June 24, 2003
Kamloops Daily News


The popularity of religion may declining but not it's power. 
According to a survey done by Statistics Canada, Canadians
increasingly say they have no religion.  The Yukon and B.C.
lead the country in non-believers.

But fear not. Our fallen province is about to be saved by
American Baptists.  They have designated Vancouver a
"strategic focus city."  Professor John Stackhouse from
Vancouver's Regent College says that U.S. evangelicals see
Vancouver as "shockingly pagan, with our low numbers of
church attendance and high numbers declaring no religion
(The Daily News, May 31, 2003)."

The idea of British Columbians being saved by Southern
Baptists is mildly amusing.  What's not funny is the
influence that religious forces have over the world's
hyperpower. An unholy union of state and religion guides
President Bush and the U.S. government.  Some of these
religions are obscure.

I bet you've never heard of The Fellowship, for example. 
That's the way they want it.  The Fellowship is not like
most religions that seek to convert the masses.  It's more
like an covert council.  Their goal is to sway the world's
decision makers, not to win converts.

"A Fellowship employee, went so far as to say that 'there is
no such thing as the Fellowship,' even as she helped lead a
group of 250 college students around Washington this month,
part of a Fellowship-sponsored national leadership forum on
faith and values," writes Lisa Getter in The Los Angeles
Times (Sep 27, 2002).

Even those who are influenced by The Fellowship don't know
exactly who they are.  The administration of U.S. government
is so closely entwined with The Fellowship that they appear
seamless.  Their annual big public event is the National
Prayer Breakfast in Washington. It has been attended by a
succession of ambassadors, foreign dignitaries for years. 
Most attendees think the event is sponsored by Congress or
even the president.

A Los Angeles Times review of the Fellowship's archives kept
at the Billy Graham Center reveals that The Fellowship has
had extraordinary access and influence on foreign affairs
for the last 50 years.

The Fellowship's leader, Douglas Coe, 73, has befriended a
succession of presidents and worldleaders since arriving in
Washington in 1959. Former U.S. President Bush Sr. once
referred to Coe as "an ambassador of faith."

Jeffery Sharlet infiltrated The Fellowship at their boot
camp for recruits in Arlington, Virginia.  They don't like
to call themselves The Fellowship.  They prefer "the
Family."   They don't even like to call themselves
Christians.  It's "a term they deride as too narrow for the
world they are building in Christ's honor," says Sharlet in
the March issue of Harper's magazine. Instead, they are
"believers."

The Family believes that the way to advance Christ's will on
earth is through intense personal bonds, or covenants, with
world leaders.  While in Arlington, Sharlet met Douglas Coe
as he was counseling a congressman from Kansas about
commitment to the Family.  Coe summed up the influence of
their minimalist religion, "That's what you get with a
covenant, Jesus plus nothing."

It's not just shadowy quasi-religions that influence the
world's most powerful nation.  U.S. President Bush's foreign
policy is affected by Evangelical Christians who make up 25
per cent of the U.S. population.
 
Many of Bush's supporters are Christian Zionists - - they
believe that the return of the Jews to Israel is part of
God's plan.  They include Evangelical groups headed by Pat
Robertson, Oral Roberts, Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell.

Their biblical interpretation of God's plan was popularized
by a maverick Irish Anglican priest, John Nelson Darby
(1800-1882).  He proposed history as a series of epochs in
which mankind moved from catastrophe to catastrophe.  First
there was the expulsion from Eden, then the flood, the
crucifixion of Christ.  Now, with the return of the Jews to
Israel, we are in an epoch which God will soon bring to a
shuddering halt.

In the apocalyptic imaginations of Christian Zionists,
Yasser Arafat and Saddam Husseim compete for the role of
Antichrist.

President Bush hopes to bring peace between Israel and
Palestine with his "road map."  His credibility as
peacemaker is stretched, not just by his inclination to make
war, but by his religious bias. How can his plan succeed
when he regards one side as God's chosen people and the
other as evil terrorists?

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