When I heard on the news recently that American Christians were hosting the Iranian president, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, I wondered which church would do such a thing. Soon I learned that they were two “Peace and Justice” Movements—The Friends and the Mennonites. Being familiar with these groups and their publications, I was no longer surprised. Following is an excerpt, with slight modifications, from my book, Beyond the Intention of Jesus, which I researched in the 1980’s and 90’s and published in 2004.
“Peace and justice Movements, including the Mennonites and Friends (Quakers), have gone completely over to the Marxist analysis of society and the theology of liberation. Two words have become popular in these movements—peace and justice. To them ‘peace’ means the cessation of resistance against socialism, even Marxist socialism (communism). ‘Justice’ means the elimination of capitalism and the distribution of wealth. American churches picked up these words and used them as if they suddenly understood them for the first time. They harped on peace and justice without understanding what they mean in this context. Gullible people should be informed of their errors. If you are for peace, then I assume that you are willing to capitulate with the communists, right? And if you believe in justice, I assume that you are willing to relinquish your wealth so others may have “their fair share,” right? Well, if not, why do you parrot the Marxist on peace and justice as the Mennonites and Friends do?
“At an Illinois Sunday School Convention in Peoria in 1989, I registered and began to look around. The nearest booth was operated by the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center. I went through their material, picked up a couple of tracts and got into a conversation with the young man in the booth. “Do you teach liberation theologies as your missionaries in Latin America do?” I asked. He didn’t answer me directly but revealed his color (which incidentally was red) by immediately defending Marxist Nicaragua and condemned the anti-communists—a subject which I hadn’t even mentioned.
“When we tried to work in El Salvador,” he said, “we had lots of trouble, but when we went to Nicaragua we had no trouble at all.” If one is in Rome doing as the Romans do he is not likely to have any trouble with the Romans.
“I replied by saying, ‘But the Soviet Union is shipping arms to Nicaragua and is building a big runway there.’
“Russia doesn’t have a runway in Nicaragua,” he snapped.
I knew the runway was being built but his propaganda didn’t allow him to know it. In his tract, “Conversion to the Kingdom of God,” I read, “There is from Jesus’ point of view, much reason to criticize the popular evangelists and their call to be born again. The prayer of Jesus is not, ‘Lord save some souls today;’ but ‘Thy Kingdom come.’” The Kingdom of God, they say, is universal socialism. This statement sums up all I have been trying to say about the advocates of liberation theology. They have stated their own case and indicted themselves better than I could ever have done. The tract also spoke of “humanistic anti-communism.” Doesn’t everyone, except the Marxists, know that communism, not anti-communism, is humanistic?) The tract continued, “In out time and place the best translation of the early Christian confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’ may be, ‘Jesus is President’…What reason is there to believe that He (God) would not chose the title of the strongest political authority to identify Jesus today?
“Notice the emphases these groups place on ‘politics and economics.’ With them, everything regarding the Kingdom of God is political and economical. You and I are being asked to stop trying to ‘save some souls today’ and assist these liberal groups and their Marxist comrades in their socialist conquest. While faithful evangelists are on the mission field preaching the Gospel of Christ, trying to save souls, as Jesus commissioned, the Quakers, Mennonites, ecologists, liberationists et al, are there opposing them in the name of a “human Jesus. They say that Jesus Christ, the Son of God and Lord of all, should be spoken of today as the “strongest political authority”—Jesus, president of a political kingdom.’”
Ahmadinejad is not a communist, neither are the unbelieving Friends and Mennonites Christian, according to the biblical use of the term. Confessing Jesus Christ as the Son of God, not as president of a political kingdom, is the mark of a true Christian.
Now you know who it was that hosted the Iranian president.
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