June 18, 2006 Profiles in Subversion The Strange Career of Donald Grey Barnhouse Part 3: Agent of the Red Underground
Having prepared for decades through gradual infiltration, the underground Communist network launched its modernist assault on Protestant Christianity from within, led by agents posing as ministers and coordinated by the Marxist Federal Council of Churches (FCC), in the 1910s and 1920s. As expected, conservative clergy and theologians rose up in protest. Dr. J. Gresham Machen, president of Princeton Seminary, led the rebellion by resigning in 1929, shortly after the Left had taken full control of Princeton. As he and his fellow conservatives spoke out more strongly against the subversion, the newly Marxist-controlled Presbyterian denomination defrocked and expelled Machen and his allies.1 The storm had already enveloped all major Protestant denominations. Yet Donald Barnhouse, also a Presbyterian and supposedly a member of Machens fundamentalist camp, neither fought the modernists nor resigned from the denomination nor did the new Marxist leaders ever try to expel him. That fact alone raised considerable suspicion of Barnhouse in fundamentalist circles.2 As the FCC reorganized itself into the National Council of Churches (NCC) in 1950 and its affiliated World Council of Churches (WCC) by 1954, Barnhouse not only did not protest the increasingly open Marxism, he actually remained a member of the NCC and condemned the fundamentalists for refusing to participate.3 In 1954, Barnhouse openly abandoned the fundamentalists and fully endorsed the NCC and WCC, even while both organizations were being led by either Communists from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe or by ministers with open ties to the Communist Party and its front organizations, and while both groups were officially promoting Communist publications and political causes.4 In the same article in which he repeatedly condemned conservative fundamentalists, Barnhouse brazenly declared that some of the officials of the National Council of Churches are humble, dedicated men with genuine religious belief.5 He even tried to paint New Yorks notorious Riverside Church, a perpetual center of Marxist revolutionary organizing created by the leftist radicals of the Rockefeller family, as turning to theological conservatism.6 Naturally, Barnhouse showered his affection equally on the International Missionary Council (IMC), a Marxist precursor of the Soviet-controlled WCC. When the IMC and the WCC brokered an official merger between the two organizations in 1958 at a meeting in Communist Ghana hosted and addressed by brutal Marxist dictator Kwame Nkrumah Barnhouse covered the event favorably, even quoting Nkrumahs comments as guidelines for Christians to follow.7 The IMCs well-deserved reputation for sending Leftist missionaries into the field didnt bother Barnhouse in the least; in fact, he directly echoed the Communist line by publishing a call for missionaries to stop bringing positive cultural influence to primitive societies.8 The Marxist Left showered Barnhouse with equal friendliness. Since the 1920s, the CBS radio broadcasting network enthusiastically promoted Barnhouse and turned him into a household name throughout America; by the mid-1950s, Barnhouses show moved to NBC to receive that networks unusual favor.9 Both broadcasting networks had established clear reputations for refusing airtime to religious programming while supporting leftist politics, yet they easily embraced Barnhouse. The National Council of Churches joined in by 1955, officially sponsoring Barnhouse as its co-host in a new television program from coast to coast.10 Other Communist-controlled organizations also promoted Barnhouses career and influence. The Fifth International Student Missionary Convention, for example, featured Barnhouse as a speaker on the theme One Swimming in such a stream of Communist ties, Barnhouse predictably worked to promote close relations between American evangelicals and churches under control of the Soviet KGB secret police, thus opening doors for KGB penetration among conservative fundamentalists. For example:
An undercover Communist agent with widespread influence as a religious leader does not restrict himself to a Marxist political agenda; he also works to transform the religious theology and practice themselves, to undermine monotheistic faith. Barnhouse played that role, too. References
1. Stanford, M.J., Dr. Donald Grey Barnhouse and Neo-Evangelicalism, withchrist.org, 1977 (retrieved May 18, 2006), part 1.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.; Barnhouse, D.G., Editorials, Eternity, March 1958, pp. 6-7.
4. Stanford, M.J., Op cit., part 2; Bundy, E.C., Apostles of Deceit, Church League of America, Wheaton, IL, 1966.
5. Barnhouse, D.G., Editorials, March 1958, Op cit.
6. Bundy, E.C., Op cit., pp. 40-41; Barnhouse, D.G., Window on the world, Eternity, Aug. 1958, p. 34.
7. Barnhouse, D.G., Window on the world, Eternity, March 1958, p. 30.
8. Glasser, A.F., New Books, Eternity, April 1956, p. 28.
9. Hopkins, P.A., Dr. Barnhouse moves to N.B.C. network July 1st, Eternity, July 1956, pp. 6-7.
10. Hopkins, P.A., Television: Man to Man, Eternity, Oct. 1955, pp. 6-7.
11. Barnhouse, D.G., Window on the world, March 1958, Op cit., pp. 30-31.
12. Leitch, A.H., The theological conflict, Eternity, May 1956, p. 44.
13. Woods, S., What I saw in Latin America, Eternity, Sep. 1958, p. 35.
14. Lawrence, J., Here are the facts about Russian Protestants, Eternity, Nov. 1955, pp. 8-9, 54-55; Barnhouse, D.G. & Hitt, R.T., Eds., Window on the world, Eternity, July 1956, p. 19.
15. Bundy, E.C., Op cit., pp. 89, 102, 504; Barnhouse, D.G., Window on the world, Eternity, Sept. 1958, p. 36.
16. Barnhouse, D.G. & Hitt, R.T., Eds., Window on the world, Eternity, May 1956, p. 14.
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