From:
"Friends" <friends@thefriendsway.com>
To: <
mccoskey@imbi.edu>
Subject:
URGENT Re: Religious Repression at Washington Community High School
Date:
Saturday, May 19, 2001 7:32 PM
DEFY RELIGIOUS REPRESSION
From: Rev.
A. Friend
Regarding:
No Prayer at Washington Community Highschool Graduation Ceremony, Washington,
Ill.
Dear
Brothers and Sisters In Spirit:
There is,
today in America, a highly organized and concerted WAR OF REPRESSION being
waged against Religion. This WAR against Religion is blatant and relentless.
The efforts of those who would REPRESS Religion are increasingly bold and
aggressive. The assault on Religion began on the West and East Coasts and is,
as you are now experiencing, being spread across America in a "pincer"
like fashion, just as any invading army would do.
The
"cover" for this effort and the strategy behind it is to make it SEEM
that events, such as yours, are just isolated incidents that have no connection
with one another. However, this is not the case. Consider these things:
(1)
Everywhere this specter raises its ugly head, the ACLU is right there - often
ahead of the actual incident that provokes it. Often, they have their
"Dupes" (a Communist technical term meaning: "a patriotic person
who is deceived into aiding and abetting the Communist cause") in place
and ready to attack.
(2) The very scenario that we are seeing
across America - and which you are experiencing this day - is straight out of
Lenin's textbook on Communism and the Communist agenda. Think not? Please read
Lenin's own words at the end of this email.
What can we
do? What can you do? There are many things that can be done. You COULD stand
outside the Graduation Ceremony and Pray and Sing songs of Praise aloud. A
Christian student in the Graduation Ceremony COULD grab the microphone and give
a Prayer while being wrestled to the ground.... It is not my place to advise on
these matters. Indeed, the highest of these is that we must each, individually
and in harmony with one another, ASK GOD in Prayer to give us His Divine
Guidance and HEAR what HE directs with an open and clear heart and mind. In
this way, we can - as individuals, small groups, and Congregations formulate
plans that are UNIFIED IN SPIRIT while diverse enough to fit our localities and
keep the enemy who is assaulting us, off guard.
Above all,
we must have a UNITING THEME that inspires and directs us in a GENERAL way,
without being tyrannical or dictatorial. I humbly propose that this theme be:
DEFY
RELIGIOUS REPRESSION
For THIS, is
the essence of what must be done to stop the assault on Religion in our Beloved
Country. Nothing less will do. We must
share and promote this THEME to all the Churches and, indeed, all good
Religious people of every FAITH across America. Then, we must take up the
COURAGE to act upon our CONVICTION.
I know that
this may seem too "radical" for many. We are God-Loving and
Law-Abiding people. Still, I ask you to remember that, had the early Christians
obeyed the UNJUST Roman Laws that outlawed Christianity - there would be NO
Christians or Christianity in the world today. As the Hindu Saint Mahatma
Gandhi demonstrated so clearly, when laws are unjust and are used as tools of
persecution and repression - good men and women have a DUTY to God and Country
to stand up, peaceably, against them AND willingly and joyously suffer whatever
consequences may come from such ACTS OF CONSCIENCE arising from DIVINE
GUIDANCE.
This is my
conviction. I hope that it will also become yours. Our Constitution and Bill of
Rights do NOT say that our Government GRANTS us our RIGHTS. Instead, the
Founders of our Beloved Country, Guided by GOD'S Infinite Wisdom, wrote these
hallowed documents to expressly say that our Rights are GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS. I say
that, as GOD has given us our Rights - ONLY God can alter them or take them
away.
Please
consider these words seriously and take them into your Prayers and Meditations.
I am convinced that all Religions and all Americans stand, this day, at a
CROSSROADS. The Left-hand road leads to Communism, atheism and SLAVERY - the
Right road leads to Freedom, Democracy and the full manifestation and fruits of
God's WILL and GRACE that has built this country and given Her People the
Strength to excel beyond any other. We MUST take the Right Road. To do this, we
must put our bodies and our very lives ON THE LINE for God and Country.
You stand -
this moment - in the unique position of striking a powerful blow for God. Stand
up and DEFY RELIGIOUS REPRESSION and show the whole Country what COURAGE and
willing SELF-SACRIFICE God can raise up in HIS People!
If God
should direct you to stand against the unjust law by which the Forces of
Darkness seek to drive Religion out of the public view, I ask you to make signs
(many signs) expressing the slogan above (i.e.: DEFY RELIGIOUS REPRESSION) and
present them boldly and VISIBLY so that all Americans who Love God will know
that NOW is the time to stand and be counted.
Finally, a
final word of Truth. Truth is very important to those who Love God. Truth, by
the way, means less than NOTHING to Communism or those who are Communists. But,
just below God, Truth is the mainstay of my life. Therefore, I must tell you
something that may surprise and - I hope - encourage you. You see, though I dearly
Love and Revere Jesus, I am not a Christian Minister. However, one of the
primary vows of my Faith is to, "WORK FOR AND UPHOLD SPIRITUAL FREEDOM FOR
ALL PEOPLE." This, God has directed me to do. This I willingly do.
So, take
Heart, dear Brothers and Sisters in Spirit. There are literally millions of us
out here who are not Christians that will stand with you - and if necessary die
with you for the Freedom of every man and woman to Worship God as he or she
sees fit.
Please read
the Lenin article that follows below the ==== line. It will open your eyes.
May the
Peace, Love and Grace of God be with you all.
God Save
America.
Rev.
Adhyatma B. Friend
======================================================================
Taken from
the "Lenin Internet Archive"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Socialism
and Religion
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written:
approx. December 3, 1905
First
Published: Nozvaya Zhizn (No. 28), December 3, 1905
Source:
Collected Works Volume 10, p. 83-87
Transcription/Markup:
Brian Basgen
Online
Version: Lenin Internet Archive (marxists.org) 2000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Present-day society is wholly based on the
exploitation of the vast masses of the working class by a tiny minority of the
population, the class of the landowners and that of the capitalists. It is a
slave society, since the "free" workers, who all their life work for
the capitalists, are "entitled" only to such means of subsistence as
are essential for the maintenance of slaves who produce profit, for the
safeguarding and perpetuation of capitalist slavery.
The economic
oppression of the workers inevitably calls forth and engenders every kind of
political oppression and social humiliation, the coarsening and darkening of
the spiritual and moral life of the masses. The workers may secure a greater or
lesser degree of political liberty to fight for their economic emancipation,
but no amount of liberty will rid them of poverty, unemployment, and oppression
until the power of capital is overthrown. Religion is one of the forms of
spiritual oppression which everywhere weighs down heavily upon the masses of
the people, over burdened by their perpetual work for others, by want and
isolation. Impotence of the exploited classes in their struggle against the
exploiters just as inevitably gives rise to the belief in a better life after
death as impotence of the savage in his battle with nature gives rise to belief
in gods, devils, miracles, and the like. Those who toil and live in want all
their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on
earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live
by the labor of others are taught by religion to practice charity while on
earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence
as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in
heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual
booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for
a life more or less worthy of man.
But a slave who
has become conscious of his slavery and has risen to struggle for his
emancipation has already half ceased to be a slave. The modern class-conscious
worker, reared by large-scale factory industry and enlightened by urban life,
contemptuously casts aside religious prejudices, leaves heaven to the priests
and bourgeois bigots, and tries to win a better life for himself here on earth.
The proletariat of today takes the side of socialism, which enlists science in
the battle against the fog of religion, and frees the workers from their belief
in life after death by welding them together to fight in the present for a
better life on earth.
Religion
must be declared a private affair. In these words socialists usually express
their attitude towards religion. But the meaning of these words should be
accurately defined to prevent any misunderstanding. We demand that religion be
held a private affair so far as the state is concerned. But by no means can we
consider religion a private affair so far as our Party is concerned. Religion
must be of no concern to the state, and religious societies must have no
connection with governmental authority. Everyone must be absolutely free to
profess any religion he pleases, or no religion whatever, i.e., to be an
atheist, which every socialist is, as a rule. Discrimination among citizens on
account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare
mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be
eliminated. No subsidies should be granted to the established church nor state
allowances made to ecclesiastical and religious societies. These should become
absolutely free associations of like minded citizens, associations independent
of the state. Only the complete fulfillment of these demands can put an end to
the shameful and accursed past when the church lived in feudal dependence on
the state, and Russian citizens lived in feudal dependence on the established
church, when medieval, inquisitorial laws (to this day remaining in our criminal
codes and on our statute-books) were in existence and were applied, persecuting
men for their belief or disbelief, violating men's consciences, and linking
cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes with the dispensation of
this or that dope by the established church. Complete separation of Church and
State is what the socialist proletariat demands of the modern state and the
modern church.
The Russian
revolution must put this demand into effect as a necessary component of
political freedom. In this respect, the Russian revolution is in a particularly
favorable position, since the revolting officialism of the police-ridden feudal
autocracy has called forth discontent, unrest and indignation even among the
clergy. However abject, however ignorant Russian Orthodox clergymen may have
been, even they have now been awakened by the thunder of the downfall of the
old, medieval order in Russia. Even they are joining in the demand for freedom,
are protesting against bureaucratic practices and officialism, against the
spying for the police imposed on the "servants of God". We socialists
must lend this movement our support, carrying the demands of honest and sincere
members of the clergy to their conclusion, making them stick to their words about
freedom, demanding that they should resolutely break all ties between religion
and the police. Either you are sincere, in which case you must stand for the
complete separation of Church and State and of School and Church, for religion
to be declared wholly and absolutely a private affair. Or you do not accept
these consistent demands for freedom, in which case you evidently are still
held captive by the traditions of the inquisition, in which case you evidently
still cling to your cosy government jobs and government-derived incomes, in
which case you evidently do not believe in the spiritual power of your weapon
and continue to take bribes from the state. And in that case the
class-conscious workers of all Russia declare merciless war on you.
So far as
the party of the socialist proletariat is concerned, religion is not a private
affair. Our Party is an association of class-conscious, advanced fighters for
the emancipation of the working class. Such an association cannot and must not
be indifferent to lack of class-consciousness, ignorance or obscurantism in the
shape of religious beliefs. We demand complete disestablishment of the Church
so as to be able to combat the religious fog with purely ideological and solely
ideological weapons, by means of our press and by word of mouth. But we founded
our association, the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party, precisely for such
a struggle against every religious bamboozling of the workers. And to us the
ideological struggle is not a private affair, but the affair of the whole
Party, of the whole proletariat.
If that is
so, why do we not declare in our Programme that we are atheists? Why do we not
forbid Christians and other believers in God to join our Party?
The answer
to this question will serve to explain the very important difference in the way
the question of religion is presented by the bourgeois democrats and the
Social-Democrats.
Our
Programme is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist,
world-outlook. An explanation of our Programme, therefore, necessarily includes
an explanation of the true historical and economic roots of the religious fog.
Our propaganda necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism; the publication
of the appropriate scientific literature, which the autocratic feudal
government has hitherto strictly forbidden and persecuted, must now form one of
the fields of our Party work. We shall now probably have to follow the advice
Engels once gave to the German Socialists: to translate and widely disseminate
the literature of the eighteenth-century French Enlighteners and
atheists.["Fluchtlings-Literatur", Volksstaat (No. 73) June 22,
1874)]
But under no
circumstances ought we to fall into the error of posing the religious question
in an abstract, idealistic fashion, as an "intellectual" question
unconnected with the class struggle, as is not infrequently done by the
radical-democrats from among the bourgeoisie. It would be stupid to think that,
in a society based on the endless oppression and coarsening of the worker
masses, religious prejudices could be dispelled by purely propaganda methods.
It would be bourgeois narrow-mindedness to forget that the yoke of religion
that weighs upon mankind is merely a product and reflection of the economic
yoke within society. No number of pamphlets and no amount of preaching can
enlighten the proletariat, if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against
the dark forces of capitalism. Unity in this really revolutionary struggle of
the oppressed class for the creation of a paradise on earth is more important
to us than unity of proletarian opinion on paradise in heaven.
That is the
reason why we do not and should not set forth our atheism in our Programme;
that is why we do not and should not prohibit proletarians who still retain
vestiges of their old prejudices from associating themselves with our Party. We
shall always preach the scientific world-outlook, and it is essential for us to
combat the inconsistency of various "Christians". But that does not
mean in the least that the religious question ought to be advanced to first
place, where it does not belong at all; nor does it mean that we should allow
the forces of the really revolutionary economic and political struggle to be
split up on account of third-rate opinions or senseless ideas, rapidly losing
all political importance, rapidly being swept out as rubbish by the very course
of economic development.
Everywhere
the reactionary bourgeoisie has concerned itself, and is now beginning to
concern itself in Russia, with the fomenting of religious strife - in order
thereby to divert the attention of the masses from the really important and
fundamental economic and political problems, now being solved in practice by
the all-Russian proletariat uniting in revolutionary struggle. This reactionary
policy of splitting up the proletarian forces, which today manifests itself
mainly in Black-Hundred pogroms, may tomorrow conceive some more subtle forms.
We, at any rate, shall oppose it by calmly, consistently and patiently preaching
proletarian solidarity and the scientific world-outlook - a preaching alien to
any stirring up of secondary differences.
The
revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private
affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system,
cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open
struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the
religious humbugging of mankind.
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