Red Network Bulletin
THE RED BETRAYAL
OF THE
CHURCHES
By ELIZABETH DILLING
Author of
"The Red Network" and "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background"
The Red Betrayal of the Churches
"With devotion's visage
"And pious action we do sugar o'er
"The Devil himself." (Hamlet.)
Just as Judas by acting as one of the beloved disciples of Jesus Christ, living with Him, eating out of the same dish with Him, with a kiss was able to betray Him to the soldiers to be crucified, as no stranger could have done, so, through the ages, the eternal Judas has worked for the destruction of Christ's church from within. Persecution from without but strengthens real Christian faith. "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church!" The gruesome martyrdom of Christians and the far more deadly atheization of their children at the hands of Satanic Red forces in Mexico, Spain and Russia, could not have taken place without preceding cooperation on the part of Judas-like clergy and laymen who played with, protected and fanned the destroying Red fire. The faith of our children, and adults as well, is being destroyed today in schools, colleges and churches, supposedly Christian.
As one sincere Jesuit said to me, "The schools of Mexico could never have been atheized as they have been in a Catholic country like that if part of the hierarchy had not sold out to the Red government for the sake of political or other advantages." The Communists are now proudly featuring such "Catholic" priests as Luis Sarasola who uphold the Spanish Communists in betrayal of their faith.
The American Association for the Advancement of Atheism (see pag 109, "The Red Network") says: "for many, Modernism is but a stopover on the road to Atheism. Perhaps we should have a little more patience with these our weaker brothers who are unable to go straight from Orthodoxy to Atheism without resting at the camps of Liberalism. Modernism being no abiding place for a reasoning mind some of them will yet arrive. For the present we should train our guns principally on such religious standpatters as the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant botheds of Fundamentalism."
How They Did It in Russia
How the Soviet Government atheists manoeuvered to get the Russian Church turned over to the Modernist radicals within its fold preliminary to destroying it and atheizing its children is a tragedy of modern times told graphically by a report in the Chicago Daily Tribune of May 18, 1923, entitled "RUSSIAN CHURCH SELLS ITSELF TO SOVIET INTRIGUE—Now Agent for Control of Devout Peasantry."
To quote: "This is the inside story of a deal arranged between the Soviet authorities and the present Russian church. All Russia knows that it was one of the greatest swindles ever perpetrated. The
swindle was part and parcel of the recent meeting of the Russian ecclesiastical council at the all Russian church congress.
"For America there is added interest in the fact that an American Bishop .... delivered the Methodist blessing upon the congress proceedings. "Here are some of the results: "For the Bolsheviks:
- "1. The church lifts the anathema which Patriarch Tikhon pronounced against the Bolsheviks.
- "2. The church unfrocks Patriarch Tikhon, lifts his immunity from trial and practically surrenders him friendless to Bolshevik mercy.
- "3. The church blesses the Soviet regime and accepts the Communist program of Marxian philosophy, excepting the clause against religion.
- "4. The church blesses the Red army. "For the church:
- "1. Metropolitan Antonin, the arch enemy of Patriarch Tikhon, becomes head of the Russian Church.
- Priest Vidensky of Petrograd becomes archbishop.
- "3. The anti-Tikhon group of reformists obtains the best church properties.
- "4. The Red clergy received the full support and favor of the Soviet government, army and cheka in every town in Russia.
"Play on Split
"For the purpose of putting through the above program the Soviet leaders played upon the split between the Tikhonites and the reformists. and also upon personal feuds and enmities that had smouldered for years. For months the Soviet authorities and cheka agents who frequent churches and the Red clergy worked together, a part of their task being to obtain election of favorable representatives at the church congress. Then in order to make the sale look real they called upon Vidensky to lead the movement at the congress.
"Vidensky was a czartime boy wonder; a handsome priest whom the women adored and whose church was the most fashionable meeting place of royalty, nobility and wealth. But Vidensky, despite his close association with czarism, was a parlor Socialist; he loved to shock every one with his radical views ....
"Fraud on Ignorant
"But behind, the Soviet Government supports the Red church, which, in adopting the Communist program, gives the deluded, simple, superstitious and frequently ignorant but nevertheless intensely devout masses of the peasantry a church allied to the greatest anti-church party in modern history . . . . Today it becomes the Bolshevik weapon against (first) all the classes and (second) religion, it was this reformation that Bishop Blake greeted. Behind the reformation stand the big Communist leaders smilingly pulling the strings of
the hands which the American bishop clasped, promising help and friendship."
Does Bishop Blake Serve Christ?
And Blake has given that help and friendship ever since. To quote the late authority, R. M. Whitney, who had access to the Department of Justice records and was author of "Reds in America," in his pamphlet "The Big Red Joke on Uncle Sam" (1924): "Gregory Zinoviev, commissar of Soviet Russia, speaking at the Communist International in Moscow last June, in the presence of Bishop Blake of the Methodist Church in the United States and Bishop Mulson of Zurich, Switzerland, quoted Lenin as follows: "Our program necessarily includes the propaganda of Atheism, the publication of suitable scientific literature which, up to the present prohibited by autocratic governments, must now form one of the chief branches of our Party activities."
To quote the same authority (page 39 of "La Follette Socialism-Communism"): Bishop Blake spoke "at the Russian Sobor, May 3, 1923, when he said: 'I do not see how a Christian Church can do other than give itself sincerely, earnest, and wholeheartedly to a movement that has so large a Christian ideal in view."
He not only spoke more than once in Moscow in support of the Communist regime but also now serves on the national committee of a legal front for the Communist Party, the American Civil Liberties Union, and has addressed and sponsored the Congresses of the Comintern's own American League Against War and Fascism, set up, as their organs state, to turn any war of this country into a Red revolution for the setting up of a Soviet dictatorship. (See "The Red Network" and "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background.") According to the report of the national Americanism chairman of the American Legion, Blake, when the white lights were flashed in his face as he was addressing the Congress of this Communist organization, held at Cleveland, June 3-5, 1936, said: "Tinge your glare with a bit of red and I will like it."
Reds Rejoice Over Christian Dupes
Wm. Z. Foster, head of the Communist Party of U. S. A., section of the Communist International, headed at Moscow, writing in the Party paper, The Daily Worker, Aug. 20, 1937. was able to announce:
"The Communist Party under Comintern" (Communist International) "guidance has made real strides in transforming itself from a propaganda organization into a Bolshevik leader of mass struggle. One of the Communist Party's important united front advances is its practical approach to the religious question on a basis long ago laid down by Lenin. In consequence the anti-religious Communist Party is to be found in close united front cooperation with dozens of churches and other religious organizations on questions of political interest to the toiling masses."
Socialism-Communism Is Atheism
In case there is any doubt of the militant Atheism of Marxian Socialism-Communism, the works of Marx, Lenin and others should
be read, as well as the fruit of their teachings in the book "Religion in the USSR" by Yaroslavsky, head of the Soviet Union's League of Militant Atheists. It was published in 1934 and is sold at Communist Party bookstores all over the U.S.A. The doing away with "Sunday" in the USSR, the melting of the church bells, propaganda resulting in 100 villages at on time declaring themselves Atheist, the renouncing of their religion by priests, are covered, and such principles as the following set forth:
(Page 20.) "With regard to religion the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...................................
(Page 31.) "A person cannot act correctly, cannot act in an organized manner as a Communist, as a Leninist, if his brain is poisoned by religion. It is impossible to be a Communist-Leninist and at the same time go to church, listen to the lies of priests and lake part in the performance of religious rites."
All Religions Alike
(Page 53.) "As in differences between one religion and another, they are of little, if any consequence. Lenin writing to Gorky, sees no greater difference between one and the other than between a blue devil and a green one .... Take for instance the Baptists, the Evangelists, and many others . . . ." (And he proceeds to condemn them bitterly.) "Other sectarians forbid their children to join the Young Pioneers, the Young Communist League or the Communist Party or to go to the village reading rooms to listen to Soviet lectures .... We must fight against these wrecking elements . . . ."
(Page 59.) "For the first time in the history of humanity, a vast state, the USSR, took the path of unconditional, complete rupture with the church and religion. That is why not a trace of the influence of the church over the schools is left. That is why Atheism in the USSR grows throughout the length and breadth of the country."
They Scoff at the Pope's Warning
(Page 60.) "In this period religion must die out of the minds of millions much more quickly and thoroughly. This definite growth of Atheism about which Pope Pius XI complains so bitterly in a message quoted above, and which he says is 'the most dreadful evil of our time' is inevitable not only in the USSR, but in every other country as well. Pius XI complains that: 'Thus we see today what was never before seen in history, the Satanical banners of war against God and religion brazenly unfurled to the winds in the midst of every people and in all parts of the earth!'
"The further growth of Socialism . . . . will inevitably lead to the dying out of religion. But it would be a great mistake to believe that religion will die out of itself. We have repeatedly emphasized Lenin's opinion that the Communist Party cannot depend on spontaneous development of anti-religious ideas . . . . that these ideas are moulded by organized action .... In our work among religious people we must bear in mind Lenin's advice to utilize every method available to us, or as he said, approach them this way and that way, in order to stimulate them to criticize religion themselves." (How well "higher criticism" and "Modernism" fill that role!)
Red Ministers Will Also "Get Theirs"!
(Page 63.) "The growth of godlessness in the United States, the closing of churches in other countries, are inevitable accompaniments of the decay of capitalism. Of course, in these countries, too, the priests are trying to adapt themselves to the social changes taking place. Whenever necessary they even flirt with Socialist theories. But the exposure of the role of the church and of religion will proceed at a growing pace in the countries of capitalism and create a mighty army of militant Atheists throughout the world .... It is our duty to do even more than we have done to make the anti-religious movement, not only in the USSR, but in the capitalist countries as well, a movement of vast millions .... The banner of militant Atheism must be raised still higher .... Remember that the struggle against religion is a struggle for Socialism!" (These are the last words in the book.)
The Spearhead of Communism in Churches
A so-called "Reverend" by the name of Edgar Jackson, representing the "Youth Committee, Methodist Federation for Social Service" (headed by Bishop Francis J. McConnell), writing in Moscow's official organ of the Communist Party of U.S.A., "The Sunday Worker," May 17, 1936, says:
"Almost 30 years ago a group of Methodist ministers and laymen felt that the stirring of the awakening society should be aided and not impeded by the organized church. The Methodist Federation for Social Service was the agency set up by this group of liberals .... The attempt of the Federation to get the church to go on record in favor of social change in the direction of a scientifically planned society, to condemn capitalism once and for all as a bankrupt economic system, and to enter into such united front activities as the "American League Against War and Fascism" (the Communists changed the name to "American League for Peace and Democracy" at the 1937 Congress) and the Scottsboro Defense Committee has caused the 'right wing' forces within the church and outside it to unite in an attempt to completely wreck its activity.
"The Federation, however, has a history of brave struggle behind it, and is prepared now not only for defense but a larger offensive. At its national conference at Columbus on April 29, it voted to enlarge on several fronts, to treble its budget, to increase divisions of women's and youth's work and increase its publications.
Leninist Social Creed of the Churches
"In 1908 the Federation presented to the General Conference, the governing body, a report that became known as the 'social creed of the churches.' It was unanimously adopted. When LENIN READ IT HE HAD ONLY FAVORABLE COMMENT TO MAKE, though he was skeptical of the possibility of putting into practice an ideal of social change in a large organization with capitalistic attachments and conservative traditions." (He need not have been, for the capitalists support the Methodist church just the same!)
Into the Federal Council of Churches and out through all the various Protestant denominations went the Lenin-praised "social creed of the churches" advocating, necessarily, for the complete state control outlined, a collectivist society, a dictatorship state, in the name of religion, in the name of Christ, who advocated no system of government, taught individual regeneration, refused dominion over all the kingdoms of this world offered by Satan, saying that His kingdom was not of this world until He returns to rule it after the battle of Armageddon.
The Anti-Christ Regime Foretold
The Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels, the "Bible" of Socialism-Communism, states (page 23): "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence: Abolition of private property . . . " (page 24) "And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production. free trade, free selling and buying."
The New Testament Revelation and also Old Testament prophecies tell us of Satan's beastly regime preceding Christ's return, the servers of which are promised the most awful consignment to Hell, under which all authority will be centralized in a blasphemous state machine so that "no man might buy or sell save that he had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name." (Rev. 13:17.) Xor did Christ expect the spread of the. Gospel to all nations to prevent the Satanic "falling away" in which we appear to be living, for He asked. "When the Son of Man cometh shall He find faith on the earth?" He preached no unionized salvation, no pacifism in the face of Satan, but said. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. 1 came not to send peace but a sword!" (Matt. 10:34.) "When I sent you without purse and scrip and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said nothing. Then said He unto them, But now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one: and they said, Lord, behold, here are two swords. And He said unto them, It is enough." (St. Luke 22:35-38.)
We are told in Scripture, also, that in Christ's millenial reign. each man will sit under his vine and fig tree. He is not to be collecti-vized like a herd animal.
Yet Modernist "Christians" persist in preaching that Lenin-in-spired "peace" movements and collectivized state power can bring humanity in its present sinful state into a millenial kingdom without Christ. They squirm at the idea that bloodshed for a great cause shows that "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (St. John 15:13) as squeamishly as they squirm at the idea that Christ's bloody sacrifice of Himself was a propitiatory sacrifice for our sins, as He said it was. In their desire to find their life without disagreeable sacrifice, they fulfill part of the Scripture verse: "He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it." (Matt. 10:39.)
Christ and Caesai
A government that supervises every detail of the "buying and selling" of its people must be a dictator state. What, for example, has the following from the "Social Ideals of the Churches" of the federal Council of Churches to do with religion, with Christianity, with spiritual regeneration? Its voice sounds like the voice of Christianity. Its hands are the hands of Communism. To quote:
"Social planning ard control of the credit and monetary systems and the economic processes for the common good .... a wider and fairer distribution of wealth . . . . social insurance against sickness, accident, want in old age and unemployment" (so that the state handles everything), "encouragement of COOPERATIVES."
Socialist Cooperatives
Cooperatives paved the way for Communism in Russia. The Russian State cooperatives, called Centrosoyus, are a section of the International Cooperative Alliance. I. Zelensky, until he was recently "liquidated" by his shotgun government, headed Centrosoyus, and was vice president of the International Cooperative Alliance, the American section of which is the Cooperative League of U.S.A. (supported by the communist Garland fund.) In conjunction with the Cooperative League of U.S.A., the Federal Council of Churches Industrial Division, Social Action Department of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, and the Social Justice Commission of the Central Conference of American Rabbis are holding conferences to boost this Socialist movement, beginning in Washington. Feb. 14-15, 1938, Boston. Feb. 20-22, 1938, etc. To quote the Federal Council Bul-letin for Feb. 1938: "The Good Will Fund has given \$500 to the Massachusetts Federation of Churches, and \$500 to the Catholic Diocesan Society to provide part scholarships for Protestant ministers and Catholic priests to visit and study Nova Scotian cooperatives during the coming summer."
Making Owners Hired Men
James P. Warbasse, head of the Cooperative League of U.S.A., says in his book, "Cooperative Democracy" (pp. 258-9): "The ultimate aim of the Consumers' Movement should be to purchase the land from the farmers and employ the latter as an agricultural worker."
The American aim is to see the hired hand able to purchase his own farm and sit under his own vine and fig tree.
The Federal Council "Social Ideals of the Churches" also declare for: "Repudiation of war, drastic reduction of armaments, participation in international agencies for the peaceable settlement of all controversies" (the League of Nations or "Marxian debating society," as it has been called), "the building of a COOPERATIVE WORLD ORDER" (exactly what bloody Communism says it is working for). There is not one word of warning against the Atheistic world tiger of Communism stirring up civil war in all countries.
License for Reds Only
Also: "Recognition and maintenance of the rights and responsibilities of free speech, free assembly, and a free press." "This is the battle cry of the Communist party through its various agencies. The American Civil Liberties Union specializes on this slogan while suing for libel those who attack with annoying free speech their Communistaiding activities. Like the American Civil Liberties Union with which the Federal Council leaders are staunchly interwoven, they sent a representative, Worth Tippy, of the Federal Council along with the radical Catholic, R. A. McGowan, and the radical rabbi, Sidney Goldstein, to beg the Communist-backed LaFollette Committee of the U.S. Senate, to investigate and take action to repress "the Red Network crowd" who criticized them! (See page 269 of "The Roosevelt Red keeord and Its Background" for the reproduction of the account in the Communist Party's Daily Worker.) The La Follette Committee is the Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Education and Labor, which was headed by Hugo Black who made a regular Russian OGPU record in his illegal seizure of personal telegrams and records until Roosevelt rewarded him with promotion to the Supreme Court. This promotion won the praise of the entire Red press.
'Boring from Within the Churches"
Working in close cooperation with each other, spreading the same Communistic propaganda, their leaders headed up together in the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union, are small groups working within the various denominations of American churches. Anyone with the patience and willingness to wade through their literature in conjunction with Communist-Socialist literature will find that, "ensemble." they: ballyhoo about Scottsboro, Herndon, Mooney cases; wail against sedition laws in the name of democracy and free speech: urge unlimited license for criminal Reds to overthrow that democracy; back the Communists' vehicle, the C.I.O.; urge disarmament of this government until Roosevelt indicated that he might help the Reds against the anti-Communist nations, then they resign themselves to "national defense" measures and urge repeal of the neutrality law they formerly advocated so that the Red powers can be aided with supplies. As quickly as the Communist party "line" changes, they change their tune. Of course, some modification and sugar-coating is necessary in accordance with individual denominational psychology, but the essence of the propaganda pills is identical.
Federal Council Plays Red Piano
Sounding every key of the Communist piano is the Federal Council of Churches, by which is meant the small staff and controlling group that dominate its policies. A continuous stream of outright Communist and Socialist literature is recommended. To quote their own publication, "The Churches of the Federal Council," by their General Secretary (page 259): "The national office and its executives, under the Administrative Committee, carry on the continuous work of the Council."
No president is elected who is not in full accord with their radical ideas. For the Red affiliations of S. Parkes Cadman, and the featuring in the Communist press of Ivan Lee Holt's praise of Soviet Russia, etc., see "The Red Network" and "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background." Bishop Francis J. McConnell's Red-aiding record can also be found there. He is at present vice president of the League for Industrial Democracy, which started spreading the Communist Manifesto and its kindred teachings among college students in 1905 and within the last two years has amalgamated two of its sections with the Communist Party's organizations, forming the American Student Union and the Workers' Alliance, which leads revolutionary marches on public institutions and seized the legislatures of two States, at one time. His daughter. Dorothy, is head of the Women's Bureau of the communist American League for Peace and Democracy. His article, as told to her, which appears in the publication of that Communist "peace" society, aptly named "Fight" (June, 1937, issue) is very revealing of McConnell's connections with the head of the Communist Party, Wm. Z. Foster, during the great Red steel strike he led in 1919, of which McConnell voices his full approval. He was on the Interchurch World Movement Commission of Inquiry into this steel strike, whose report, as he himself says, raised a howl all over the country.
The Methodist Federation for Red Service
McConnell also heads the Methodist Federation for Social Service, of which Harry Ward is executive secretary. Ward is also head of the Communist-fronting American Civil Liberties Union and head of the communist American League for Peace and Democracy (of which the secretary of the Communist Party is vice chairman). The Methodist Federation for Social Service openly cooperates with Communist agencies. Winifred Chappell served as co-secretary with Ward until recently when she went to teach in the notorious Commonwealth College training school for Red agitators. She also served on a Communist Party campaign committee in 1932 (see "The Red Network"). Ward states in "Who's Who in America," that he is the author of the "Social Creed of the Churches." and he is credited with introducing it into the Methodist church and the Federal Council of Churches. His lengthy sojourns in Soviet Russia have kept him close to the bosom of his social philosophy.
James Myers, Reinhold Niebuhhr, Walter Van Kirk, Ernest F. Johnson, G. Bromley Oxnam, Samuel McCrea Cavert, Worth Tippy, Mary Woolley, Allan K. Chalmers, Roswell Barnes, etc., leading
Labor Defense Council
FRANK P. WALSH. Chief Counsel for the Defendants
National Office FEDERATION OF LABOR BUILDING 166 W. Washington, St. Chicago, 111
"For the defense of the Michigan Criminal Syndicalist defendants prosecuted at the instance of the Federal Secret Service in its drive against organized labor."
"To carry on in connection with the legal defense, a campaign against all infringements upon the right of free speech, free press and freedom of assemblage and all measures restricting the rights of the workers."
April 9, 1923 TO ALL WORKERS PARTY BRANCHES: Comrades:
Last fall when many of our comrades were arrested, when it appeared likely that they were doomed to years in prison, when it seemed that our labor movement was fated to lose some of its most trusted and able leaders, the members of the Workers' Party took upor themselves a great duty and responsibility. With the slogan, "WE MUST STAND AND FIGHT", the Workers' Party through the sacrifice and devotion of its members, undertook to rally the workers to the defense of Foster, Ruthenberg and their co-defendants.
We have stood our ground, we have fought and we have won. April 4, 1923, the day the jury in the Berrien County Court was dismissed, unable to convict Foster, will go down in the history of the labor movement as a day of remarkable victory.
Who is chiefly responsible for that victory? The defense lawyers? No! These were able and devoted, but the major honors are not theirs. Foster ana Ruthenberg? No! They took the witness stand in the defense and courageously defended their revolutionary principles, but they also must pass the honors to others.
THE MILITANTS OF THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT, THEY ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VICTORY! Those who supported the defense, who gave to Foster the best legal defense that could be procured, who made the determined voice of American labor heard, they are the ones who won the fight.
The struggle of the defense is not over. Ruthenberg's trial, beginning April 16, is the scene of the determined attack of the enemies of Labor to retrieve the defeat they suffered in the Foster trial. If Ruthenberg is acquitted the victory will have been completed, the back of the prosecution broken. If Ruthenberg is convicted, all the gains won in the Foster trial will have been lost.
The Workers' Party must again take onto itself a major responsibility for the support of the defense. We know that we can count on 100% response from every Workers' Party branch. The enclosed lists should be circulated by every one of them, in every union, fraternal organization, wherever workers meet; in every shop, factory, mine or mill, wherever workers work.
For new tasks, new duties, new responsibilities, new victories, we are
Fraternally yours, LABOR DEFENSE COUNCIL MJL:VM OEA-12755 Secretary Somed:
MORITZ J. LOEB
fights in the Federal Council controlling groups, have startling Redrevolution-aiding connections for those who talk in the honeyed words of "peace" and Christianity. (See "The Red Network" and "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background."
Congregational and Christian Church Group
The Council for Social Action of the Congregational and Christian Churches is headed by Hubert C. Herring (a Red herring!) of the national committee of the Communist-fronting American Civil Liber-ties Union and a director of the League for Industrial Democracy, of which Bishop McConnell is vice president, and Reinhold Niebuhr, advocate of Marxian Red revolution, is a director. Both McC'onnell and Niebuhr are red-light members of the Federal Council Executive Committee.
Arthur E. Holt of the very red National Religion and Labor Foundation (see "The Red Network" for its Soviet cartoons and Communist atheist literature), Graham Taylor (see "The Red Network"), Frank W. McCulloch, formerly treasurer of the Chicago branch of the League for Industrial Democracy and active and arrested in Red riots in behalf of its Workers' Alliance (which amalgamated with the Communist Party's Unemployed Councils), are others of the leaders of the Council for Social Action, which spreads Red propaganda in the Congregational and Christian churches.
The Church L. I. D. (Episcopal)
The Church League for Industrial Democracy operates within the Episcopal Church (see "The Red Network" and "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background") and is headed by Wm. B. Spofford as executive secretary. He is a member of the board of directors of the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union and also on the national bureau of the communist American League for Peace and Democracy. The president of the Church L. I. D. is Bishop Edward Parsons, national vice-chairman of the red American Civil Liberties Union. The Church L.I.D. vice-presidents include: Mary Van Kleek, a director of the Red A.C.L.U., who wrote a Communist pamphlet with Earl Browder, secretary of the Communist Party: Bishop Benjamin Brewster of the national committee of the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union; John Howard Melish (see "The Red Network), Vida Scudder (see same), whose devotion to Red revolution is expressed by her keeping a little Red flag side by side with a crucifix on her home altar! (Consistency, thou art a rare jewel!)
In February, 1936, at their Baltimore conference, this group voted to affiliate with the communist American League Against War and Fascism, which advocates treason and Red revolution, and at the General Conference of the Episcopal Church in 1937, the most notorious Reds such as Abraham J. Muste, until recently head of the coalition of his own group with the Trotskyite Communist Party which they called the "American Workers' Party," were featured in the Church convention hall for daily meetings, Bishops of the church presiding. The Church L.I.D. boasts that "all the editors" of Episco-
pal Church weeklies are League members." There are many in the Church who, like myself, arc sick at heart over the situation. Bishop Manning delivered a rousing denunciation of this radical convention activity.
Radical Rabbis Support Red "Christians"
The Commission for Social Justice of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, who advocate "fundamental reorganization of our economic organization" and the "socialization of our basic social enterprises," etc., cooperate constantly with the radical Protestant and Catholic groups. They are one happy family in their mutual efforts to collectivize America under some sort of Socialist-Communist government.
There Are Others
The Social Relations Department of the American Unitarian Association calls for the same sort of radical legislation as the others. (See page 284 of "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background." The Y.W.C.A. and Y.M.C.A. national boards are now following a consistent Communist Party line and are hailed by the Communist press for this, which deserves far more space than can be given here.
Catholic Radicals
One of the most outstanding radicals in the U.S.A. in point of years and value of services to the Red cause is Msgr. John A. Ryan. His assistant, R. A. McGowan, runs him a close second. See "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background" for McGowan's connection with the I.W.W. General Defense Committee [financially aided by the communist Garland Fund]; the recommendation of his writings by the Socialist-Communist League for Industrial Democracy; his service in 1925 on the board of directors of the Cooperative League of U.S.A., which was financially aided by the communist Garland Fund; his valiant plea before the La Follette Committee [as featured in the Communists' Daily Worker] for suppression of the "Red Network crowd." See also "The Red Network" for his service to the American Civil Liberties Union, etc.
Ryan is the guiding spirit of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and director of its Social Action Department. His assistant, McGowan. is secretary-treasurer of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems. In cooperation, these organizations are running a National Catholic Social Action Conference at Milwaukee, Wis., May 1-4, 1938.
C.I.O. Backers
Communist literature, papers and periodicals daily shriek their endorsement and backing of the C.I.O. and the head of the Communist Party, Wm. Z. Foster, says in his booklet "Steel" (page 62): "Also the Communist Party, with its revolutionary program, looks far beyond the perspective of the C.I.O. It aims at the abolition of the capitalist system and the complete liquidation of the exploitation of man by man" (as in Russia!) "through the private ownership of industry and the land, by the establishment of Socialism." His entire
booklet is on the necessity of organizing Red revolution through the C.I.O. Yet the C.I.O. is able to proudly print in a leaflet entitled "The Church Speaks Out for Labor" the endorsements of the C.I.O. by Rev. Father Charles O. Rice of Pittsburgh, by Bishop Lucey of Amarillo, Texas, who is vice president of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems, by the Federal Council of Churches, by the Council for Social Action, Congregational and Christian Churches, and by Rabbi Barnett R. Brickner for the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the same radical crowd.
John A. Brophy, of the Communist-led C.I.O., was the Communists' candidate for president of the United Mine Workers in 1927 against John L. Lewis, his present bedfellow, and denounced as such by Lewis at the time. He was a member of the first American Trade Union Delegation to Russia backed by the Communists and denounced by the American Federation of Labor. Mis connection with the communist All America Anti Imperialist League, and a few other of his Red connections are listed in "The Red Network."
The president of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems is J. F. Magerty, also an honorary president of the very red National Religion and Labor Foundation. See "The Red Network" for its atheist Soviet cartoons, Communist literature and outright Red revolutionary propaganda, with John A. Ryan serving as a book editor. See page 205 of "The Red Network" for their letterhead and the significant statement on it of the Foundation's aim to build an order here similar to that in the Soviet Union. Francis J. McConnell of the Federal Council of Churches and Soviet-aiding Sidney Hillman were Magerty's fellow honorary presidents of the National Religion and Labor Foundation in 1933. The leading "Church" Reds arc on that letterhead, Federal Council, Congregational Social Action. Methodist Federation for Social Service, as well as the head of the Socialist Party and Rabbis Sidney Goldstein and Edward Israel for the radical Jews. etc.
Gorman a Radical Ally
The name of Francis J. Gorman as vice-president of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems makes a reader of the Red press gasp. He is not only on the national committee of the notorious Communistaiding American Civil Liberties Union, but also on the board of communistic Commonwealth College, where legislative investigation revealed atheism, nude bathing, free love, along with training of Red agitators, as part of the school's activities. Gorman is vice-president of the United Textile Workers of America (C.I.O.), a member of the advisory board of the Communist-organized and controlled American Youth Congress, and on the board of the Communist-organized and controlled North American Committee to Aid Spanish Democracy, set up to aid the Communist-controlled Red government forces of Spain. He headed a group of chairmen staging a farewell for the first American hospital unit to go to Madrid to aid the Reds who are disemboweling helpless Spanish Sisters, burning Catholic Churches, and destroying statues of Jesus Christ. I saw them shoot the head off of a great beautiful white statue of
Christ and the head roll to the front of the picture, in a newsreel. Bishop Francis McConnell is chairman of this committee to aid the Spanish Reds. Communists of. the Lovestone and Stalinist factions, such as Chas. Zimmerman, Max Bedacht, Rose Baron, etc., Roger Baldwin of the A.C.L.U., Guy Emery Shipler of the Episcopal Church L.I.D., Hubert C. Herring of the Congregational Social Action Council, etc., serve as one happy unit for the mutual cause.
Gorman was also a sponsor of the Congress of the Comintern's own American League for Peace and Democracy (set up for the purpose of organizing Red revolution), held Thanksgiving week, 1937.
Another vice-president of the Catholic Conference on Industrial Problems is Rev. Francis J. Haas, a speaker on "workers' rights" at the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union Conference (12-8-34). See "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background," page 403 for some of his radical connections
A Daily Worker Favorite
Anyone familiar enough with Red propaganda, sugar-coated or otherwise, to be shocked at a radical Catholic conference will find that behind the two Catholic organizations mentioned and all their allied conference activities stands the figure and influence of the Kingpin radical in the Catholic Church, John A. Ryan, closely followed by his "Fides Achates," or faithful aide, R. A. McGowan. A study of the record of Ryan is a study of the leader who has done more to inject radicalism into the Catholic Church than any other person. His sayings have been favorably reported and his photo featured three times in less than six weeks in 1938 (Jan. 14, 19, and Feb. 23) in the Communist Party's Daily Worker.
Ryan Active Long Ago
We find in the "Report of the Joint Legislative Committee of the State of New York Investigating Seditious Activities," commonly known as the "Lusk Report," issued in 1920, a report containing the following: "A certain group in the Catholic Church with leanings toward Socialism, under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Ryan, professor at the Catholic University of Washington, issued in January. 1918, a pamphlet called 'Social Reconstruction; A General Review of the Problems and a Survey of Remedies'. It was issued by the Committee on Special War Activities of the National Catholic Council in Washington, and was signed by four bishops: Peter J. Muldoon, Bishop of Rockford; Joseph Schrembs, Bishop of Toledo; Patrick J. Hayes, Bishop of Tagaste; William T. Russell, Bishop of Charleston .... Among other things, it favors the cooperative societies owned and operated by the consumers .... Where the socialistic tendency of the Committee shows itself most clearly is in what is said under the heading of 'Co-operation and Co-partnership.'"
Bishop Schrembs is now a member of the administrative committee of the National Catholic Welfare Conference and chairman of its Lay Organizations.
Ryan and the Red A.C.L'.U.
In company with such blood Red Communists as Wm. Z. Foster, Robert W. Dunn, Scott Nearing and all the cohorts of the Red movement, we find Ryan on the national committee, according to their letterheads, of the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union in 1924, 1925, 1931, 1932, 1934. See page 131 of "The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background" for the reproduction of a letter to a Communist Party organizer by the director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Communist Roger Baldwin, showing Ryan's name on the letterhead as a member of their Wash ngton Committee, dated May 6, 1922. This committee was then active in securing the release of the seditious I.W.W. criminals who had been jailed. To read the reports of the activities of the American Civil Liberties Union is to read the report of the Communist Party and the allied revolutionary activities. Wherever treason, atheism, obscenity, the violence of revolutionists, raise their heads, the A.C.L.U. is there leaping to bail out. propagandize and carry on practical court cases for the Red defense.
The A.C.L.U. Fights for Atheists
It was the A.C.L.U. that sued the New York City School Board for the atheist Freethinkers Society (See "The Red Network") demanding that Bible reading cease in the public schools. When the Communist organizer, Anthony Bimba, was arrested for blasphemy, the A.C.L.U. defended him. When police officers are murdered by Reds, or attacked, the A.C.L.U. is there to fight for the release of the Reds. A strange business, one might say, for a "Christian," a church "dignitary" at that, to be directing.
Ryan was listed among the radicals in "American Labor Who's Who," a publication financed by the communist Garland Fund and prepared by radicals in 1925.
Ryan and Communist Leaders
The Labor Defense Council was organized in 1922 to defend the Communist Party leaders arrested at Bridgman. Michigan. See page 182 of "The Red Network" for a reproduction of their letterhead showing John A. Ryan, a "Catholic." supposedly, as a national officer, his name appearing just below that of Eugene V. Debs, who announced that he was a Bolshevik from head to foot and was jailed during the war for treasonable activities, just above Wm, Z. Foster's (now head of the Communist Party), and near that of C. F. Ruthen-berg (now deceased), then head of the Communist Party. John A. Lapp, an aide of Ryan's, also of the American Civil Liberties Union national committee, was a national committeeman of this communist Labor Defense Council along with Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. then a whirlwind, much-arrested organizer and agitator of riots for the T.W.W.. later and now a Communist Party organizer. In 1925 the Labor Defense Council took the name "International Labor Defense," the official Communist Party defense agency.
In 1922, the Communist Party was called the Workers' Party. I have a letter sent by the secretary of the Labor Defense Council to the Party organizer of Pittsburgh which reads in part as follows:
Ryan's Organization a Communist Party Affair
"Comrade C. E. Ruthenberg has assured us that Workers' Party Organizers will be held responsible for activity toward the organization of Labor Defense Councils in their district. It is our understanding that you are the district organizer of the Pittsburgh District and we would very much like to have you take responsibility toward organizing the Labor Defense Council in your district, seriously. We appreciate that you are burdened with much other work, but take it that you understand the importance of the Labor Defense Council Work and that if you cannot handle the matter yourself, you will see to it that other members of the Workers' Party take up the work on behalf of the Party. Fraternally yours, Moritz J. Loeb."
The Communist Party organized a drive to collect a day's pay from all Party members to aid the work of the Labor Defense Council. I have numerous Party letters written about that with Ryan's name appearing on the letterhead. A reproduction is here given of one letter sent out by the Communist Party, or Workers' Party, as it then called itself, to all Party branches, the names of Lapp and Ryan appearing on the letterhead.
The work of the American Civil Liberties Union, in which Ryan has long been a leader, is but one continuation of such Communist Party work as the Labor Defense Council's.
Ryan's Many Red-Aiding Activities
Ryan has spread his efforts in a multitude of directions for the Red cause, serving in many organizations not forthright Communist-Socialist but that aid and abet legislation and propaganda sponsored by those forces in a manner suited to the tastes of developing Pinks, intellectual Reds and befuddled humanitarians, but directed by experts.
Among such organizations that Ryan has long served are: the American Association for Labor Legislation, which sponsors socialistic legislation and has within its membership outstanding radicals from every quarter. Samuel Gompers, at one time a member of the American Association for Labor Legislation, resigned, repudiating all its words and works. To quote Whitney's "Reds in America," p. 182, organizations like this are a cloak for "the united front, and might be deemed the shock troops of an insinuating army of borers, whose province it is to wedge ignorant inertia aside and make room for advancing Communism."
The American Association for Old Age Security, a similar organization, was organized to promote old age pensions at the expense of state and nation, among the immediate objectives of the Socialist program which aims ultimately to put every possible human activity,
as well as all property, under state (political) control. Ryan and John A. Lapp have served as vice-presidents. Ryan's place as vice-president was evidently taken in 1937 by Michael Williams of Catholic "Commonweal," which features radical causes and writers. Francis Haas is on the board of directors. The president is, as before, Bishop McConnell, and the guiding spirits are radical Abraham Epstein and Nicholas Kelley, son of the late Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky, friend of Lenin and translator of works of Communist Engels (joint author with Marx of the Communist Manifesto). She spread Communism in polite circles with great efficiency by organizing and leading numerous of these radical organizations.
Florence Kelley's son also now carries on her work in the National Consumers' League (financed by the communist Garland Fund), which she dominated until her death, Ryan being honorary vice-president along with Mrs. F. D. Roosevelt.
Other of Ryan's radical affiliations include: the National Council for Prevention of War, called a "clearing house for Socialist-Communist pacifist propaganda" whose head. Fredrick J. Libby, was barred for his unpatriotic utterances from speaking in Washington schools, and the editor of whose Disarmament Notes. Seymour Wald-man, is now head of the Washington Bureau of the Communist Party's Daily Worker; the National World Court Committee, an organization dedicated to America's entrance into the World Court, to date defeated in spite of President Roosevelt's open aid. largely because of Father Coughlin's valiant fight against it over the radio; the National Save Our Schools Committee, an organization described by the expert Francis Ralston Welsh as a "Red affair through and through, with possibly a very few respectable dupes. The evident object was to take patriotic teaching out of the schools and substitute propaganda more pleasing to left wing Socialists and Communists. It is the Communist-aiding American Civil Liberties Union crowd at work."
Ryan also served on the National Popular Government League whose 12 lawyers were successful in getting all funds withheld from the Department of Justice from 1924 on for the investigation of seditions activities, this campaign being financed by the communist Garland Fund. And to this day, the Department of Justice is still impotent in this regard. (For more information on all of the above. sed "The Red Network.")
Ryan has also been vice-president of the socialistic Public Ownership League, headed by Carl D. Thompson, former associate with Eugene V. Debs in the "Yours for the Revolution" People's College. Ryan was a founder and active in the radical People's Legislative Service promoting socialistic legislation for public ownership and closely associated with the National Popular Government League (another of his affiliations) and the Socialist Party. Some of its leaders are now in favor and power with Roosevelt, as is Ryan. It was directed by Basil M. Manly of the communist Garland Fund's Committee on Imperialism, the I.W.W. Defense Committee, etc. who was hailed by the old communist "Masses" (now called "New Masses") many years ago for his radical efforts.
Ryan's latest connection, 1938, is on the American Association for Economic Freedom, headed by Wm. Allen White, star of the 1937 annual dinner of the American Civil Liberties Union, from which he and his costars, Ickes and La Guardia, broadcasted. A photo of the three appeared in Associated Press dispatches of December 9, 1937. White has been closely associated with the Red movement from the time he was a delegate to the Russian Conference at Prinkipo in 1919, having served on the communist American Society for Cultural Relations with Russia, appealed (recently) for the liberation of the Negro Communist Party organizer Herndon, donated money to the Communist magazine "New Masses" (barred from the mails for blasphemous obscenity for a time), and served on the atheist Free-thinker's Committee to honor atheist Robert Ingersoll in 1933 and on numerous other communistic committees, part of which are listed in "The Red Network."
The associates of Ryan and White on the American Association for Economic Freedom read like a "Who's Who" of the Red movement. To cite their records would require a book.
Along with Ryan in the American Association for Economic Freedom are representatives of the same radical church groups: Bishop McConnell. James Myers (head of the Industrial Division of the Federal Council of Churches), Hubert C. Herring of the Council for Social Action, Rabbi Stephen Wise (president of the American Jewish Congress), Homer L. Morris of the American Friends' Service Committee (which puts on Institutes of International Relations all over the U.S.A. featuring Socialist and Communist speakers), Guy Emery Shipler of the Episcopal Church L.I.D., and the following Catholics who have other radical connections: Rev. Francis J. Haas, Pau Kiniery (teacher at Loyola University), J. W. R. Maguire of St. Viator's College, Msgr. John O'Grady of Catholic University, and Carleton J. H. Hayes. For a spicy and revealing record of Hayes' rod revolutionary teachings at Columbia University, read Communist Joseph Freeman's "An American Testament."
Ryan Endorser of Communist Propaganda
Ryan was an endorser of "Professional Patriots," a scurrilous attempt to jeer at all those who oppose Communism, prepared for the American Civil Liberties Union, which ran serially in the Communist Party's official organ, the Daily Worker, as Communist propaganda in June 1927.
While Ryan was a hook-editor of the red National Religion and Labor Foundation, such books as "Toward Soviet America" by Wm. Z. Foster (head of the Party) and "Little Lenin Library," which contains Lenin's blasphemies against religion, were distributed.
In truth, "no man can serve two masters," certainly not atheistic Socialism and Jesus Christ. Anyone cleaving to Christ should remember the warning: "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? And what communion hath light with darkness? (IICor. 7:14.)
"For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ.
"And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
"Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also he transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall he according to their works." (II Cor. 11:13-14-15).