By Brannon S. Howse
Globalism is being implemented along two tracks: political and spiritual. You can see this convergence as religious leaders implement political programs and give political speeches. But you will also see political leaders—such as Tony Blair and his Tony Blair Faith Foundation—speaking in blatantly religious ways as well. You will likely see more and more pastors, Christian leaders, Christian organizations, universities, and colleges accept the agenda of people such as Rick Warren and Tony Blair.
This compromise is happening in my own “backyard.” I live about 75 minutes from Union University, a school supported by the Southern Baptist Convention, and although many SBC colleges, universities, and seminaries have long since been lost to liberalism, Union has consistently promoted itself as the university committed to integrating a biblical worldview into all subjects. Yet in a March 31, 2011 press release, Union boasted:
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be the keynote speaker for Union University’s 14th annual Scholarship Banquet Oct. 3 at the Carl Perkins Civic Center in Jackson, Tenn. “In recent years Mr. Blair has become one of the most admired men in the world with his many efforts to promote good will through numerous means such as his faith foundation, his sports foundation, his charitable work and many other laudable efforts,” Union University President David S. Dockery said. “The Union community will be pleased once again to bring a major world leader to West Tennessee”… He founded the Tony Blair Faith Foundation to promote respect and understanding between the major religions and makes the case for faith as a force for good in the modern world.
Union’s worldview now apparently includes the promotion of ecumenicalism and the willingness to host a Fabian Socialist. There’s good reason the re-discovered Fabian Window depicts a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Receiving the Union press release did not shock me. I already knew that, in February 2006, David Dockery joined Rick Warren and other leaders in signing the Evangelical Climate Initiative which was supported by the globalist Rockefeller Brothers Fund. In my estimation, that renders Dockery a useful idiot. He may really believe such projects and initiatives are pleasing to God, but in fact, friendship and partnership with the enemies of Christ are not.
The Union University press release also trumpeted that “previous speakers have included…Mikhail Gorbachev, Laura Bush, Rudolph Giuliani, and Colin Powell, among others.” Gorbachev? Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union has used his foundation to promote globalism and pagan spirituality. He speaks openly of the need for a new world religion:
First of all, we must return to the well-known human values that are embodied in the ideals of the world religions and also in the socialist ideas that inherited much more from those values. Further, we need to search for a new paradigm of development that is based on those values and that is capable of leading us all toward a genuinely humanistic or, more precisely, humanistic-ecological culture of living.
Mikhail Gorbachev is president of the International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies in Moscow, and he has been pushing a one-world religion and one-world government for years. He has even conducted much of his work right here in America from an office in San Francisco.
On January 1, 2009, Gorbachev wrote a column for the International Herald Tribune. He seemed almost gleeful over the financial crisis and the great opportunity for using it to further the globalist agenda:
The G-20 summit meeting in Washington foreshadowed a new format of global leadership, bringing together the countries responsible for the future of the world economy. And more than just the economy is at stake. …The economic and political balance in the world has changed. It is now a given that a world with a single power center, in any shape or guise, is no longer possible. The global challenge of a financial and economic tsunami can only be met by working together.
Working together for what purpose? Gorbachev explains:
A new concept is emerging for addressing the crisis at the national and international levels…If current ideas for reforming the world’s financial and economic institutions are consistently implemented, that would suggest we are finally beginning to understand the importance of global governance.
In October 2011, Gorbachev spoke at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania. William F. Jasper reported on the speech by Gorbachev:
“Transformation,” transformational,” and “transformative” are well-worn words in Mr. Gorbachev’s globalist lexicon, always signifying a supposed urgent need to deconstruct the current political/economic system of sovereign, independent nation states and the market-based economy and restructure (transform) it into a globalized, centralized, socialized “new world order” (NWO).
In his address to the Lafayette students and faculty members, Gorbachev lamented that “the opportunities that existed after the end of the Cold War…were not used properly. At that same time, we saw that the entire world situation did not develop positively. We saw deterioration where there should have been positive movement toward a new world order….”
“But we still are facing the problem of building such a world order. We have crises: we are facing problems of the environment, of backwardness and poverty, of food shortages. All of these problems are because we do not have a system of global governance.”
Another example of the political and spiritual tracks merging is evident in the Global Faith Forum that was held November 11-12, 2010 at Northwood Church in Texas. The conference slogan is revealing: “Moving from a conversation about other faiths, to a conversation with other faiths” [emphasis mine]. Sponsors listed on the conference website included the Leadership Network, which Emergent Pastor Brian McLaren says is responsible for the launch of the gnostic emergent churches.
Another sponsor was the Council on Foreign Relations. Started in 1921, the CFR has been pushing for world government for decades. One of America’s most influential families, the Rockefellers, was heavily involved in founding the CFR. John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson document in their book on the Rockefellers describe John D. Rockefeller, Jr. this way:
A committed internationalist, he financially supported programs of the League of Nations and crucially funded the formation and ongoing expenses of the Council on Foreign Relations and its initial headquarters building, in New York in 1921.
The CFR’s influence has been mounumental. On October 24, 1945, the United Nations was birthed out of the Council on Foreign Relations. The Rockefellers donated the land in New York City on which the United Nations headquarters was built.
John D. Rockefeller was also a strong promoter and supporter of ecumenicalism. He once declared:
Would that I had the power to bring to your minds the vision as it unfolds before me! I see all denominational emphasis set aside…I see the church molding the thought of the world as it has never done before, leading in all great movements as it should. I see it literally establishing the Kingdom of God on earth.
The CFR apparently continues Rockefeller’s objectives to use the church for global governance as described on the Global Faith Forum:
The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR)—an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, and publisher—spearheads a Religion and Foreign Policy Initiative to connect religious and congregational leaders, scholars, and thinkers with CFR’s resources on U.S. foreign policy and provides a forum for this community to discuss a broad range of pressing international issues.
Speaker and biographical sketches listed on the Global Forum website included:
● Ed Stetzer, Southern Baptist Convention’s Lifeway Research;
● John Esposito, professor at the Jesuit, Georgetown University;
● Shamil Idriss, who was appointed Deputy Director of the UN Alliance by Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2005 and is a member of the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow network;
● Le Cong Phung, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam to the United States of America
● Eboo Patel, Founder and Executive Director of Interfaith Youth Core and named by Islamica Magazine as one of ten young Muslim visionaries shaping Islam in America;
● Prince Turki bin Faisal, who served as Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States from July 2005 until December 11, 2006;
● Sami Awad, Executive Director of Holy Land Trust (HLT), a Palestinian nonprofit organization which he founded in 1998 in Bethlehem. HLT works with the Palestinian community at both the grassroots and leadership levels in developing nonviolent approaches that aim to end the Israeli occupation…
This reads like a bad joke—“did you hear the one about the Southern Baptist, Muslim, and Communist that got together for a conference on religion?” I wish it were a joke but there’s nothing humorous about “Christians” who think they can meet with Muslims and communists under a common slogan such as “many distinct beliefs, one common respect.” And unfortunately, this sort of influence is far more widespread—and insidious—than a conference here and there.
Copyright 2012 ©Brannon Howse. This content is for Situation Room members and is not to be duplicated in any form or uploaded to other websites without the express written permission of Brannon Howse or his legally authorized representative.
