, and among other constituencies, to further a decidedly liberal agenda. From our research, you won't ever see IAF working with its protégés to encourage conservative principles in public policy.OFPC has learned that a battle is now raging privately between conservatives and liberals, priests and parishioners, within Catholic parishes in central Oklahoma. The Most Reverend Eusebius J. Beltran, Archbishop of Oklahoma City, acknowledged as much in a recent article in The Sooner Catholic. We are unaware to what extent other central Oklahoma-area Protestant churches are informed or concerned about IAF's organizing and their liberal mission.
We at OFPC stand with, and are deeply concerned that, our Catholic friends--who have been leaders and allies with Protestant evangelicals through the years in so many important pro-life and marriage-related issues--are now having to defend their churches from those who are attempting to capture the Church in pursuit of a radical agenda, which is at odds with the conservative, traditional, Judeo-Christian, limited government values of most Oklahomans.No doubt, it's the caring, compassionate, humane interest of well-meaning parishioners in pursuit of social justice that is encouraging many of these Oklahoma churches to get behind IAF's efforts. How they are being used for Leftist purposes was described by the late Balint Vazsonyi, a Hungarian immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen, in Chapter 7 of his 2000 book, America's Thirty Years War: Who is Winning?
But, even apart from opposition to the duplicity of IAF because of its Marxist roots, there are other reasons for churches and congregants to be extremely wary.
Speaking of Alinsky, columnist Ryan Lizza, in a 2007 article in The New Republic said, "His legacy is less ideological than methodological. Alinsky's contribution to community organizing was to create a set of rules, a clear-eyed and systemic approach that ordinary citizens can use to gain public power."Apparently, Alinsky's IAF, and the people whom they organize, are very effective at it. This phenomenon was acknowledged by Eagle Forum President Phyllis Schlafly in her recent March 20 column.
And, it is IAF's effectiveness and skill that is the real danger for unsuspecting Oklahomans.
For, if a poll were taken, most Oklahomans would surely--today and forever--prefer that their children and grandchildren continue to live in liberty. Most Oklahomans very much like our conservative, pro-life, family-friendly, faith-based, 101-year-old "red" state rather than the socialist, big-government, class-based utopia which IAF activists are so passionately trying to arrange for us.Wake up, fellow Oklahomans! The wolf is at our doors, dressed in sheep's clothing.
