ACTION

Beware of a new communist "Christianity"

A marriage between a new communist revolution and a radical brand of Christianity combines the traditional communist viewpoints on Biblical truth, which is to be abolished, with a new Biblical narrative that dismisses the Biblical text in deference to what its leaders call existentialist integrity. It is a communist revolution wrapped in the cloak of a new Jesus used to indoctrinate a young generation toward communism. This radical viewpoint questions the motivations of the 10 Commandments, for example, and depicts Jesus as a supporter of slavery, ownership of women, and a hypocrite. It is a humanistic view of the Bible being taught in some of America's most revered seminaries such as Princeton.

Professors of Theology Mark L Taylor of Princeton and Cornell West of Union Theological Seminary are founding members of the Revolutionary Communist Party, led by Bob Avakian. This "party" has organized and fomented much of the Ferguson, Mo., and New York City protests against police brutality. Unlike communist efforts of the past, which attacked all religion, this movement is embracing a new context of the Bible, saying, for example, that the truth of Biblical creation in Genesis is evolution. This movement is calling for the overthrowing of America and blames the ills of society and of the world on the old Christianity, which its new "Manifesto" holds responsible for reversing socialism.

The maifesto reads: "...in the "vacuum" created by the reversal of socialism and accompanying setbacks for communism, and with the continuing, and even heightening, depredations carried out by imperialism-with all the upheaval, chaos, and oppression this means for literally billions of people throughout the world-there has been a significant growth of religious fundamentalism and its organized expression in many parts of the world, including among the desperately oppressed. Imperialist marauders and mass murderers, and fanatical religious fundamentalists-the former more powerful and doing greater harm, and in so doing giving further impetus to the latter, but both representing a dark veil, and very real chains, of enslavement and enforced ignorance, reinforcing each other even when they oppose each other."

In a three-hour presentation at Riverside Church in New York City, Avakian called for the overthrow of the US government, saying that Osama bin Laden and the Islamic State could never imagine the atrocities committed by American government. He pointed out that the current "president," Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic Party were allies in the Revolutionary Communist Party's struggle. The mixing of this radical doctrine with a new Christianity, sometimes referred to as the Black Prophetic Movement among other names, is a horrible deception. Jesus Christ--the real one, not the communist one--said in Matthew 24:4, "Take heed that no man deceive you." Deception is in many pulpits, this is one of them.