This weekend, leftist churches are expected to ring their bells to note the 2,500th U.S. military death in Iraq. The campaign is organized by the the National Council of Churches' (NCC) political arm, called "Faithful America" and by Ralph Nader’s antiwar group, Democracy Rising (See their website at: DemocracyRising.us.).

The NCC and the Nader group hope to enlist 2,500 "communities of worship" to ring their bells. Supposedly, one thousand have signed up so far.

Of course, this fatuous "Ring in Remembrance" campaign’s purpose is not really to "honor" the American dead. Instead, it seeks to exploit their deaths as a news hook for the campaign’s harsh anti-war rhetoric. Sadly, the NCC likely will ensnare at least a few churches that are not aware of the left-wing cynicism of the NCC and Nader’s group.

The NCC is trying to portray the bell-tolling "remembrance" in spiritual terms."Bell ringing has historically been used to call communities together in times of joy, sadness, or crisis, said Vince Isner of the NCC’s "Faithful America." "We believe this is not only a time of sadness, but an opportunity to ring in a new season of peace." He insisted that "the bells will toll as a call to prayer."

In his news release, Ralph Nader was more direct than Isner: "The ringing of the Bells of Remembrance on this solemn occasion may persuade more of the large majority of Americans opposed to this war-quagmire to act," Nader said. "The people can make the White House and Congress to stop the destruction and end the occupation." He first announced the concept last Fall at a press conference with Isner at a Unitarian church in Washington, D.C.

Nader, who is of Lebanese Maronite (Catholic) Christian lineage but is not known to be overly religious, first thought up the idea last year of employing church bells to make an statement against the war, and the administration, he opposes. "The U.S. corporate and military forces will end up pulling out of Iraq," Nader said in an NCC news release. "The question is – when? Months? Years? Decades? After how may more preventable deaths, debilitating injuries and diseases? After how much destruction? That’s up to us. Together we can end the occupation and bring the troops home safely."

Naturally Nader, et. al., see the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq from Saddam’s despotism in the most sinister terms. Democracy Rising's website attributes the war to war profiteering by Big Business and the Bush family.

The NCC’s chief, Bob Edgar, a Methodist minister and former Democratic congressman, also chimed in, although he tried to sound more pastoral: "This is a tragedy that shouldn’t have happened," he said of the Iraq war, cynically using other people's religion to advance his left-wing political agenda. "These young men and women who paid the ultimate price of their government's call to arms will be mourned by everyone. And across America, tens of thousands – mothers, fathers, spouses, siblings, children and friends – bear a burden of grief we can scarcely imagine."

Edgar, facing a nearly bankrupt NCC when he took over six years ago, has intensified the NCC’s involvement in far-Left political causes. Accordingly he has gained increasing support for the NCC from leftist foundations, even as the NCC’s 35 member denominations continue to give less and less to the NCC.

In particular, the NCC’s "Faithful America Project" has gotten support from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

That Edgar’s NCC has joined together with Nader’s completely secular antiwar project for a campaign targeting church bells shows that Edgar is not overly concerned about sustaining even a public veneer of Christian purpose for the NCC. Other current initiatives of the NCC’s "Faithful America" include closing the Guantanamo detention center, opposing U.S. "torture," and backing Teddy Kennedy’s recent, failed legislation to increase the minimum wage.

Although 35 denominations, totaling over 40 million American church members, belong to the NCC, the NCC has restored historically on the seven historic "mainline" Protestant denominations for most of its church funding, staffing and political direction. Forty years ago, one out of every six Americans belonged to the mainline churches. Today, thanks to their demographic implosion and exultation of politics over the faith, only one out of every 15 Americans belongs to a mainline denomination. Wherever it is tried, left-wing theology, which replaces transcendent truths with passing political fads, enervates and kills religious institutions.

When facing bankruptcy several years ago, the NCC could have seriously examined the cause of its near collapse. Why are orthodox and conservative churches growing while the liberal-led churches are collapsing? But the NCC’s leftist leadership would never admit to its failures. Instead, Edgar, realistically realizing that declining mainline churches could no longer financially sustain the NCC, turned to secular left-wing foundations. Politics, and not Christianity, interests the new secular donors, who now give the NCC more money than do all of the NCC’s church donors combined.

The NCC’s angry crusade against the Iraq War, and its alliance with even angrier secular groups like Nader’s Democracy Rising, represents the new, sad face of spiritually-empty, liberal Christianity. Its "Ring in Remembrance" bell-tolling of this weekend claims to honor slain U.S. military personnel. But it really instead portrays them merely as hapless victims in a shameful cause. Nader and the NCC should be ashamed.

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