Religious left leaders chided for meeting with war on terror enemy

Religious left leaders chided for meeting with war on terror enemy

A spokesman for the Institute on Religion and Democracy says the Iranian regime is receiving the sympathy, if not the support, of a delegation of church officials from denominations such as the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church. The ecumenical delegation is currently in Iran to meet with government officials, including the country's current and past president.

The delegation members' expressed aim is to help avoid what they view as a potential military confrontation between Iran and the United States over Iran's nuclear weapons program. But Mark Tooley with the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a Protestant renewal group, says its members have reluctantly acknowledged they need to address other issues as well, such as the Iranian president's threats to destroy Israel and Tehran's sponsorship of a Holocaust denial conference.

"Unfortunately," Tooley notes, "the delegation has not cited at any point Iran's atrocious human rights record and the fact that it treats all of its people oppressively, especially religious minorities. But it persecutes anyone who openly criticizes or resists the Iranian government's theocratic understanding of Shiite Islam."

The IRD spokesman is critical of the ecumenical delegation, which includes representatives not only from the United Methodist and Episcopal denominations but also from the Quakers, the Mennonites, and Sojourners, a liberal evangelical group. The delegates see Iran as a potential victim of U.S. aggression, he says, also noting that some of the same church officials currently visiting Iran went to Baghdad shortly before the U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Tooley says he finds the church leaders' latest trip ironic on several levels. "These old line church bureaucrats are more distressed about the U.S. than about a potentially nuclear Iran," he observes.

"These liberal religious officials warn that conservative Christians in America are trying to create a theocracy in the United States, which of course is silly," Tooley continues. "But when they are confronted by real-life, oppressive theocracy -- Islamic Shiite theocracy -- in Iran that actively persecutes non-Shiites, including Christians, they have nothing to say about the problems with that," he says.