In 1975, President Gerald Ford admitted that the CIA had, in the past, used missionaries as agents and held out the possibility that it might do so in the future. Ford’s CIA director, George H. W. Bush, issued an internal CIA memo in 1976 that terminated “paid or contractual” relationships with “American clergymen” and stated the agreements would not be renewed. President Jimmy Carter’s CIA director, Stansfield Turner, issued another CIA guideline in 1977 that stated: “American church groups will not be used as funding cut-outs (fronts) for CIA purposes and that “no secret, paid or unpaid, contractual relationship with any American clergyman or missionary . . . who is sent out by a mission or church organization to preach, teach, heal or proselytize” will be established by the CIA.
National Council of Churches official Eugene Stockwell, a Methodist missionary, urged a ban on contacts between missionaries and the CIA. He stated, “Church bodies overseas have the right to expect that the relationships of United States religious personnel to those churches will be solely at the service of common worldwide Christian missions and will not be used in any way for the purpose of one government.” He added that the CIA’s use of missionaries threatened their safety.
In 1982, the issue of CIA use of missionaries was once again raised. CIA director William Casey and Vice President Bush tried to assure religious leaders that the agency had not returned to the practice of using missionaries as spies. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch of June 13, 1982, Casey and CIA External Affairs Director William Doswell told the Richmond-based Southern Baptist Foreign Missions Board that the CIA’s use of missionaries violated the First Amendment on separation of church and state. The Baptist Mission Board president, Dr. R. Keith Parks, had requested the meeting with Casey due to “persistent rumors of contact” by CIA agents with missionaries. The same day Casey was meeting with the Southern Baptists in Richmond, Bush was taking up the missionary spy issue with officials at the Southern Baptist convention in New Orleans.
More recently, the CIA has been actively recruiting Mormon missionaries due to their foreign language skills and supposedly “clean” backgrounds.
Congolese Tutsi rebel General Laurent Nkunda, now allegedly exiled in Rwanda, is associated with a mysterious U.S.-based group called “Rebels for Christ.” Nkunda has been accused of receiving covert U.S. intelligence support through Rwanda.
Perhaps the most infamous CIA association with a religious group was the People’s Temple compound in Jonestown, Guyana.
On August 31, 2007, WMR reported, “WMR has uncovered documents that show the CIA kept extensive open source records on the agency’s suspected involvement in the People’s Temple cult that set up shop in Jonestown, Guyana, after moving from the San Francisco Bay Area. Most official U.S. intelligence files on Jonestown remain classified . . . The U.S. ambassador to Guyana at the time of the Jonestown massacre was John Burke, who served with his deputy chief of mission, Richard Dwyer, and were allegedly working for the CIA in Bangkok during the Vietnam war. Dwyer was wounded in the Port Kaituma shootings where [Congressman Leo] Ryan and the others were killed. On Sept. 27, 1980, Jack Anderson reported that Dwyer was a CIA agent and a friend of Jones. Anderson reported that on one of the tapes made during the mass suicide Jones was heard saying, “Get Dwyer out of here before something happens to him.” Dwyer reportedly left Guyana for Grenada after the massacre. The US consular officer at the embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, was Richard McCoy, who allegedly liaised with Jim Jones and was a U.S. Air Force intelligence official. Another alleged CIA employee, operating under State Department cover, was Dan Webber, who also visited the Jonestown the day after the massacre. Joe Holsinger, Ryan’s assistant and friend, later said that he believed that Jonestown was a massive mind control experiment and that the CIA and military intelligence were involved in the program.”
Recent reports from central Asia and Latin America suggest the CIA is back in its old business of mixing espionage with religion and giving credence to what some observers claim “CIA” actually stands for: “Christians In Action.”
http://www.mathaba.net/news/?x=618620
Focussed on Chile 1970’s
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/Villains_Afoot_COTP.html
Covert ops, Christian-style – former CIA operative Mark Tooley now works for the religious right – Watch on the Right – Column
Since its beginning in 1981, the Institute on Religion and Democrac [IRD] has again and again attacked the National Council of Churches, the World Council, United Methodists, and Pres-byterians. It has refrained from attacking churches with a right-wing agenda, such as the Southern Baptists and the Roman Catholics.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_n4_v56/ai_18501023/
Within this atmosphere of deceit which clandestine work seems to require, the FBI still manipulates the American media and the CIA fuels an international propaganda machine — most likely the biggest covert operation of them all.
http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=1836
* Medellin, Columbia , Evangelical Fundamentalist “Born Again Christians” attract many killers active in the drug trade
…
The “Born Agains” began to take control of the Republican Assemblies in the state of California way back in 1991 and their control and influence has spread across the rest of the states since then. It is said that there are over forty million “Born Again Christians” in the US. Many people rightly believe that the “Born Again ” movement is fascist in nature and in it’s practise! These fascist “Born Again Christians are against homosexuals and they believe in exclusive salvation . Exclusive salvation means to them ; only those who are “Born Again Christians” will enter the kingdom of God! All others will burn in hell! They are Anti-Christ.
…
However, one thing must be said ; ” all “Born Again Christian ” groups , The Christian Fellowship “Prayer Groups”, “The Church of Christ, The Pentecostal Movement etc , which have close ties to the CIA must be very suspect!
EXPOSÉ: THE “CHRISTIAN” MAFIA by Wayne Madsen
The Christian Fellowship Church (Cult) set up by a NAZI – Abraham Vereide a Norwegian living in the USA after WW2
Quote – ”
EXPOSÉ: THE “CHRISTIAN” MAFIA Where Those Who Now Run the U.S. Government Came From and Where They Are Taking Us
By Wayne Madsen
The Roots of the Fellowship
The roots of the Fellowship go back to the 1930s and a Norwegian immigrant and Methodist minister named Abraham Vereide. According to Fellowship archives maintained at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College in Illinois, Vereide, who immigrated from Norway in 1905, began an outreach ministry in Seattle in April 1935. But his religious outreach involved nothing more than pushing for an anti-Communist, anti-union, anti-Socialist, and pro-Nazi German political agenda. A loose organization and secrecy were paramount for Vereide. Fellowship archives state that Vereide wanted his movement to “carry out its objective through personal, trusting, informal, unpublicized contact between people.” Vereide’s establishment of his Prayer Breakfast Movement for anti-Socialist and anti-International Workers of the World (IWW or “Wobblies”) Seattle businessmen in 1935 coincided with the establishment of another pro-Nazi German organization in the United States, the German-American Bund. Vereide saw his prayer movement replacing labor unions.
A student of the un-Christian German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, Vereide’s thoughts about a unitary religion based on an unyielding subservience to a composite notion of “Jesus” put him into the same category as many of the German nationalist philosophers who were favored by Hitler and the Nazis. Nietzsche wrote the following of Christianity: “When we hear the ancient bells growling on a Sunday morning we ask ourselves: Is it really possible! This, for a Jew, crucified two thousand years ago, who said he was God’s son? The proof of such a claim is lacking.” One philosophical fellow traveler of Vereide was the German Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, a colleague of Leo Strauss, the father of American neo-conservatism and the mentor of such present-day American neo-conservatives as Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz.”
xxx
The Charismatic Movement Is Dangerous …Watch Out For It!
Marion H. Reynolds, Jr.
April 19, 1919 – Sept. 3, 1997
©Fundamental Evangelistic Association (adapted)
AT THE TURN of the century, the present-day Pentecostal Movement came into being, emphasizing “speaking in tongues” and “divine healing.” Their failure to “rightly divide the Word of Truth” led to many false teachings regarding the ministry of the Holy Spirit and produced confusion in the minds of the saved and unsaved religionists alike. This Pentecostal Movement arose mainly from within various Protestant churches but they were soon forced out, either because of their unusual beliefs and practices or, in some cases, because they felt unhappy in churches which had become liberal theologically and worldly in position and practice. At least two things can be said for most of these early Pentecostals-they utterly repudiated the liberalism of the ecumenical movement and would not condone mixing the world with the church.
In the 1960’s a new movement took shape, sharing the basic doctrines of Pentecostalism but advocating a “stay in” rather than a “come out” policy with regard to church affiliations. This movement is commonly known as the “Charismatic Movement.” It involves not only various Protestant churches but Roman Catholic churches as well. In fact, if one is able to “speak in tongues” or if he has experienced a “healing,” he is accepted by the Charismatics with little or no regard to his church affiliation or doctrinal deviation. When you hear Roman Catholics talk about how their “baptism in the Holy Spirit” has given them a greater love for the Mass, you know that this cannot be attributed to the Holy Spirit, but rather to a false spirit.
In the 1980s, yet another movement appeared on the religious scene which made the Pentecostal/charismatic false teachings even more appealing and dangerous. Why? Because this movement promoted the same, basic unscriptural doctrines held by Pentecostals and Charismatics while, in its inception, disclaiming any relationship to either of these groups, thus making it especially attractive to evangelicals and fundamentalists who did not want to wear the label of either group because of their deviant teachings and practices.
The impetus for this new movement came largely from several widely circulated books and many lectures to evangelical groups around the world by John Wimber, founder of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, and Peter Wagner of Fuller Theological Seminary Institute of Church Growth. Both men greatly influenced each other and, as they experimented with various teachings and practices related to “healing, miracles, signs and wonders,” they soon went even beyond the Pentecostal and charismatic errors. They claimed that the exorcising of so-called “territorial spirits” was essential to complete the task of world evangelization; and, that God had re-established the offices of prophet and apostle with those supposedly holding these offices receiving direct messages from God for the church, and exercising divine authority over the church. This newest movement is often referred to as “Power Evangelism,” “Healing, Signs, Wonders and Miracles Evangelism,” or the “Third Wave of the Holy Spirit.” Ecumenical in scope and decidedly worldly in practice the three so-called “waves of the Holy Spirit” (Pentecostals, Charismatics and Power Evangelism teachers) have now blended into a powerful coalition which is rapidly spreading. This poses a great threat to the purity of the Church and the Gospel.
Others have dealt at length with the dangers of the Charismatic Movement and how Scripturally unsound the movement is. Our purpose is to briefly point out some of the real dangers of this movement so that God’s people will be informed and forewarned. It is important to look at principles, doctrines, and positions and not to look solely at the individuals who compose this movement. The Word of God must be the only basis for conclusions drawn — we must not judge by personal relationships or prejudice.
The CHARISMATIC MOVEMENT Is Dangerous Because…
- It accepts tongues, interpretation of tongues, visions, dreams, prophecies, etc., as being messages from God to His children. This is a grave danger. Once you accept “extra-biblical messages” (those which are in addition to the Bible but not necessarily contrary to the Bible per se) it is not long before you will be accepting “anti-biblical messages” as being valid (those which directly contradict God’s Word). The Charismatic Movement has done and is doing exactly that. In reality, all extra-biblical messages are anti-biblical messages because God’s Word specifically warns against adding to the Scriptures (Deuteronomy 4:2; Revelation 22:18, 19). The Charismatic Movement defends these extra-biblical, anti-biblical messages on the basis that, “New winds of the Holy Spirit are blowing.” They say, “Who knows what the Holy Spirit may do?” Let no one forget, however, that the Word of God is a completed revelation and was given by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:19). We can be sure of one thing-the Holy Spirit will never contradict Himself. It was the Holy Spirit Who warned about adding to the Word of God. Therefore, those who add to God’s Word cannot claim to be authorized or empowered by the Holy Spirit.
Ref: new article – Born Again Christians began barking like dogs during their “prayer” meetings!
Please visit my new index web site: http://jimcairns.net/ – The New Missing Persons issue Ireland.
.www.sra-ireland.freepress-freespeech.com
Reference articles:-
Ref: .MarilynManson.html This satanist song is called “Born again” Killers:
Ref: .What in G-d’s name is going on in Arizona?! Jews for Jesus, “Born Again” Jews
Ref: .BREAKING NEWS Khmer Rouge ‘Born Agains”
Ref: .California moves toward ‘Christianization’
Ref : Antipas Ministries – Past Articles — Evangelicals and the Contra death squads
his face. He walks slowly toward the bristling mot of white cops and into the blinding lights. Behind him comes a young woman and two small children. After them an older woman in slippers and curlers. But the suspect, Juan, stays inside, phone off the hook. Desk jockeys from probation – until a few years ago, unarmed bureaucrats – are now hovering at the elbow of the VCSU commanding officer. The probation wannabes are eager for action, wearing jeans, bulletproof vests, and blue windbreakers and toting radios, cuffs, and Smith and Wesson .44 automatics. Juan is on their list so they have the right to storm his home without permission, probable cause, or a warrant.”
THESE ARE THE TACTICS OF A TERRORIST STATE
These are the tactics of a terrorist state – and they have been introduced into the United States by the same elites that pioneered them in Guatemala, El Salvador, Brazil, Thailand, the Philippines and countless other nations in America’s “CLIENT-STATE” system. These are not the tactics one uses in a REAL democracy. These are the tactics one can expect to find in a Central American oligarchy; the strategies one would expect to see in countries where democracy is nothing more than a sham, and where the government is held in power at the point of a gun. These are the methodologies of a regime that can maintain itself only by violently suppressing vast portions of the population, coupled with “rigging” the political process, manipulating the press, and instituting policies reminiscent of George Orwell’s world of “Big Brother.”
http://www.antipasministries.com/html/file0000040.htm
Copyright of Jim Cairns Kilkenny Ireland
http://www.missingpersons-ireland.freepress-freespeech.com/freemasonryandsatanism.htm
who funds domin EXPOSÉ: THE “CHRISTIAN” MAFIA
Interesting history of the Fellowship which includes Rove and many more
http://insider-magazine.org/ChristianMafia.htm
http://danger-army.livejournal.com/152022.html
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/char/charisma.htm
It wasn’t long before Wimber began to categorize methodologies for healing, music ministry, leadership, outreach, evangelism, etc. All aspects of body life became studies of method.
Within a short time, Wimber brought on Sam Thompson, a licensed psychologist, as an assistant pastor in charge of counseling. Thompson developed the ministerial aspects of the Vineyard, combining psychological theory with charismatic practices. He taught how to look for signs of spiritual and physical problems, and how to deal with them. The emphasis was, and still is, on attaining spiritual power. The congregation would stand in circles, holding hands and commanding demons to manifest themselves in order to cast them out.
The church was growing in numbers, and had the outward appearance of a typical Calvary Chapel. Wimber’s “signs and wonders” philosophy was developing and gaining adherents under the Calvary Chapel label. Concerned Calvary Chapel pastors began to ask Wimber about the reports of people levitating, being “slain in the spirit,” engaging in aura reading, and other bizarre practices.
…
The rest is history. The Vineyard has grown to more than seven hundred congregations in eight countries. They claim some one hundred thousand members. In 1982, shortly after taking over the Vineyard, Wimber returned to the Fuller Theological Seminary to co-teach with C. Peter Wagner a course entitled MC:510, “The Miraculous and Church Growth.” It was a laboratory for experiments in signs and wonders.
The Vineyard philosophy of signs and wonders is expressed primarily in the teachings of John Wimber. Major points he emphasizes are:
(a) The need for a paradigm shift in the Church (we must change our Western world view to that which integrates reliance upon supernatural influences);
(b) The charismatic movement is “where it’s at” in church growth;
(c) We should be doing the “stuff” Jesus did;
(d) The supernatural practices beginning to emerge were of the Lord, and to be desired and pursued (i.e., hot, tingly sensations indicating healing taking place during prayer; trance-like euphoric states of “worship” characterized by a restful “alpha-wave”-type feeling, which is verification of the “presence” of the Lord; supposed “words of knowledge,” “discerning of spirits,” “personal prophecy,” etc.);
(e) Every believer can walk, talk, and do the very things Jesus and the apostles did;
(f) The signs-and-wonders movement is the third wave of God’s power manifesting in the 20th century (the first wave was turn-of-the-century Pentecostalism; the second wave was the charismatic movement);
(g) We are involved in spiritual warfare to take the Kingdom by force; for this, the major weapon is “power evangelism.”
http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/wimber/john.htm
- Guatemala:General Efrain Rios Montt, Class of 1950. He seized power in a 1982 coup. Target of two Truth Commissions that “documented widespread human rights abuses by his regime including rape, torture, executions and acts of genocide against the populace, including indigenous population.” The former dictator was much-admired by then-President Ronald Reagan. His genocide conviction was .overturned in 2013
Rios Montt is generally credited with the murder of some 70,000 Mayan peasants, but all through the killing he maintained a love affair with the American Christian Right, which was delighted by the fact that he’s an evangelical Protestant in a deeply Catholic country, converted in 1976 by American self-declared “Jesus Freaks,” fundamentalist hippies. Here’s where YWAM comes in:
Rios Montt’s ascension to power [by coup in 1982] was celebrated by the U.S. Christian Right as a sign of divine intervention in Central America…. In May, 1982, [Pat] Robertson told the New York Times that his Christian Broadcasting Network would send missionaries and more than a billion dollars in aid to help Rios Montt rule the country. While Robertson’s offer never came to fruition, it enabled Rios Montt to convince the U.S. Congress that he would not seek massive sums of U.S. aid. Instead, he would rely on “private aid from U.S. evangelicals. Toward that end, Rios Montt’s aide… came to the United States for a meeting with… [Reagan consigliore] Edwin Meese, Interior Secretary James Watt… and Christian Right leaders Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Loren Cunningham (head of Youth With a Mission).
http://www.politicalcortex.com/story/2006/9/8/213312/8102
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Zeroes/Efrain_Rios Montt.html
CIA in Churches
Links between American and British intelligence services and church groups have been investigated by journalists Anton Chaitkin and the late Jim Keith. Mr. Keith documented the Naval Intelligence background of Jim Jones prior to the Jonestown tragedy in Guyana, which has been called a CIA mind-control program ‘gone wrong’. Mr. Chaitkin has explored the infiltration of the Pentecostal Movement in America and South Africa by British intelligence, going back to the beginning of the 20th century. Christian apologists Tim and Barbara Aho have researched the Christian affiliations of death squad groups in Central America and have identified intelligence operatives involved in these covert operations going back over 30 years.
It has been conjectured that the reason for this activity in Latin America was to enable U.S., British, and Israeli intelligence agencies to study and then fine-tune techniques for effective national destabilization work, using new religious movements particularly of the “signs and wonders” type.
Widely publicized in the 1980’s, for example, were the massacres in Guatemala of thousands of indigenous civilians of Mayan ancestry. During the previous decade a protracted civil war had been funded by the CIA and the United Fruit Company. A successful military coup in 1982 installed Gen. Efrain Rios Montt as President. Montt was an early Christian convert when the Church of the Word (“El Verbo”) was planted in Guatemala by California missionaries of an organization which became known as Gospel Outreach, who came to supply humanitarian aid to the country following the devastating 1976 earthquake.
Montt directed a Leadership Training School of 1,000 members as an elder in Verbo
Ministries. Upon his taking power, he was supported throughout the 1980’s by Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, Jimmy Swaggart, and Loren Cunningham of Youth With A Mission.
In June 1982, Amnesty International issued a report entitled: “Massive Extrajudicial Execution in Rural Areas Under the Government of General Efrain Rios Montt,” detailing a “partial listing of massacres,” totalling more than sixty. More than a thousand Mayan communities were abandoned or destroyed, and it is estimated that tens of thousands died in brutal genocidal sweeps conducted by Montt’s army. According to the Covert Action Bulletin, the State of Israel provided substantial financial aid to Guatemala between 1977 and 1986, and Israeli intelligence recruited members to assist agents in espionage and torture from Gen. Montt’s Verbo Church, which had grown to represent 250 congregations across the countryside.
The most well-known contemporary proponent of both “church growth” and the “Third Wave Wovement,” now embraced by evangelicals and charismatics alike as a genuine visitation of the Holy Spirit in the modern age, is C. Peter Wagner, a former friend and colleague of the late John Wimber at California’s Fuller Theological Seminary.
What is not widely known is Wagner’s extensive missionary background in Bolivia from 1954 to 1970. A CIABASE report on Bolivia states: “Between October 1966-68 Amnesty International reported between 3,000 and 8,000 people killed by death squads.” Bolivia was also used as a resettlement location for Southeast Asian refugees who fought for the CIA before and during the Viet Nam War.
A blueprint for American policy in Latin America was published in 1980 by the Council for Inter-American Security (CIS), originally titled: “Inter-American Relations, Shield of the New Order and Sword of the U.S. Ascent to World Power.” This paper, which became known as the “Santa Fe Document” was analyzed by Burn Fouchereau in his book “The Sect Mafia,” in which he stated that the report set forth plans to create religious sects on a worldwide scale, with a mission to corrupt the collective conscience of Christians to willingly accept a free market agenda for the financial advantage of global corporations. According to this strategy, evangelical organizations such as Rios Montt’s Church of the Word would be used as fronts for the CIA to “take charge of the initiative of ideological struggle” through religious phenomena, i.e. psychological warfare operations for inculcating the desired ideology, and that Christian groups resisting this influence would be neutralized through ‘divide and conquer’ programs. “The experience acquired in Viet Nam, thanks to the work done in population control, was exported to Latin America, and particularly to Guatemala, by numerous agents of A.I.D., and of other U.S. services. Certain sects were created by psychological warfare specialists and entrusted with control of the political forum and control of conscience.”
http://www.illuminati-news.com/lord-hutton%27s-famous-church.htm
Villains Afoot
excerpted from the book
Cry of the People
The struggle for human rights in Latin America
and the Catholic Church in conflict with US policy
by Penny Lernoux
Penguin Books, 1980, paper
p282
After years of using and abusing local and foreign religious groups in Latin America, the CIA now appears to be seeking a lower profile in this area, partly because of the ruckus caused by indignant Catholic and Protestant organizations in the United States following revelations in 1975 of CIA penetration of missionary groups.
p283
During the cold war, U.S. missionaries routinely collaborated with the CIA and, on their return to the United States, visited the State Department to be debriefed. In those days there was nothing conspiratorial about this relationship, nor any suggestion of moral conflict: most missionaries shared the concerns of their government, particularly about the spread of communism. A number of Foreign Service personnel came from missionary backgrounds, and it was not uncommon for missionaries to take sides in military/ideological confrontations, the classic example being John Birch. A Baptist missionary who worked with the OSS in World War II and was later killed by a Chinese communist while leading a patrol of Chinese nationalists, Birch was canonized by Robert Welch and the radical Right as the “first martyr” of the cold war.
Because of their personal relationships with the people they serve and the status of their profession, the forty-five thousand U.S. Catholic and Protestant missionaries stationed abroad were and are an obvious source of intelligence, in some areas perhaps the only source. This was particularly true in Latin America, where twelve thousand U.S. missionaries work and where most of the cases of CIA collaboration have been documented. During the 1960s when the Alliance for Progress was in vogue, nobody questioned this relationship, since Church groups and the U. S. Government were agreed on the twin priorities of economic development and anti-communism. “Part of the problem stems from the fact that the great Latin crusade by the churches in the 1950s and 1960s merged, at times almost totally, with the thrust of the Alliance for Progress and its Truman-Eisenhower predecessors,” said Thomas Quigley, assistant director of the Division for Latin America of the U. S. Catholic Conference. “The stated goals were to promote development and contain communism, and few then realized the ambiguities contained in that statement. Only later was it learned that development, as practiced, benefited the rich at the expense of the poor, and that containment of communism was often simplistically equated with protecting an unjust and unChristian status quo. Now we see those aspects. But at that time, the average missionary-perhaps especially the socially progressive ones-sensed a greater affinity with certain people from the local United States embassy or consulate than with fellow missionaries from another country or even congregation. The prime targets for CIA contact were precisely such pragmatic liberals sent in large numbers during the period to Latin America from the United States churches-the ‘concerned’ missionaries from the mainline Protestant Churches and from Catholic societies like Maryknoll and the Jesuits.”
p285
Darryl Hunt, a Maryknoll missionary who headed the Lima-based Latin America Press news service covering hemispheric Church affairs, recalled that visits to Maryknoll headquarters in New York were routine up to a decade ago, when the order’s superiors were alerted to the agency’s intentions. “They tried to get information from the missionaries in the field by developing friendships with them and appearing to ask disinterested questions without identifying themselves as CIA,” he added. “U. S. Embassy officials in Lima asked me questions about progressive priests’ movements in Peru that later seemed highly suspect.”
Jim O’Brien, a former priest who worked in Guatemala in the late 1960s, described how CIA agent Sean Holly used his background as a Maryknoll seminarian to develop contacts with U.S. missionaries. Officially listed as the labor attaché, Holly was later kidnapped by a Guatemalan guerrilla group and freed in exchange for four political prisoners held by the Guatemalan Government. Holly’s job, said O’Brien, was to keep tabs on U.S. missionaries, particularly Maryknoll priests and nuns.
According to John D. Marks, a former State Department intelligence analyst and co-author of the controversial The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, 30 to 40 percent of the churchmen he interviewed, during an investigation of the subject, knew of a CIA-Church connection. Marks also reported a retired CIA agent as stating: “Hell, I’d use anybody if it was to the furtherance of an objective. I’ve used Buddhist monks, Catholic priests, and even a Catholic bishop.”
It is precisely this amoral-some would say immoral-attitude that altered the thinking of many missionaries: that and political conditions in the countries where they worked. In the days before Vietnam and Watergate, few missionaries questioned U.S. support of right-wing dictatorships, because those governments claimed to be anti-communist. But as the United States expanded its role as world policeman, its police methods becoming ever more dubious, the missionary was forced to face the conflict posed by his dual role as American citizen and bearer of Christ’s universal Good News. Indigenous Christians were suffering imprisonment, torture, and death, as well as hunger and social discrimination, at the hands of repressive governments; and yet these governments were receiving U.S. economic and military aid, and in some instances had been brought to power by the United States. For the missionaries working and living with these people, this was not a remote issue of foreign relations but a question of neighbors and friends. As one Protestant writer put it, “Most missionaries loved the countries and the people where they worked far too much to knowingly damage them.” Thus, when these missionaries realized that they had been used as tools by their own government to harm the interests of the people they had thought to serve, they were shocked and angry. The crux of the matter was the blatant violation of freedom of worship, one of the fundamental guarantees in the United States Constitution, by an agency funded by American taxpayers, and all on behalf of right-wing political interests. According to U. S. Senate investigations, the CIA attempted to play God in Latin America, deciding who should be President, who should be eliminated, how the people should live, and whom they should have as allies and enemies. Foreign missionaries and local religious groups were among the many means used to achieve these ends, but because of what they believed and taught, their manipulation must be viewed as an act of calculated cynicism.
CIA Director William Colby’s assertion that CIA use of clergy and churches was “no reflection upon their integrity or mission” was absurd: there is conclusive proof that the CIA used religious groups in Latin America for its own secret ends. At the same time it contributed to the persecution and division of Latin America’s Catholic Church by supporting right-wing Catholic groups and financed and trained police agencies responsible for the imprisonment, torture, and murder of priests, nuns, and bishops, some of them U.S. citizens. That is why missionary groups in the United States have changed from complacent collaborators to harsh critics of the CIA-they have seen the results of the agency’s intervention with their own eyes.
After President Ford announced his approval of illegal U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of the Latin-American countries, sixteen officials of Catholic and Protestant mission agencies wrote him: “Contrary to what you would have us believe, CIA covert actions in the Third World frequently support undemocratic governments that trample on the rights of their own people. We missionaries have felt first-hand the effects of such interventions, which are certainly not in ‘the best interests’ of the majority of the citizens of those countries…. Nor do such actions, which are prohibited by international law and by Article 6 of our own Constitution, serve ‘our best interests,’ as you stated. Gangster methods undermine world order and promote widespread hatred of the United States.”
Warned New World Outlook, published by agencies of the United Methodist and United Presbyterian churches: one cannot “defend democracy by destroying it.” As long as U.S. citizens shrug their shoulders, romanticize “spy thrillers,” and pass the buck to politicians, it added, there will be blood on our hands, “for it is our money and our government that pay for the regimes that do the killing.”
p287
David A. Phillips, the CIA’s former chief of Latin-American operations and a self-appointed public relations spokesman for the agency, said that “any information-gathering organization would be derelict if it did not take advantage of the in-depth experience of American clerics working in the area.” He added that CIA contacts with U.S. missionaries were “to mutual advantage,” though he failed to specify what advantage a missionary might gain from collaborating with an agency involved in the arrest and abuse of priests. Phillips is himself a good example of the mentality that has alienated and shocked so many religious groups. His book The Night Watch, a CIA whitewash that does not even try to refute ex-CIA agent Agee’s CIA Diary, makes it evident that in the CIA no means, however illegal or unpleasant, is ever questioned if it achieves the desired goal. While admitting reservations about the CIA’s operations in Chile, for example, Phillips justified the agency’s intervention by arguing that orders were orders-after all, who was going to deny President Nixon if he wanted Allende’s head? There is no room for moral distinctions in that line of reasoning, and collaboration with the CIA is indeed a reflection on the integrity and mission of U.S. churchmen, whatever Colby may say. Phillips’ assertion that CIA contacts with missionary groups have declined in recent years is undoubtedly true, but that is more because missionaries have learned to be suspicious than because the CIA has resolved to be scrupulous.
Whereas it sought out U.S. missionaries primarily for information, the CIA funded and directed local religious groups in Latin America for all manner of covert activities, from bombing church buildings to overthrowing constitutionally elected governments. It ranged the political spectrum from extreme right to center-left, usually preferred the former, particularly for dirty tricks.
p292
… the activities of … Chilean Catholic groups funded by the CIA, particularly the notorious Fatherland and Liberty goon squads that formed the guerrilla arm of the extreme Right before and after Allende’s election. A modern version of the Spanish Inquisition-the Pinochet junta later employed a number of the organization’s members as police interrogators-Fatherland and Liberty received CIA funds for a variety of purposes, ranging from an attempted military coup to violent demonstrations at political rallies, which its militants attended in full riot gear. Its CIA contact was Keith Wheelock, then secretary of the U. S. Embassy in Santiago. According to a U. S. Senate investigation that revealed CIA funding of Fatherland and Liberty, the organization’s tactics came to parallel those of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), but whereas the armed forces treated MIR’s guerrillas as outlaws, they allowed Fatherland and Liberty to act with impunity. In the waning months of the Allende government in 1973, Fatherland and Liberty spokesmen boasted to a U.S. correspondent about their arsenal of weapons, classes in target practice, and attacks on Allende’s followers. Some of the most bloodthirsty militants were women, many of whom had participated in the much-publicized “Empty Pots March,” a supposedly middle-class women’s demonstration against the Allende government that was composed principally of the wives of high-salaried employees, managers, senior executives, and industrialists. During the march the women attacked several boys who shouted “Viva Allende,” all but castrating them.
Fatherland and Liberty organized an abortive CIA-sponsored military coup in June 1973, for which it took public responsibility in the Santiago press. It also took credit for 70 attacks (of an estimated 290) on government offices, public works, and Allende newspapers; assassinated Allende’s naval aide, Commodore Arturo Araya; and abetted a truck owners’ strike by strewing miguelitos, three-pronged steel spikes, on the highways. Two months before Allende’s overthrow, Fatherland and Liberty’s second-in-command, industrialist Roberto Thieme, announced that the organization would unleash a total armed offensive to destroy the government. After Allende’s death, Thieme’s followers joined the junta’s security police, DINA, which was responsible for the torture and death of hundreds of Chileans.
Vigilante Squads
Though dangerous, the Fatherland and Liberty fanatics were less influential than their counterparts in the Chilean branch of a right-wing Catholic movement known as Tradition, Family, and Property (TFP), principally because TFP’s militants had an intellectual base that appealed to a large number of officers in the armed forces. Founded in the early 1960s by the Brazilian philosopher Plinio Correa de Oliveira, TFP has followers in most Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and l Brazil. While akin in some respects to twentieth-century fascism, particularly to Mussolini’s corporate state, TFP is really a throwback to eighteenth-century Europe, as yet untouched by the French Revolution, when the Catholic Church defended aristocratic privilege as a divine right. Indeed, TFP’s insignia is a medieval lion. Most of its members are from the wealthy, propertied classes and yearn for an earlier time when the Latin-American Church upheld the right of a few patrones to rule a mass of peons.
TFP’s first commandment is the utter sanctity of private property, and in countries with progressive bishops, such as Chile and Brazil, this has forced it into repeated clashes with the hierarchy on the issue of agrarian reform. The movement’s members tend to be narrow-minded nationalists with a xenophobic reaction to any suggestion by foreigners that there might be something wrong with their country, particularly if the government is running the country for the benefit of the wealthy, as in Pinochet’s Chile. They are also blindly anti-communist, seeing subversion in anything remotely resembling reform, and are convinced that reds lurk everywhere in Latin America’s new, socially conscious Church. Thus TFP divides the Catholic Church into “our” Church, which is a class Church, rooted in another century, and “their” Church, which is a classless Church and therefore subversive.
While the organization exists primarily to maintain the privileges of the rich, that goal has been disguised by jargon about “degenerate political systems,” which TFP claims have caused the Western countries to succumb to Marxist penetration. Society is to be purified, along the lines of Mussolini’s corporate state, by replacing traditional political parties with special-interest groups, to which people are assigned according to job and social class. This is supposed to produce a society in which everyone knows his place and is happy to keep it. What TFP doesn’t say is that its model of government effectively nullifies any social or economic gains made by Latin America’s middle and lower classes.
TFP’s activities in Chile, Brazil, and elsewhere are an important part of the CIA story in Latin America, because its members were the intellectual and financial backers of military coups supported by the agency. After the military took over, TFP members and fellow travelers were active in these regimes’ persecution of the Catholic Church, as in the case of police agent Adolfo Centeno and the smear campaign against priests and bishops in Uruguay. In some countries-Brazil, for example, where TFP established a series of training camps near Rio de Janeiro- members were instructed by the Army and the police, who, in turn, received military training and political orientation from the CIA, the Pentagon, and AID. But there were still closer ties: in Chile and Brazil the evidence points to both financial and political links between TFP and the CIA in plotting the overthrow of the Allende and Goulart governments.
When it supported right-wing Catholic groups, the CIA had principally in mind the political objective of removing left-wing governments by military intervention, but one result of the collaboration was to strengthen such organizations as TFP, which emerged as religious vigilante squads for the military regimes. Thus the CIA could be accused-and was accused by a number of prominent Catholic leaders, including Brazil’s Archbishop Helder Camara-of inciting one sector of the Church to attack another. Moreover, in some countries, Bolivia being one, this collaboration extended to persecution of U.S. citizens when the CIA provided military governments and right-wing Catholic organizations with confidential dossiers on American priests and nuns.
A good example of TFP’s connections with both the CIA and the military is the branch in Chile, which supplied the Chilean armed forces with a social philosophy-the generals had none – and a religious basis for the regime’s political witch-hunts.
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In the last months of the Allende government, TFP, the gremios, Fatherland and Liberty, and other right-wing opposition groups merged in a common front. The National Agriculture Society, for example, was controlled by Fatherland and Liberty and received CIA funds through an organization called the Congress for Cultural Liberty. The society, in turn, worked with the Association of Manufacturers, whose president, Orlando Saenz, was one of the directors of the TFP-backed gremios as well as a secret leader of Fatherland and Liberty. A month before the coup Saenz publicly thanked the president of the Agriculture Society for “the services lent earlier by you to our cause.” Both groups had close ties with El Mercurio, Santiago’s largest newspaper, which was financed by the CIA and used as an outlet for anti-Allende propaganda, according to U. S. Senate investigations. They also shared important Brazilian connections. Fatherland and Liberty obtained arms from Brazil through a Chilean coffee-importing firm which brought in, via the port of Valparaiso, crates of guns disguised as raw material for the manufacture of instant coffee. Saenz was in close touch with the financial and ideological backers of Brazil’s TFP, which had been in at the kill of Goulart’s regime. (Several of the tactics used in Chile were tested by TFP in Brazil. With CIA help, TFP sponsored in Sao Paulo a march of several thousand middle- and upper-class women that was psychologically crucial to the coup ten days later. Similarly, women’s groups sponsored by TFP and Fatherland and Liberty held their largest demonstration five days before Allende’s overthrow.
U.S. congressional investigations have established that the CIA spent $13 million to thwart Allende, but with some exceptions, such as El Mercurio and Fatherland and Liberty, details of how the money was allocated have not been revealed. How much the CIA gave the TFP may never be known, but there are numerous links between the two organizations, particularly through Fatherland and Liberty, in addition to an established connection in the campaign to discredit the country’s Catholic Church.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Latin_America/Villains_Afoot_COTP.html
The Constantine Report http://www.constantinereport.com/iran-contra-and-the-religoius-right/
Iran-Contra and the Religious Right
Oliver North worshipped in a charismatic Episcopal Church in Virginia called Church of the Apostles. It turn out to be one of those Shepherding churches, a cult movement within the charismatic movement. North’s pastor was Rev. Brian Cox, a National Coordinator of Sharing of Ministries Abroad (SOMA), a right-wing political orgainization in guise of of an active missionary work in South America. Their agenda was to fight communism in South America.
In 1976, Jesus freaks from Gospel Outreach of California came to Guatemala after its earthquake. They did not waste time aiding earthquake victims, they were trying to convert Catholics to Pentecostals. One early convert was Rios Montt, who became leader of Gospel Outreach Verbo Church. He smuggled Bibles into Nicaruagua after Sandisitas took over the country.
Christian Emergency Relief Teams (CERT) started in Carlsbad, California in 1974 to aid Honduras hurricane victims, but after Sandistas took over Nicaruagua, they switched to aiding the contras. They have even accompanied contras to battle. Templo Biblico in San Jose, California was a front for Full Gospel Businessman International and World Vision. It became a CIA conduit to contras in Costa Rico.
Glendale, California based Transworld Mission (TWM), headed by John Olson. When Somoza was head of Nicaragua, Olson produced rabid anti-communist radio broadcasts in US, supporting Somoza. He became friends with Oliver North.
When Oliver North became an officer, he joined Officers’ Christian fellowship, founded by Ret. Army Major Gen. Clay T. Buckingham on 170 US bases. It was a shepherding organization.
1979-83-NCPAC Financial Director Carl “Spitz” Channel formed a coalition of religious right wing organizations to raise funds for contras. Lutheran pastor Richard Nieuhaus influenced IRD in 1981 to supporting contras.
In 1982- Charles Moser, Secretary-Treasury of Free Congress and Education Foundation, formed a committee to support the contras. This committee had Enrique Ruedo of Free Congress, Dan Tefferman of Freedom Leadership Foundation, Reed Irvine of AIM, and Lynn Francis Bouchery of Council for Inter-American Security. Jimmy Hasan, Director of Campus Crusade in Nicaragua 1982-85, was working for the contras.
By 1984, the most prominent private donor to contras was CBN. Capt. Robert Warren, retired Navy counterinsurgency specialist, was head of Operation Blessing. He was also formerly of Operation Phoenix, the CIA assassination group in Vietnam. North, Secord, and Poindexter were also in Operation Phoenix. They had ties to John Singlaub, head of World Anti-communist League (WACL) and a former member of NSC. He was a coordinator for private aid to the contras. North went around US trying to get aid for contras and build domestic propaganda for the contras. CBN contributed $3 million to Nicaraguan Patriotic Association. Its president was Juan Sacasa, Houston representative for the contras. Harry Aderholt, the Air Force officer who pioneered Operation Phoenix, headed the Air Commandos Association( the Air Force Green Berets) and was supplying the Salvadoran Army against its rebels. Aderholt, with Warren and Operation Blessing opened a clinic in Nebay region in Guatemala that turned out to be a de facto concentration camp for the Indians.
Dr. Alton Ochsner,Jr. convinced Moral Majority to the contras cause. They started “Family Forum” in San Francisco, an organization to support contras. They formed Friends of America (FOA) in 1984. Ochsner became head of Carribean Commission, a contra support group. He introduced Jenkins to Council for National Policy, which was supporting the contras. Ochsner father was a well-known white supremicist. FOA supplies were flown by the National Guard of Mississippi and Louisana at taxpayers’ expense and illegal activity.
In Sept.,1985, Robertson asked Reagan on the 700 Club, who was the person going to Tehran to talk about hostages. Reagan admitted sending someone to Tehran to trade hostages for arms. That “someone” was Oliver North. He was accompanied by Robert Marrow, an CIA agent allegedly on the plot to kill JFK, and was part of Operation Phoenix and in Operation Blessing. Jimmy Hasan was arrested by Sandistas after an IRD meeting on Oct. 31, 1985. He fled and appeared on the 700 Club. He recieved money from North’s NSC safe. North introduced Derstine to Calero and Bermudez in a secret map room. Rev. Derstine was a televangelist. Calero and Bermudez are contra leaders. FOA leaders generate public support and coordinate private aid from US church groups for contras, though that was illegal at the time. Woody Jenkins went around claiming Sandistas were dictators.
In 1986, FOA used Kelly Air Force Base and airlifted at taxpayers’ expense 100,00 pounds of supplies to Honduras for the contras. The planes were accompanied by National Guards of Mississippi and Louisana. FOA also supplied SETCO, an CIA airline for the contras. Operation Blessing supplied gas and drove vehicles for the contras. CERT accompanied contras to their battles.
David Cousas and Oliver North spoke at National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) to get support for the contras. 1985-John Olson was Oliver North’s guest at the White House for a briefing on the contra war. Olson was there on behalf of NRB. NRB became staunch advocate of direct US military intervention against Nicaragua. Before the Hausenfus crash, Robertson knew about the contras were being supplied by Israel and South Africa. This was before the press found out. AFC Richard Viguerie lobbied for the contras in Congress and claimed North was innocent. Singlaub and Micharl Clifford (Robertson’s CBN staff member) were among AFC members. North was keynote speaker for Bev LeHayes’ Concerned Women of America (CWA), urging them to aid the contras. Barbara Abbey, CWA,co-sponsored a fund-raiser for contra leader Calero. CWA sponsored a contra refugee camp in Costa Rico. CWA got money from Pepsico, Levi, Avon,Amex, Subaru, Sun Co., United Bank of Colorado, and Government Employees Insurance.
Jose Gonzales Souza started Semilla (“Seed”) at the Chesepeake, Va, office of Pat Robertson’s National Perspective Institute. Souza was a graduate of Robertson’s Regent University and lead its Hispanic Studies.CBN gave him money to start Semilla to train and organize Christian leaders in the Western Hemisphere, especially in Latin America. Semilla got $1,714.34 from Spitz Channell’s National Endowment for Preservation of Liberty (NEPL), part of Oliver North’s multifaceted procontra propaganda project.
Robert Reilly, Reagan’s liason to the Catholics, denounced liberation theology. He worked with former Maryknoll worker Geraldine O’Leary Macras (who worked for Costa Rican contras). He also worked with Humberto Belli, former editor of La Prensa. Humberto Belli started Puebla Institute in Michigan in co-operation with Sword of Spirit (Catholic charismatic group) and Ciudad de Dios (“City of God”), the Hispanic version of Sword of Spirit. Belli claimed there was religious persecution in Nicaragua. CIA paid Belli to do a film called Nicaragua Christians under Fire. Belli was advisor to pro-contra Archbishop Bravo. He had Bravo doing mass for contras in Miami. Archbishop Bravo had ties with W.R. Grace Corporation. He also got funds from North. Robert Pickus and George Weigel formed National Endowment for Democracy (NED), spending millions of taxpayers’ money funding Nicaragua’s opposition press. Weigel served as advisor for USIA. Pickus formed World without War Council (WWWC), which promoted US tour of Belli and contra leader Arturo Cruz.
1987- Bev Lehaye met Violetta Chamarro, editor of La Prensa, pledging support for the contras. Rev Geoff Donnan of Carribean Christian Ministries organized anti-Sandistas clergy in Nicaragua using private Christian schools there. Donnan worked under sponsorship of Paul lindstrom, a John Birch organizer.
1986- Donnan declared liberation theology as Satanic. He planned to publish a “Christian ” history of Nicaragua, written by Belli. Contra leader Joseph Douglas joined CERT. A few days before Swaggert resigned, he went to Nicaragua and saw the children victims of contra attacks. He withdrew his support of the contras and criticized them for their inhumanity. Suddenly, Marvin Gorman came up with pictures of Swaggert with a prostitute. Meanwhile, the contras smuggled illegal drugs into the US.
If anyone can add to this report, please send it to me at jongaeyu@hotmail.com. Thank you.The info came mostly from Sara Diamond’s Spiritual Warfare book.
Christian Right and the Moonies
Politics make strange bedfellows. This proves it! In 1961, after a military coup of a democratic government in South Korea that brought Park to power, KCIA decided to organize and utilize a church called Unification Church, as a political tool of the right wing military government. They wanted to export this church to the US. They asked Rev. Bill Bright to help organize it and chose a leader of it. Bill Bright choose Rev. Sun Myung Moon to head it. Moon had been a friend of Bright for a long time. Numerious Moonies served as aids to various Congresspersons since then.
In 1977, Richard Viguerie got a contract for “Children’s Relief Fund”, sponsored by the Moonies’ Korean Culture and Freedom Foundation. Less than 6.3% of the donations went to the needy, the rest went to Viguerie’s pockets and the Moonies. The biggest chunk went to Viguerie.
In 1986, Moonies paid Viguerie to handle the distribution of their magazine Insight.
In 1975,Christian Freedom Foundation founded by Bill Bright, Richard Viguerie, Richard Devos, Arthur DeMoss, Rep. John Conlan, Ed McAteer. The money came from Moonies.
In 1983, American Coalition for Traditional Values (ACTV) began with Tim LaHaye, Falwell, Robertson, Bakker, Robison, Humbard, and Swaggert. The money that started it came from the Moonies. It was right after Gary Jarmin, ex-Moonie, introduced Tim LaHaye to Col. Bo Pak, Rev. Moon’s right hand man.
1984-Rev. Moon was arrested for his illegal business activities. Moonies formed Coalition for Religious Freedom (CRF), a front for defense of Rev. Moon. LaHaye, Falwell< Ben Armstrong, Robison, Humbard, James Kennedy, and Swaggert were on the executive board. Paul Crouch and Hal Lindsey joined in 1986.
Ron Goodwin, a top Falwell aid left the Moral Majority to work on Insight in 1985.
1987-Col. Pak paid 10.06 million dollars for Vigueries’ offices. Christian Voice was in Moonies pay and headed by Gary Jarmin. Pres. Robert Grant and the Christian Voice joined the Moonies to form American Freedom Coalition.
1988-Grant made ties with Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. It was a group made up of Who’s Who of WWII Nazis.
Coaliton on Revival (COR) was founded by Dennis Peacocke, a Bob Mumford disciple, and Jay Grimstead, an ex-Moonie. The money came from Moonies.
Mumford promoted dominion theology (Reconstructionism). Gary North of COR was a member of the John Birch Society.
The neo-Nazi church Identity’s rock group Legacy had entertained COR’s meetings and parties.
!985-While “Father” Dowling was passing off as a Catholic priest, he spoke at Grace Luthern Chruch in El Cerrito, CA. Its pastor, Ralph Moelling, was a member of the Moonies’ CAUSA. Dowling served as national advisory board on CAUSA, which was paying Dowling’s travel expenses. Dowling frequently met Pat Buchanan at the White House and Bretton Sciaroni, a confident of John Singlaub. Dowling kept close ties with Linda Guell, director of Western Goals, which was involved in North’s contra fundraising. It was also a John Birch front.
1987-Christian Emergency Relief Teams(CERT) recieved a large amount of money from the Moonies.
1986-Moonies received money from South Africa, $45million, in exchange for South Africa’s interest in Washington Times, the Moonie paper.
1982-James Whelan, editor of Moonie-owned Sacramento Union, went to the Washington Times. Back in 1961, he was part of a secret UPI team in Miami that covered the failed US invasion of Cuba. He was PR man for ITT, when it helped CIA overthrow Allende and set up Pinochet. Whelan resigned the Washington Times in 1984, and worked briefly for CBN.
Reed Irvine wrote for Moonie-owned papers. Richard Zone was also with Christian Voice. Grant had ties with Anita Bryant, an anti-gay crusade. Tim LaHaye, Bob Billings, and Cal Thomas, an ex-Moonie, was with the Christian Voice. Billings and Thomas was also with Moral Majority.
Shepherding
In 1965,in South Korea, Paul Yonggi Cho started a sysytem called Shepherding. He was inspired by the organizational methods of Rev. Moon. He wrote the book Successful Home Cell Groups in 1981, based on his ideas of shepherding.
1970-Argentina. An Assembly of God pastor, Rev. Juan Carlos Ortiz, established a new church, Body of Christ. It had a highly structured authority from small cells led by a “shepherd”, who was in turn led by another shepherd and so on in a pyramid form of command. It was from reading about what Cho was doing.
1972- Rev. Bob Mumford visited Ortiz’s church and was impressed. He brought Shepherding to America. He was a Bible teacher in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Mumford, with four other associates, moved to Mobile, Alabama, directing the Christian Growth Ministries. They saw in the Charimatic Movement too much chaos. Shepherding would bring discipline.
Most leaders of the Shepherding Movement required their members to disclose intimate details of their lives and submit to the Shepherd (no female was allowed to be a Shepherd).The shepherd directed all facets of their followers’ lives.
Pat Robertson denounced the Shepherding Movement, but he invited Don Basham, one of the Shepherd leaders, to the 700 Club in 1987.
They have a magazine called New Wine. Cult Awareness Network declared they are a cult.
Mumford promoted dominion theology or Reconstrutionism, which was trying to get theocracy in America. Rev. Peacocke was one of Mumford’s disciples and his Coalition on Revival (COR) promoted Reconstructionism.