Role of the Church

Soweto Christian Gospel Choir performs in Chicago, Illinois

The times, they are a-changing, and Western man’s institutions are changing too. One of these institutions is organized Christianity: the Church. (“The Church” – with a capital “C” – hereinafter is used in a collective sense, encompassing all organizations which embody the established Christian sects, both Catholic and Protestant, except where the context indicates a specific denomination.)

The Church has endured as a Western institution for about a thousand years – even longer in some parts of the West – but it is now feeling the hurricanes of change and responding to them more strongly than many new institutions.

Spiritual Masochism

Some recent news items concerning the Church will serve as illustrations of the changes which are taking place or have taken place: “The Church’s chief source of income today is women’s vaginas,” the invited speaker explained to her audience at Notre Dame. The assembled Catholic students and faculty listened attentively as Women’s Libber Ti-Grace Atkinson carried her theme back to the time when Mary “was knocked up” and then went on to predict that Catholic women would put an end to this exploitation by destroying the Church, because “the motherfucker belongs to us.”

There was a minor stir inside the United Presbyterian Church (a very minor stir, involving only two congregations) when it was disclosed at the denomination’s 1971 general assembly that a $10,000 contribution from the church’s treasury had been made to aid the legal defense of Angela Davis. Church officials justified the grant as helping to assure a fair trial for the communist Negress, who was charged with complicity in the murder of a judge and three other persons in a shootout staged by Black militants at a Marin County, California, courthouse.

The First Presbyterian Church of Tacoma, Washington, and the First Presbyterian Church of Anchorage, Alaska, however, expressed displeasure and indicated that they preferred the money their members put in the plate each Sunday not end up in the Communist Party’s legal defense fund.

Not to be outdone by the Presbyterians, the Episcopal Church revealed early this year that a $10,000 contribution from its treasury had gone to the militant Indian group which recently sacked the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington. The contribution was authorized by Black militant Episcopalian Leon Modeste, $23,500-a-year head of the Episcopal Church’s “Minority Empowerment Office.”

Unitarians sought last year to quash a grand jury subpoena requiring the production of the bank records of the Unitarian-Universalist Association. The subpoena was issued because Beacon Press, the Unitarians’ publishing house, had published the top-secret “Pentagon papers” stolen by Daniel Ellsberg and his associates.

The same Beacon Press advertising leaflet which listed 4 volumes of Pentagon papers (hardback: $45; paperback: $20) also offered the following Unitarian books: Three Documents of the National Liberation Front (“Americans may now judge for themselves whether the NLF (Viet Cong) principles are consistent with equity and their own sense of justice…”); The Vanguard, by Ruth-Marion Baruch (“A photographic study of the Black Panthers – eloquently capturing their spirits as well as their faces, attitudes as well as activities, in a uniquely personal and intimate introduction to youth and revolution.”); The Right of Revolution, by Truman Nelson (“For those who cannot understand the Black militants’ willingness to burn political bridges,  a gifted writer places new revolutionaries within our oldest patriotic tradition.”); Marriage in Black and White, by Joseph R. Washington, Jr. (“…racial conflict cannot be eliminated until we are willing to confront prejudice on its most personal level-by acceptance of intermarriage.”); and An Essay on Liberation, by Herbert Marcuse, the communist-Jewish senior theoretician.

Beacon Press, as a church organization, is exempt from federal taxes and mails its flyers at the special postage rates allowed to non-profit organizations.

The Massachusetts Bible Society has praised the efforts of a couple of modern Bible scholars, Walter A. Wolfram and Ralph A. Fasold, in its newsletter. Wolfram and Fasold have nearly finished their translation of the Bible into “Black English.”

Here’s the way the Gospel according to St. John reads in their translation: “God really did love everybody in the world. In fact, he loved every last one of those dudes so much that he done give up the onliest Son he had. Any man that believe in Him, he gonna have a life that ain’t never gonna end. He ain’t never gonna die.”

No Escape from Liberalism

The instances of change cited above may seem atypically bizarre to some churchgoers who have thus far escaped the mainstream of change and still preserve a pre-World War II, Norman Rockwellian image of the Church. Even the smallest backwater congregations, if they are linked by denominational ties to a national organization, must inevitably fall under the influence of national trends, however.

The immediate effect of the liberalization of the Church has been a drastic decline in its influence. During the 1960’s overall church attendance in North America dropped by more than one-sixth.

Young People Abandon Church

More significantly, in the age bracket 21-29 years church attendance dropped by one-third in the 1960’s and is falling even more rapidly in the 1970’s. During the same decade Bible sales fell 30 per cent.

All Christian sects are now experiencing a critical shortage of clergymen. More priests and ministers return to secular life every year, and fewer young men enter the seminaries. This sharp decline in the number of clergymen can be seen, for example, in the almost complete substitution of laymen for priests on the faculties of most church-owned schools.

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[T]he Church is not dying gracefully or with dignity

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Adapting to a TV Life-style

The Church, in attempting to adapt to radical changes in its environment, has, like the dinosaur, failed. Unlike the dinosaur, however, the Church is not dying gracefully or with dignity. Its attempts to maintain its grip have led it to plumb the depths of degeneracy in a degenerate age.

Traditional services and ceremonies of beauty and solemnity have been corrupted by the introduction of elements of “mod” culture. More and more they are taking on the aspects of “happenings,” with rock combos replacing organists and choirs, beads and psychedelic lights taking the place of vestments and candles, “swinging” ditties and jive-dialect Bible translations edging out the old hymns and the King James version.

Social Gospel

Sermons have, in recent years, been giving fairly short shrift to spiritual matters and instead have tended to become social-action harangues. The pulpit has, to a very large extent, become a sounding board for neo-liberalism.

In the more avant-garde denominations, the prestige attached to a minister is determined not so much by his ability to interpret Holy Writ for his congregation as it is by the number of times he has been in jail for pouring blood on Selective Service records or supplying the teenagers in his flock with pot.

Religious Thirst Unquenched by Modern Church

And yet, becoming “mod” and “relevant” has not won for the Church the affection of the present generation; it has only lost the respect of a portion of the old generation. Pot and pacifism and “love” have served as poor substitutes for reverence and awe.

But the Church is not dead yet. Left to its own devices, it would probably linger in the West for another hundred years or more before becoming a negligible factor in the overall scheme of things.

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The Church once stood as a bitter and determined opponent

of the communist movement. Today it has-at best- settled on

peaceful coexistence with this deadly enemy of mankind.

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Dying but Still Dangerous

Though the Church has lost its former position of absolute moral authority, tradition still lends a not inconsiderable weight to its influence. Many Christians who are no longer fervent in their adherence to the Church’s doctrines-even those who no longer attend church services-still allow their opinions and attitudes to be governed to a greater or lesser extent by the Church.

Unfortunately, this influence is being sadly misused. The Church, in turning away from purely theological matters and concerning itself primarily with politics and social and racial policies instead, has-on virtually every major issue-taken a position diametrically opposed to Western interests.

The Church once stood as a bitter and determined opponent of the communist movement. Today is has-at best-settled on peaceful coexistence with this deadly enemy of mankind. At worst-and this is becoming more common every day-it has become an enthusiastic collaborator, not only with formally recognized Marxist groups, but with practically every ragtag band of sub-men big enough to organize a street demonstration in the United States or overthrow the ruling clique in banana republic.

Church Now Racially Destructive

Most serious of all is the Church’s racial attitude. It is not simply that “racism” has become the No. One Devil, the only unforgivable heresy, the ultimate sin in the eyes of the Church, but all the major sects, Catholic as well as Protestant, have perversely embraced a program calculated to physically destroy the racial basis of Western man’s existence.

This program has already advanced to the stage where a number of church organizations have issued statements supporting-even urging-miscegenation by Christians.

Crimes Against God and Nature

A report released a few months ago by the Presbyterian Church in the United States, a predominantly Southern denomination, said that Presbyterian officials “recognize with appreciation the contribution to better human relations in the world community that may come from Christian marriage across cultural, national, and racial lines.” Another section of the report encouraged church members who are considering adoption to give serious thought to adopting Negro or Oriental orphans instead of White infants.

And the Presbyterian Church in the United States is no worse than other major denominations in this regard. Everyone has heard the insidious spot advertisements sponsored by various denominational groups which are intended to instill feelings of racial guilt in White listeners while undermining racial pride and solidarity.

Backing Black Terror

On the international level we have the sorry spectacle of such ecumenical groups as the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches lobbying viciously to isolate and undermine the independent White governments of Rhodesia and the Republic of South Africa.

Last September the World Council of Churches allocated $200,000 to support Black terrorist “freedom fighters” in Africa. Much of that money has already been spent on weapons and has allowed a number of terrorist raids to be launched from Zambia against White settlers in Rhodesia this year.

Likewise, in Australia the government’s abandonment of its former “White Australia” immigration policy was due to much pressure from the powerful Australian Council of Churches as from Jewish and Marxist groups.

Tragic Betrayal

The present racial policies of the Church are tragic and ironic, for it was Western man-and Western man alone-who built the Church.

For several centuries the interests of the race and the interests of the Church were one. It was under the sign of the cross that the Teutonic Knights conquered and civilized the lands of eastern Europe, that the Crusaders extended the Western imperium into the Orient, that our European ancestors defended the West against invasions by Moors and Mongol hordes.

The Church was, for hundreds of years, the principal repository for Western science and learning, the most important stimulus for Western creative and artistic energies. All the great artists of the Middle Ages, all the architectural splendors of Gothic Europe, much of the sublime music ever created drew their inspiration from the Church.

Subversion by Aliens

But the times have changed. Those who most bitterly resent the changes which have taken place in the Church place the blame in several areas.

Some see the problem as a matter of infiltration and subversion of the Church by alien elements. This is, indeed, not a new problem. It played a major role in bringing on the Spanish Inquisition in the 15^th century, after Jewish converts, or marranos, began infiltrating the Catholic Church.

The infiltration has certainly increased since the 15^th century, and it has had profound effects. For one thing, there has been a radical revision of the Church’s attitude toward Jews.

Bulwark Against Culture Distortion

Until recent times the Church was a major bulwark against Jewish influences in the life of the West. If the natural instincts of the people failed to keep the Jews at a distance, the Church was prepared to do so on purely religious grounds.

Now every bit of Church doctrine and liturgy has been carefully scanned and, wherever necessary, “modernized” to bring it into line with the new Judeo-Christian way of looking at things. Even the beautiful and moving Passion Play at Oberammergau has recently been twisted into conformity with the new line by removing or recasting all those portions which portrayed Jews in a bad light.

Putting Jews on a Pedestal

Lutherans and Presbyterians have recently begun publishing new Sunday school materials which no longer place the blame for the Crucifixion on the Jews (“We are all responsible”) but instead describe them in the same terms the Jews use in referring to themselves: “a special people,” “God’s chosen people,” etc.

The current trend toward ecumenicism is also tending to stress a connection between Christianity and Judaism.

Decadence is Major Factor

Others see the problem as a simple matter of decadence rather than deliberate subversion. In their view the really significant symptom is not the Red rabble-rouser-the Father Groppi-in the pulpit; it is the sincere Methodist minister, anxious to keep up the attendance-and the collections-at his Sunday services, who lies awake at night thinking of new Madison Avenue gimmicks to make his service “relevant.”

Regardless of the extent to which it is deliberate or involuntary, the fact is that the Church is suffering from exactly the same disease which has infected all the other institutions of Western civilization: neo-liberalism.

Mulatto Catholics in Rio de Janeiro celebrate the rite of an 

African spirit cult on the beach. They are offering a sacrifice 

to Iemanja, a sea witch. The Roman Catholic Church 

increasingly tolerates irregularities of this sort as the non-White 

membership of the Church grows. In some parts of Latin 

America Christian doctrine is so strongly modified by local 

paganism as to be barely recognizable.

Mulatto Failure

The burning zeal, the intolerance of heresy, the unquestioning devotion to the Faith-all the things that once gave the Church its vitality-are gone. What is left is an empty, materialistic shell.

The fervent men who once devoted their lives to the service of God have been replaced by Ivy League organization men who are eager to please, adapt, conform. They have held moistened forefingers to the winds of change and have let themselves be persuaded that those winds are blowing toward a mulatto future. And they want to get there ahead of everyone else.

A More Fatal Ill

Many Christians nurse the hope that the Church’s faults can be cured by rooting out the subversives and reversing the neo-liberal policies. They see the Church as a fortress of goodness, sorely beset now by its enemies but worthy of being defended and set right again, for the ultimate good of our race. They fail to see a more fatal ill.

That ill lies in the changing racial complexion of Christendom. The fact is that Christendom always has been, in theory, a community of faith rather than of blood. Just as with all cultural phenomena, the Church reflects the racial characteristics of the human masses who give it life. When the Holy Roman Empire was the secular arm of Christendom, those masses were substantially Aryan. Today they are not.

Approximately half the Christians in the world today are non-White, and by the end of this millennium non-White Christians will outnumber White Christians by three to two, if the present shift of Christendom’s center of gravity to the south continues. Regardless of the reasons for this shift, it is real and has proceeded far beyond any possibility of recall.

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[T]he Church can no longer be regarded as a Western 
institution, and those who serve it cannot also 

wholeheartedly serve our race.

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Cast Corruption Aside

Thus, the Church can no longer be regarded as a Western institution, and those who serve it cannot also wholeheartedly serve our race.

This poses a choice for every man and every woman of the West: a choice which will be difficult for some and easy for others, but a choice must be made.

The strongest and the best will make the right choice, for they will understand that their inner faith is the essence and the Church superficiality. While the superficiality can be corrupted, the faith can nevertheless be kept pure.

They will cast aside the corrupt and cling to the pure, and in the trials which lie ahead it will stand them in good stead.

From Attack! tabloid No. 19, 1973