From The Continuing Protestant Crackup Department:

From Inside Politics by Greg Pierce of The Washington Times comes more of the same.

I'm sorry. I know that you, gentle reader, expect more from poor old Fyodor. Besides, you may have been away from church since the sixteenth century and don't know about the crackup. Let me try again.

HOLY CRAP! The National Council of Churches is a commie front organization!

Political lobby

"As funding from its member denominations continues to decline, the National Council of Churches (NCC) is increasingly relying on support from liberal foundations and polemical direct mail campaigns," Mark Tooley writes at the Web site of the American Spectator (www.spectator.org).

"A recent fundraising letter from NCC General Secretary Bob Edgar blasts 'Jerry Falwell and his friends,' 'hard-right fundamentalists,' libertarians, President Bush, Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, and the organization for which I work (the Institute on Religion and Democracy)," Mr. Tooley said.

"Preoccupied with its political purposes, Edgar's letter never once mentions what is officially still the NCC's purpose: to foster ecumenical unity within America's churches. Talking too much about Christianity might sound too 'fundamentalist.'

"So, seemingly writing for a largely secular audience, who are expected to react viscerally to the mere mention of names like Falwell and Limbaugh and Bush, Edgar hacks away at hard-core political themes. In so doing, he seems to want to confirm the worst allegations of the NCC's critics: that the NCC has ceased to be a church organization and has instead become a political lobby of the Left. Indeed, to remove all doubt, Edgar mentions that the NCC works closely with the far-left MoveOn.org, which, though unmentioned by Edgar in his letter, also has provided funding to the NCC."