Under Attack

In the past few years, many Christian churches, groups, and individuals have found themselves under attack from the forces of the "New Right." The tactics most often employed include spreading half-truths, quoting partial statements out of context, using innuendo, making undocumented and often unprovable charges, and resorting to outright falsehood. The basic theme is that those under attack are Marxist, communist, or socialist, or are secretly supporting people who are.

The attacks range in scope from the simple one-line quote that turns up in a local newspaper to entire articles and even books dedicated to name-calling and spreading false information.

Sojourners has recently been discovered by the New Right. We greet this newfound notoriety with both hope and sadness. The hope comes from realizing that the church renewal for which we work and pray has grown to the point that the right wing in this country feels pushed to acknowledge it and respond. The sadness comes from the tactics, distortions, and outright falsehood used against us by the Right.

Until now we have chosen not to respond to the numerous attacks, in part because the charges were so absurd, and because we did not want to magnify or dignify what we considered a small matter. But as growing numbers of our friends and readers have begun experiencing similar harassment, we have decided to comment publicly.

In May 1983 a group called Accuracy in Media (AIM) published a 150-page report titled Sojourners on the Path to ... AIM is a Washington-based right-wing group that claims to specialize in monitoring the print and electronic news media in order to publicize supposed incidents of liberal or leftist bias.

The report on Sojourners was supposed to be the result of a thorough reading of five years' worth of back issues, with an eye toward demonstrating that we have never once deviated from the "Soviet line" on a few dozen key issues. The report's implication is that our Christianity is only a cover for our real purpose of manipulating church people into supporting communist causes.

In the fall of 1983, the AIM report was reprinted in book form, retitled The Sojourners File and published by the New Century Foundation. The report contains numerous distortions and misrepresentations of our views and includes cases of outright fabrication when simple distortion didn't suit their needs.

In the report a description of a liberation theologian's views supporting revolutionary violence is quoted from a Sojourners book review as if it were our own position. In fact, our reviewer had quoted the theologian's position in order to criticize it as unbiblical and inconsistent. In another place the report claims that Sojourners Community members shouted down evangelical speakers from Guatemala at a public meeting in Washington, D.C., when in fact nothing of the sort has ever happened. And we, according to the AIM report, even support the Soviet line on the Superbowl. Whatever that may be.

The report also states without qualification that Sojourners has never once criticized human rights violations in a communist country. AIM's researchers managed to overlook our editorials in support of the Solidarity movement in Poland, our coverage of the independent peace groups in the Soviet bloc countries and the repression they face, and our articles on the restriction of religious freedom in the Soviet Union and the repression of the Buddhist church in post-war Vietnam. Our own quick survey revealed at least 20 articles about repression in communist countries during the period covered by the AIM report.

These are simply a few examples of the distortion used in a report apparently created to frighten people who have never heard of us or seen our work.

SINCE PRODUCING the report, AIM has worked hard to get it into the hands of other conservative and right-wing people. The report was plugged, for example, in Conservative Digest, in which it was said that we support "abortion on demand" and the "right of North Korea to assume control of South Korea," and that we were "favorably impressed with North Vietnam's treatment of American POWs." These charges are all false, of course, but apparently make good reading for conservative publications.

Another attack on Sojourners surfaced in the new conservative Catholic publication, Catholicism in Crisis. While this series was not as distorted as the AIM report, it did contain numerous allegations that are completely false. For example, according to this series, we seek the abolition of the family structure, are opposed to all leadership roles including pastors and elders, and are apparently pro-Soviet because we prayed for peace on the day that Leonid Brezhnev died.

Some conservative evangelicals have also, in one way or another, tried to portray us as un-American or even Marxist. The basic theme in their articles is that if you're not lock step behind the current U.S. policy, you're Marxist. There is no place for an alternative Christian position. The evidence the conservative evangelicals offer has been the same sort of inference, conjecture, and out-of-context quoting employed by the others.

One author, Ronald Nash, goes so far as to call Jim Wallis "one evangelical who can hardly restrain his enthusiasm for Marxism." But as Boyd Reese points out in the November-December issue of the Theological Students' Fellowship Bulletin, the thrust of the article Nash refers to is a "warning (from Wallis) to Christians against marrying themselves to any ideological system, and particularly a plea to Latin American liberation theologians to learn from the alliance of North American evangelicalism with capitalism and not tie themselves to Marxism."

Because they are based on groundless allegations, misrepresentations, and distortions, we expect that these reports will continue to be disregarded by people familiar with our work, even those who disagree with our theological and political approach. But we are concerned that Christians who have never actually seen our magazine may be misled by the claims against us. This concerns us because the important faith questions we and many friends are trying to raise in the Christian community might be prejudged on the basis of a false presentation of our views and motivations.

One thing we do find significant is that the Right is unwilling to tell its constituency what we really stand for and why. Perhaps they fear that many Christians involved in the New Right movement would be interested in our approach to biblical faith. If the New Right leadership sensed the similarities in faith between some of its constituency and Sojourners, that would explain its need to portray us in the worst possible light, regardless of truth.

In any case it seems clear from the mounting attacks that the right wing in this country is very afraid of the growing Christian movement that roots its cry for justice and appeal for peace, not in Marx, but in the Bible.

Dennis Marker was press officer at Sojourners when this article appeared.