by Bob Adelmann
Last month I made light of the fact that my name didn’t appear on the list of extremists published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, but I took comfort that a lot of people whom I know, and some friends, were on the list. This time my task is to expose them for what they really are: a “hate” group whose rants against “extremists” not only include evangelical Christians but attacks on the very foundation of the American republic.
A couple of biographical sketches on the SPLC are helpful in exposing them. From Wiki we find that the SPLC is “noted for its … educational programs that promote tolerance.” From the Legal Dictionary we learn that the SPLC “tracks hate groups and runs a program to educate Americans about racism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of intolerance.”
From World News Daily we have learned that not only do their “programs” now put evangelical Christians at the top of the list, but that list is now being used by the US Army to indoctrinate its troops. In an Army reserve unit in Pennsylvania an Equal Opportunity training brief entitled “Extremism and Extremist Organizations” included a slide with the title “Religious Extremism.” That slide listed a number of truly evil and dangerous groups including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Hamas and the Nation of Islam. But at the top of the list was “evangelical Christianity.”
When word of this got out (an audience member, himself an evangelical Christian, got angry and demanded a copy of the program), Col. Ron Crews, executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, was outraged:
Men and women of faith who have served the Army faithfully for centuries shouldn’t be likened to those who have regularly threatened the peace and security of the United States. It is dishonorable for any U.S. military entity to allow this type of wrongheaded characterization. It also appears that some military entities are using definitions of “hate” and “extreme” from the lists of anti-Christian political organizations…
The idea of salvation being exclusively through Christ is a key doctrine of the Christian faith. It is amazing that the trainer felt they had the authority and right to list evangelical Christian, Catholics and orthodox Jews alongside groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.
Crews then exposed where the Army got its information:
This is absolutely abhorrent to all those who identify themselves as evangelical Christians in this country. We know other commands have used the SPLC list in briefing soldiers about hate crimes and hate groups, but this particular briefing is the most egregious in terms of blatantly identifying evangelical Christianity as the number one extremist group in the United States.
When the SPLC attacks evangelical Christianity, it attacks the foundations of the republic. Wiki again is helpful here. It notes that “its earliest leaders included John Wesley, George Whitfield and Jonathan Edwards,” amazing men who were instrumental during the Great Awakening of the 1730s and 40s and who laid the foundation for the beliefs held by most of the founders of the republic. The best study I’ve seen that explains the impact of evangelical Christianity on the founders is The Light and the Glory by Peter Marshall (son of Peter Marshall, the Senate Chaplain) and David Manuel.
Rather than celebrating the freedom from oppression that evangelicals accomplished at the founding of the republic, the SPLC shows the depths of its depravity by promoting such as “extremism.” What’s especially outrageous is that useful idiots in the US Army have picked up the lie and promoted it as truth to its troops.
Crews has been assured that the briefing in Pennsylvania was “isolated” and won’t be repeated, but I greet that with great skepticism. The SPLC will continue to spread its lies as it has for years. It’s a poison that continues to drip into the bloodstream of the American republic, rotting away its core values and leading its misinformed citizens back into slavery once again.
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A graduate of Cornell University and a former investment advisor, Bob is a regular contributor to The New American magazine and blogs frequently at www.LightFromTheRight.com, primarily on economics and politics. He can be reached at badelmann@thenewamerican.com.
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