Chuck Carlson from www.wtth.org comes to Canton to expose Evangelical Churches thwarting the Bible into supporting Israel.

By Saad Husain
saadhusain@yahoo.com

There?s a protest rally going on.  No, not the protest rally with millions and millions of people against the war on Iraq.  It?s not a protest rally against the administration and their new ?Patriot Acts.?  It?s not a protest rally against any recent atrocity in Palestine and what the Israeli?s are doing there.  But it?s still a protest rally, and of all places against a church – The Calvary Community Church.  It has a large conservative Christians congregation, the kind of evangelicals who not only solidly oppose abortion but who also tend to read the Bible as literally as possible, support people like Jerry Fallwell and Pat Robertson and vote Republican.  This is the ?silent majority? who provide the mainstream support of George W. Bush and his administration.

Chuck Carlson stands in front of the church holding a “PRO-LIFE” sign.  He gets puzzled looks from the nicely dressed folks going to church, wondering what?s going on.  Then they see the second sign with “IRAQ? WWJD?” written on it.  Now some understand.  Carlson is asking is ?What Would Jesus Do?? with respect to Iraq.  Would Jesus support the killing of innocent life for financial or political gain?  How can one be Pro-Life for the yet to be born, but support the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives?  For Carlson, the answer is obvious. No true follower of Jesus could support a preemptive strike against another nation, even one as bad as Saddam Hussein s Iraq.

But this was not Carlson?s first foray into questioning the mainstream church and their silence about innocent lives being killed.  In 1991, he belonged to a Southern Baptist congregation in Arizona and was shocked that the pastor had nothing to say about the large loss of innocent Iraqi life in Operation Desert Storm. He and like-minded friends later founded a Internet site they call We Hold These Truths (www.whtt.org) to spread the group?s message. He did not make it tax exempt like other religious-based groups to avoid the restrictions on political activity that come with nonprofit status but still gets no salary and mostly operates with volunteer labor.

He?s led numerous protest marches against many different kinds of churches, focusing on conservative congregations that say they are anti-abortion but won t take a stand against the deaths that result from modern warfare. “We are truly a pro-life organization,” Carlson insists.  Before Christmas, Carlson and Project Strait Gate came to All Saints Episcopal Church on North Central Avenue, displaying signs with slogans like “Choose Life, Not War” and “Blessed Are the Peacemakers.”  The march was very orderly since Carlson keeps the events small and request his companions not to raise their voices or to even use bullhorns.  After the event, All Saints Reverend Deane Lierle said, ?”They were very mannerly.”

He was subsequently invited to give a talk in the Canton Masjid to inform members the underlying story behind the subtle changes in the Bible which transformed it from a book about Peace into a book which accede to the state of Israel.  In spite of the frigid temperature in Michigan, Carlson readily agreed and was welcomed warmly.  There was a preannouncement about the event on the February 14th Juma and so more than 100 people came to listen to his speech on February 16 after Zuhr.

Carlson explained how the Scofield Bible which is being commonly used to indoctrinate the Christian majority came about and about Scofield, how he had been arrested for fraud and forgery and was not a person who could be trusted, let alone be able to write a commentary on the Bible.  He also explained how people like Pat Robertson and his ilk (Carlson calls them celebrity preachers) use the Scofield Bible as justification for what Israel is doing and to oppose Israel is to commit a sin!

He gave a little background:  According to Gallop polls, 46 percent of Americans or about 127 million are evangelical Christians and many of those rely on the Scofield Bible.  Jerry Falwell claims that 70 million “evangelicals” stand with him in support of Israel s right to eject 2.5 million Palestinians from Israel.  Paul Boyer, retired professor of history at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of the book When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture says,

 “Part of the support for a war on Iraq is coming from fundamentalist believers who see it as a step in the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.”

For Chuck Carlson, all of this means that many American Christians, who he says should be influenced by Jesus teachings of peace and forgiveness, instead salivate over the prospect of wholesale destruction at the hands of American troops. “It s turned them into warmongers,” he says. Evangelical Christians are a powerful voting bloc. They are the glue that holds Bush s war program together.”  He exposes a major chink in the War Machines Neo Conservative Armor.