On his TV show Glenn Beck accused President Obama of “merging” the government with churches. (transcript, no video)

The point I suspect that Beck was rather clumsily trying to make was that President Obama is trying to use churches to advance his left-wing agenda, just as atheist Saul Alinsky used churches in his organizing days in Chicago in order to advance leftism.

President Obama doesn’t need to take over the churches: many of them are already in the service of the left.

The pro-communist National Council of Churches is deeply involved with congregations nationwide. The left controls large swaths of the Roman Catholic church. Its charitable arm, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) in Washington, D.C., is a Saul Alinsky-inspired organization that funds community organizing groups. After channeling $7.3 million of parishioners’ money to ACORN over the last decade, CCHD only very reluctantly cut off ACORN in 2008 following reports of gross legal and ethical improprieties involving ACORN.

CCHD funds develop local projects to “help break the cycle of poverty.” CCHD says it educates Catholics “about the causes of poverty and seeks to build solidarity between impoverished and affluent persons.” Its mission statement calls for raising funds to support “organized groups of white and minority poor to develop economic strength and political power.” It also declares CCHD’s purpose is to “educate the People of God to a new knowledge of today’s problems … that can lead to some new approaches that promote a greater sense of solidarity.”

There are a slew of church-linked leftist community organizing groups:

• The Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation, the mother of all community organizing networks. Alinsky referred to its training institute as a “school for professional radicals.” It aims to recruit churches into its network.
• People Improving Communities Through Organizing (PICO), which was founded in 1972 by Father John Baumann, a Jesuit priest trained in Alinsky’s techniques.
• Gamaliel Foundation says its mission is “to be a powerful network of grassroots, interfaith, interracial, multi-issue organizations working together to create a more just and more democratic society.” Its executive director is Gregory Galluzzo, a former Jesuit priest. Gamaliel brags on its website about its connection to President Obama. Obama worked for the Developing Communities Project, which was a spinoff of the Calumet Community Religious Conference, itself a creation of several Chicago area Catholic churches.
• Evangelical Environmental Network tries to convince Christians that radical left-wing environmentalism is compatible with the tenets of Christianity.

The above list is hardly exhaustive. The left has been using churches as a springboard for decades.

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