Throw Down Your Cross

This wintry season, as the faithful continue to receive alarming reports from the news that Republicans are all that stand between them and the outlawing of Christmas itself by hordes of secular humanists, the two presidents Bush have endorsed a powerful conservative interest group specializing in removing the cross – not from schools or courthouses, but from churches.

Rather than the traditional egg hunt, this group, calling itself the American Clergy Leadership Conference, sponsored a nationwide "Tear Down The Cross" day for Easter, 2003. Last week, leaders in this radical cause presided over a Washington prayer breakfast featuring messages of thanks from the presidents. Former Sen. Bob Dole came in person.

Mostly African American, pastors who joined in 2003's ACLC-sponsored "Tear Down The Cross" won gold watches from the wealthy group, which unabashedly claims in its publications to have stripped churches of over a hundred crosses over the Easter holiday alone. This, movement leaders said, cleared the way for a new age and second messiah.

Speaking of messiahs, make a quick stop at the Web site of the ACLC, and it's clear there's more to it than the "rapidly growing movement of clergy committed to the endeavor of making this nation the best that it can be," as the ACLC described itself in a Dec. 8 Washington Times op-ed. It's actually a vehicle for Sun Myung Moon, the billionaire conservative donor who calls himself the True Father.

Though the breakfast boasted two other "co-sponsors," both are easily identifiable as projects of the self-declared Messiah: the International and Interreligious Federation of World Peace and the American Family Coalition, which Moon founded in 1984. How much more eminent these names sound than "the Moonies"! In the 1970s, that was the shorthand on the evening news for Moon's followers, whose frank call for crushing Western democracy, combined with success in recruiting teenagers, made them a popular nightmare on the evening news.

On Wednesday, a video file containing the elder President Bush's message to the ACLC disappeared from the movement's web site, though both Bush endorsements were reported in the Washington Times. Neither the White House nor the ACLC returned requests for comment on the breakfast and President Bush's participation.

Taking out the Trash

One series of photos found on Moon's Web site, but purged after receiving unfavorable attention earlier this year from evangelicals, shows Massachusetts preacher John Kingara taking down the cross from his church, hauling it behind the old brick building and hoisting it into a dumpster. Another shows a ritual in Israel disposing of the cross in the earth.

Kingara, embracing the ACLC's new gospel, declared in remarks found in the Unification News, "The fact that the cross is a symbol of division, shame, suffering and bloodshed prove that it is not of God but Satan." He continued, "On this 18th day of April 2003, we are beginning a new history. Pastors, please, help me to bring the cross down, because it is not of God but the devil."

Cheerfully pitched to pastors as "trade your cross for a crown," Moon's rebate plan takes its name from a 1913 hymn with a somewhat different slant. Whereas "The Old Rugged Cross" pines for salvation in heaven, Moon offered the pastors the possibility to cash in here on earth, at a taxpayer-funded Senate building. At a secret March 23, 2004 ceremony, he declared he was erecting heaven on earth. That evening, the elderly Korean eminence behind the ACLC was brought the twinkling crown by bowing Congressman Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.).

Moon was no accidental VIP that night. Far from being on the fringes of Washington, he's the supermogul behind a political and media empire that includes the Washington Times and United Press International, as well as being a longtime friend of the Bush family.