Presbyterians Dancing With Karl Marx! Part 1

Recently my husband and I watched an enjoyable movie entitled “Sweet Land.” The movie features a mail order bride, a German woman, who comes to the United States during World War I to live and marry within a Scandinavian community.
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The movie has everything a person interested in social justice would find invigorating and challenging: immigration problems, farm foreclosures, a hard nosed banker and ethnic prejudices.

The plot comes to its conclusion with the community reconciled and the couple happily married. And despite the hard nosed banker, the farmers continue to own their own farms, a highlight of the movie.

In contradiction to the above American idealism about private property, several organizations, strongly oriented toward extreme socialism including Marxist Leninist groups, are making inroads into mainstream institutional religion in the United States.
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More troubling than the groups’ advocacy against private property, is their anarchistic tendencies and deep roots in materialistic Marxism. While some of these groups carry the blessings of some liberationist theologians the organizations are not themselves concerned with Christianity or biblical faith.

The different organizations have connections with each other and are used and promoted by various persons and organizations in several mainline denominations. Additionally in recent years they have all began to align under a larger umbrella movement called the World Social Forum (WSF).

I intend to look at some of these organizations pointing out their innate problems and connections to each other. As a member of the Presbyterian Church USA, I will also explain how these extreme left leaning groups are promoted by various persons and organizations in my denomination. I will look at each organization or movement explaining its purpose, ideology and connection to other groups.

The Landless Workers Movement of Brazil (MST)

The Landless Workers Movement of Brazil or MST, the Portuguese abbreviation of their name, was featured in the Presbyterian Women’s magazine Horizons, March/April 2006, with three articles. The articles were, “Promised Land: The Landless Rural Worker’s Movement (MST) and Democracy in Brazil,” by Miguel Carter; “The MST: A struggle for land, agrarian reform and social justice,” by Celia Alldridge; “Teaching Transformation,” by Roberta Mansfield.

The articles in Horizons pictured the MST as a group of landless people who acquired land by occupying huge unproductive and unused lands owned by other people. As they forced the government to give them the land they built homes, and schools for the people. In fact, the sub-title of Carter’s article, “The Landless Rural Workers’ Movement (MST) and Democracy in Brazil,” implies that this is a democratic movement.

In reality, looking deeper, there is a vastly different picture of MST than the one presented in the Horizons’ articles. The truth is, the idea that this is a democratic movement is debatable and is being debated even in Brazil.

What the Editors of Horizons did not state is that Carter’s article is taken from a much larger article with his original title being the same as the sub-title in the magazine.

Carter’s original article is his attempt to answer critics who believe the MST is an anti-state, Marxists organization. 1 He mentions three academic critics of the movement. Although Carter does not say so, one of the critics is a former “landless activist.”2

Zander Navarro, the former landless activist, was professor of sociology at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul at the time of Carter’s paper and is now a sociologist at the University of Sussex in Britain. Carter quotes him as writing that “the MST is an ‘anti-systemic’ and ‘anti-state’ organization, driven by a hardened Marxist disposition toward non-institutional venues of action.”3

Navarro, undoubtedly, means that MST tends to work outside of the normal institutions of both government and society. And also, because of their "Marxist disposition" they fail to find value in any kind of action or concept except that of a Marxist type of socialism.

The author of an Economist article writes that Navarro says “its [MST's] internal structure is ‘very anti-democratic.’”4

In his arguments for the MST, Carter seemingly tries to soften some of the actions of the organization. He equates their actions with the “1955-56 Montgomery, Alabama bus boycotts.” But in that earlier case the civil rights activists refused to ride buses to any destination. That is far different than occupying someone else’s property with the intent of obtaining the property for one’s own.

Going beyond the occupying of unused and unproductive land, the MST has, according to Carter, had “sit-ins at government buildings;” they have blocked highways and occasionally out of hunger and “dire need,” “stopped and pillaged trucks transporting food.”5 The Economist's article adds to that,” taking over highway toll booths” and destroying “a paper company’s research laboratory.”6

In a paper found on the MST web site, taken from the, “International, Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development,” one finds the solutions to the problems of poverty offered by several peasant movements, including MST. While naming many of the real problems facing much of the world’s poor and offering several good suggestions such as diversified farming the political underpinning of this document and others is problematic. The only political answers allowed are extreme socialism.

The solutions have to do with the term, “Food Sovereignty.” This political concept sounds good but at least in these documents it tends to function above all individual human rights. One of the main points is, “The realization of human rights should go beyond the notion of human rights and also ensure the collective rights of communities and peoples.”

The paper focuses on the rights of people as collectives, it never really addresses the rights of people as individuals, nor does it even once uphold the individual’s right to property. The physical needs of peoples and the cultural needs of ethnic groups are addressed, but the individual’s right to abstract freedoms such as free speech, free press, and freedom of religion are missing.

In another paper on MST’s site, "Agrarian Reform in the context of food sovereignty, the right to food and cultural diversity: land, territory and dignity," religious rights are partially upheld under the rights of indigenous peoples. Their religious rights are upheld because they often see their land as sacred and their religious rituals as necessary for the betterment of their lands.
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Nonetheless this is not the same as stressing individual religious rights such as the right to conversion or evangelism. And, in fact, when the religious rights of peoples are tied to their rights as a tribe within a territory or as collective owners of land, rather than an inalienable right of humanity, individual rights of conversion and/or evangelism are endangered.

In the same paper two models for agrarian reform are commended although one is questioned by the author. The author sees both Cuba and Venezuela as models of land reform.

Cuba is a model because in the 1960’s land was taken from the original landholders by the government and later, in the 1990’s again redistributed to “smaller, cooperative and individual production units.” The author still questions Venezuela’s reform partly because of the landowners and bureaucrats resistance. These are the two Marxists governments existing in Latin America. 7

Recently Marina da Silva of MST gave the opening speech at their 5th National Congress. In her speech she states that one of the important objectives of MST is to not leave “one single opening for the virus of capitalism.” da Silva in the end quoted from Mau Tse Tung, and praised Karl Marx as well as a German Communist martyr of the last century, Rosa Luxemburgo.8

The dishonesty with which the Landless Workers Movement was presented to the readers of Horizons is appalling. Christians are called to be compassionate—but to direct other's compassion, in the name of Christ, toward movements whose ideology and issues are debatable, perhaps damaging to the very faith held by Christians, is inexcusable.
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Money is fed into this organization by several church groups including Presbyterian Women via another organization I will now examine.
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Agricultural Missions, Inc. (AMI)

Agricultural Missions, Inc., an affiliate with Presbyterian Women supports MST including their 5th National Congress.9 In fact, Sherry Flyr, both a board member of AMI and Vice Moderator of Missions Relationships for Presbyterian Women, wrote the introduction to the 2006 March/April Horizons. She included in her introduction the meeting of the representatives of the Presbyterian Women's Global Exchange with Celia Alldridge. Alldridge is one of the authors who wrote about MST and an activist with MST.

AMI was formed in the thirties as an organization meant to help the rural poor gain land and educate their children. It was part of a missionary enterprise among mainline churches and assisting missionaries in religious education was included in its responsibilities. But in 1979 at a Consultation its mission changed.

J. Benton Rhoades, in a document on AMI’s web site, writes of the conference:

"Held in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, the Consultation brought together leaders of church mission societies and representatives of peoples movements from around the world in an attempt to redefine the role of Agricultural Missions and the relationship between the churches and the movements. There were intense conflicts between these two constituencies, but eventually, the yelling evolved into dialogue. After a week, Agricultural Missions had as its new mandate “to deepen its commitment to peoples movements at home and abroad and to help churches educate themselves by bringing critical information from Third World Peoples—for the purposes of consciousness raising and action.” Rural Mission was coming to be seen as a matter of accompaniment than of religious instruction." (Italics author)10

Already noted above and quoted in one of my notes, but important to notice in the Annual Report for 2007 is mention of some of the projects of AMI. They write:

"Through the Rural Network Program, AMI supports and facilitates the network building activities among partners and other grassroots organizations at the local, national, regional and global levels in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the United States. Two examples in 2006 were support for the National Farm Worker Ministry in farm worker advocacy, and for the 5th National Congress organized by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terras-MST (Landless Movement) in Brazil." (Bold mine)


Under the AMI’s Annual Report for 2007 are listed the names of the officers of AMI. They include members from several mainline denominations including Lionel Derenoncourt who is President of the Board of Directors of AMI and also a member the Presbyterian Hunger Program of the Presbyterian Church USA. Also included is Cynthia White, both a member of AMI’s Board and a part of the National Committee on the Self Development of Peoples in the Presbyterian Church USA.

Under the list of officers is the list of donors to the AMI. The Presbyterian Church USA is listed with Presbyterian Women and Hunger Program as sub headings.

The AMI is deeply involved in a movement I have mentioned above, the World Social Forum, including the United States Social Forum which was held this year in Atlanta Georgia. This is a movement partly organized by Marxist Leninist groups. I will look at this movement and its several sub groups in my next postings.

1 Miguel Carter, “The Landless rural workers’ movement (MST) and democracy in Brazil,” Working paper number CBS-60-05, Centre for Brazilian Studies, University of Oxford. See, http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=book/print/43.
2 “This land is anti-capitalist land,” Economist.com, Apr 26th 2007, See, http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9079861.
3 Ibid., Carter, “Landless,” 6.
4 Ibid., Economist.
5 Ibid., Carter, “Landless.”
6 Ibid., Economist.
7 See, http://www.mstbrazil.org/?q=book/print/43.
8 See www.mstbrazil.org/?q=book/print/475.
9 See, http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/, and http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/board.htm. “Through the Rural Network Program, AMI supports and facilitates the network building activities among partners and other grassroots organizations at the local, national, regional and global levels in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the United States. Two examples in 2006 were support for the National Farm Worker Ministry in farm worker advocacy, and for the 5th National Congress organized by the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terras-MST (Landless Movement) in Brazil.” At: http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/annual_report_2006.htm.
10 J. Benton Rhoades, “Accompaniment History: from where we came." See http://www.agriculturalmissions.org/history.htm.