Archdiocese of Los Angeles Continues to Court Relativism at Religious Education Congress

 Well the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress for 2014 will be at it's usual spot (The Anaheim Convention Center) March 14-16 . And for the first time in 5 years Jim Wallis (evangelical leader of the  Sojourners) has been asked to return as a speaker. Those not familiar with Jim Wallis he strongly believes that individual salvation is okay, but what Jesus taught was collective salvation that requires political solutions and the forced equality of a collective state.

Wallis' affinity for Marxism and socialism is evident in many things he himself has said. For example, in 2005 Wallis stated that private charity to help the poor was insufficient, and that true social justice could be achieved only by an omnipotent central government empowered to redistribute wealth: "We have to be very clear about this. Voluntary, faith-based initiatives with no resources, no resources to make any serious difference in poverty reduction, is not adequate. That's a charity that falls far short of Biblical justice."
Jim Wallis.

To no surprise Wallis has been a spiritual adviser to President Obama along with Jeremiah Wright; combine these two and one can see why our President has very skewed  belief in Christianity. Below is a link to rather lengthy study of Jim Wallis I wrote in 2009. When you are finished one has to ask if Catholics in the United States are really wanting to sell their soul to the Progressives and give up many of it's tenets such as pro-life, pro-family and the most basic tenet that Jesus came down to earth to forgive sins and re-establish a relationship with god; not to advocate for Communism.

Marxism for Christianity; Jim Wallis, Running With the Devil 

Individualism vs The Collective Part #1 "The Teachings of Jesus"

After returning from the Religious Educational Congress in Anaheim, I was reminded of several years ago when I heard Jim Wallis, the great apologist for Pol Pot’s massacre of a million Cambodians (Marxism for Christianity; Jim Wallis, Running With the Devil) and also an apologist for President Obama’s lack of a true Christian faith. Jim Wallis’ Sojourners and Jeremiah Wright’s Black Liberation Theology are two good examples of Liberal Christian Organizations that are co-opting Christianity for their political purposes (a truer meaning of “using the Lord’s name in vain” is using God for your own selfish purposes, not necessarily cursing). In this liberals using Christianity to spread communism. Listening to Jim Wallis he will tell you that Jesus was a Socialist; the truth is Christianity and Socialism are mutual exclusive.

Throughout history dictators and kings have used the concepts of collectivism to control the masses. Then as in now, the leaders cared not for the welfare on any one individual, but the health of the peasants or workers as a whole; for from the peasants/workers came the armies that would be needed and the food grown by the collective farmers needed to feed them. Then along came Jesus and Christianity, where for the first time the individual was the most important the collective non-existent. President Obama has discussed the need for “Collective Salvation”, a belief system advocated by Jeremiah Wright and his Black Liberation Theology. Here we have an almost perfect parallel with the Bible and Paul’s letter to the Corinthians. The infant church was being corrupted as teachers added complexity, new rules and necessary deeds to earn ones salvation. The pillar of Christianity rests on John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. In other words one is saved, by the grace of God, from eternal punishment for sin which is granted to those who accept by faith God’s conditions of repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus. More simply put, salvation is gods gift to the world as no amount of deeds could free the world from sin; this is what is referred to in Christianity as “God’s Grace”.

In Christianity, redemption (the paying of a debt) was Jesus’ death on the cross that paid for the sins of the world. However Jeremiah Wright has other ideas. Black Liberation Theology teaches that the white race must redeem themselves for the past oppression of blacks; apparently the sacrifice of Jesus was not enough and the white race will still have to pay off the black race to reach salvation. This best described in Galations 1:7-10 Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse. Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ.

Jesus never spoke of collective salvation or collective redemption; in fact it was the complete opposite. Jesus spurned the idea of the collective, in the name of a personnel savior. The health of the collective was not a concern of Jesus, nor was one’s station in life or economic status; in the Lord’s Prayer we pledge to “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (apparently Jeremiah Wright would want to interject an asterisk in the forgiveness part). And of course what is either purposely distorted or lost with Liberal Christian Organizations, is that giving is for the sake of the giver, not the receiver. While Jesus repeatedly directed his followers to feed the poor (and the poor certainly benefited), it was for the sake of the givers repentance (the act of changing your ways to God’s ways) and individual salvation, that Jesus wants us to give; as Jesus said in Matthew 26:11 The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.

Liberal Christian Organizations believe that communism (or socialism) would create a world according to the teachings of Christ, but the real teachings of Jesus are the bane of Liberal thinking. Jesus taught his followers since all are equal in God’s eyes, that material equality is insignificant; one should simply be the best at what ever their station of life and spend their energies helping others and loving god. To Jesus the collective had no meaning, because he was concerned about the saving the souls of individuals, not the health and/or control of the collective. I close with Jesus words in Mathew 23:13-15; words that could have been directed at Jim Wallis and Jeremiah Wright. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.

Marxism for Christianity; Jim Wallis, Running With the Devil

The first time I heard Wallis was at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress,  this year in Anaheim. It was no surprise to see a non-catholic at Congress, which is not uncommon. I was not even surprised that he spoke of what he believed was a governmental responsibility toward social justice, as most religions are less concerned with liberty and more concerned with government assistance to the poor. It was his propaganda that these concepts exists as directives from the New Testament and Christ that really caught my attention; "he doesn’t think that private faith based efforts to alleviate poverty are effective, that they fail to go far enough. Wallis makes no denial of being a very large supporter of the vision of social justice that is associated with socialism, growing the power of the government, and a wealth transfers through government coercion” Diocese, Bishop have ties to social justice group, which of course is the opposite of what Christ taught, but more of that later. Glenn Beck spent some time talking about Jim Wallis.



Following Glenn Becks deconstruction of Jim Wallis, Wallis responded with an open letter; one aspect of the letter dealt with redistribution In his opening sermon at Nazareth, Jesus gave his own mission statement when he declared, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." So Jim Wallis equates the gospel or Good News, which was that the Son of Man has come to forgive sins and restore man's relationship with god, with a redistributive form of  social justice and forced salvation. Further; It was written into the Torah as legal code and not just left up to individual charity. It was about "social justice" and even "redistribution" -- two of the least popular words on your show. You regularly criticize other people's "versions" of Christianity. How about Jesus' version of Christianity?.... I was encouraged by that because Dr. King was the archetypal social justice Christian and the primary teacher for many of us on the social implications of biblical faith. His personal faith led him to fight for racial and economic justice -- social justice. What Jim Wallis conveniently leaves out is Dr King was a conservative who's fight was for an equal playing field and personal responsibility. Dr King wanted blacks to have all the advantages that white society offers so they could share in the riches of our country through equality, hard work and love of country; this is what he meant by social justice. Jim Wallis social justice is a redistribution of wealth and forced equality ending in a collectivist state, where no one is allowed to succeed over anyone else and consumerism is no more; ie Marxism. An Open Letter to Glenn Beck

Jim Wallis' background finds him emerging for the radical and violent left of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in Michigan State University; it is also no coincidence that both Wallis and Bill Ayers emerged from the Michigan State University SDS. For those that don’t know SDS and the off shoot the Weather Underground was a Marxist group of radicals and revolutionaries that espoused violent confrontation. The Weather Undergound aspired to take over the U.S. government and establish re-education camps in the American southwest; the organization estimated that it would be necessary to kill some 25 million people "die-hard capitalist[s]" who could not be reformed. FBI Informant Reveals Weather Underground Advocated. Jim Wallis was vehemently against the Vietnam War, not because of the death and destruction, but because it was a hindrance to the growth of Marxism in Southeast Asia. When the US finally pulled out of South Vietnam, Wallis was an apologist for the brutality of the North Vietnamese. During the ongoing the refugee crisis in Vietnam,1970-1980,  Wallis lashed out at the desperate masses fleeing North Vietnam's communist forces by boat. These refugees, as Wallis saw it, had been "inoculated" by capitalist influences during the war and were absconding "to support their consumer habit in other lands." Wallis then admonished critics against pointing to the boat people to "discredit" the righteousness of Vietnam's newly victorious Communist regime. Profile Jim Wallis He of course did not discuss the 165,000 Vietnamese people that died in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam's re-education camps and the thousands of others that were abused or tortured. Vietnam Boat People When he later started his Sojourners enterprise, his members “participated in various activist campaigns that centered on attacking the U.S. foreign policy, denouncing American ‘imperialism,’ and extolling Marxist revolutionary movements in the Third World.” (FrontPage magazine).

Remember that Marx felt that religion is the “self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again.” and “The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions”. In other words one purpose of Marxism is to replace the illusion of religion with the human fulfillment that can only come from the state. Wallis’ belief in this form of collective redemption is anti-Christian. It is the belief that salvation can only occur by the people following the dictates of the state; god is eliminated. It is the belief that salvation will occur when Cap and Trade is passed or when health insurance reform becomes the law of the land and when wealth is properly re-distributed by the state. But Christ did not tell his followers to feed the poor for the purposes of ending poverty, or even to relieve the suffering of the poor; the feeding of the poor was solely for the salvation of the individual. Christ did not view social status, class or economic status as an issue in need of justice; the concept of social justice is irrelevant to individual salvation, so Wallis has to re-invent Christ as a community organizer. Wallis wants to replace Faith, Hope and Charity with government coercion. When Christ's apostles voiced concern about their material needs, Christ told them man does not live by bread alone. When Judas complained that the scented oil being used on Jesus feet could be sold and used to feed the poor, Jesus told him, “You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me”. Wallis’ belief in redemption through deeds, negates true Christian redemption, which is the acceptance of Christ as ones personal savior. There is little doubt that Wallis views Christianity not as a relationship with Christ, but a vehicle to institute Marxism. F.A. Haytek describes this process as such;

“The most effective way of making people accept the validity of the values they are to serve is to persuade them that they are really the same as those which they, or at least the best among them, have always held, but which were not properly understood or recognized before. The people are made to transfer their allegiance from the old gods to the new under the pretense that the new gods really are what their sound instinct has always told them but what before had only been dimly seen. And the most effective technique to this end is to use the old words but change the meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regime are expressed.” (Road to Serfdom).

One area that Wallis tried playing both sides is abortion. While waving the pro-life flag, it would be hypocritical in the highest order to claim that one could be aligned with President Obama and pro-life. President Obama is not pro-choice, he is pro-abortion. Like no other politician, President Obama has championed abortion, not as the necessary evil that comes from most pro-choice advocates, but literally something of inestimable value that empowers women and extols the beauty of socialism. The juxtaposition he plays is that abortion is to divisive to allow a law that protects the unborn. It's the classic Nancy Pelosi "cafeteria catholic;" that her Catholicism beliefs don't need to infringe on her public life, so politically she is rightfully pro-choice. In 2004 Wallis championed the lets compromise on abortion  More than 1 million abortions are performed every year in this country. The Democrats should set forth proposals that aim to reduce that number by at least half. Such a campaign could emphasize adoption reform, health care, and child care; combating teenage pregnancy and sexual abuse; improving poor and working women's incomes; and supporting reasonable restrictions on abortion, like parental notification for minors (with necessary legal protections against parental abuse). Such a program could help create some much-needed common ground. The Message Thing In 2009 Wallis reiterated his  pro-choice stance by declaring; "I am encouraged that President Obama’s first action on abortion was to release a statement supporting a common ground approach to reducing abortion, even as he also reiterated his policy of supporting legal choice." ...but Wallis Surprises and Disappoints  Wallis here claims to serve two masters, but his past behaviors shows he is only loyal to one. Wallis is also dedicated to same sex marriage "he thinks the state should sanction gay marriage and that churches should hold ceremonies marrying gay." Diocese, Bishop have ties to social justice group His magazine Sojourners contains ads for pro gay marriage groups .What is fundamentally wrong here is the belief that one can decide what tenets of the church one will follow (and which ones not) as not to be politically insensitive in the secular world. But as Mathew 25 tells us, when Jesus comes and you have not filled you lamp with the word of god, Jesus will say,  Truly I tell you, I don’t know you!

Don’t be fooled by the likes of Jim Wallace and Obama’s other religious mentor, Rev Jeremiah Wright and Black Liberation Theology*. In the final analysts they are defined by the lesser known theme of the dictatorship of the proletariat; to each according to their ability, to each according to their contribution. It is the anthem of Satan.

*According to Black Liberation Theology, the black race was disparaged by the white race who stole their birth right. Collective salvation will occur through social justice when the whites divest themselves of everything they have stolen from the black race. With it's basis in the Emergent Church heretical doctrines, "This new collective spirituality leads people into a socialistic community where rituals, practices, and social justice become a means of salvation, but not the salvation you think of in a personal sense of being born-again through Jesus Christ. This is a collective salvation that includes whole cultures and communities who follow the way of someone referred to as Jesus."(lighthousetrailsresearch.com)