WND distortion: Wallis “labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life' ”

WND: “Obama's new controversial pastor” has “labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' ” A March 15 article on WorldNetDaily by Aaron Klein was headlined, “Not again! Meet Obama's new controversial pastor: Champion of communism, socialism called U.S. 'destroyer of human life.' ” The article reported, “Rev. Jim Wallis, a member of President Obama's 'faith council' who is described as a spiritual adviser to the president, is a socialist activist who has championed communist causes and previously labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' ” Klein appeared on the March 16 edition of Radio America's The G. Gordon Liddy Show, where he asserted of Wallis, “Jeremiah Wright is back in a new form.” Klein further stated, " I started looking into him earlier this week and I found out that Wallis is a socialist activist who openly champions communist causes, and he's labeled the United States, quote, 'the great captor and great destroyer of human life.' "

Wallis did not label the U.S. “the great captor and destroyer of human life”

Wallis actually wrote that “the modern state” -- not the U.S. -- “is the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life.” Contrary to WorldNetDaily's distortion of his book, Wallis did not label the United States “the great captor and destroyer of human life.” From Pages 72-73 of Wallis' 1976 book Agenda for Biblical People:

When the powers of the world demand unconditional allegiance and obedience that assumes human beings should assign them ultimate value, then the worship of God and the assigning of ultimate value of God's kingdom becomes a radical act, a political threat. In fact, worship is where the vitality of the life of the Christian community is most clearly manifest and where the claims and purposes of the idolatrous powers are most clearly threatened. This is contrary to the political “use” and therefore abuse of worship which is so common to ideological religion. Rather, it is the simple, joyous, purely offered worship and praise of God who alone is the source, author, and giver of life that is the single greatest threat to the powers which worship and serve death. Biblically understood, the worship of God is to be the definition of our lives. Worship is not to be conceived as mere ritual and ceremony apart from ethics, politics, and other parts of life. Instead, worship and praise become the style of life for the gathered community living in faithful obedience to the Word of God in the midst of the blasphemy of the fallen powers [emphasis in original].

The Christian community must always be asking which of the powers are now most aggressively seeking to bring human life under their control. Discernment is the spiritual gift employed to understand where and how a particular power is on the offensive in the effort to impose conformity and slavery upon the lives of men and women. For us, the modern state is the great power, the great seducer, the great captor and destroyer of human life, the great master of humanity and history in its totalitarian claims and designs. The state as a power or principality has subsumed and subordinated even other powers of nation, tradition, racial and ethnic cultures, common and constitutional law, local community institutions and groupings, the media, information, education, religion, the professions, movements and causes, the economic system -- other principalities which would rival and compete with the state and, perhaps, inadvertently limit its power in benefit of human life.

Right-wing witch hunt turns to Wallis

WND paints Wallis as a “controversial” figure who is connected to “radicals.” As Media Matters for America noted, the right-wing witch hunt against Obama's advisers has turned to Wallis, a member of the president's faith council who has worked with numerous conservative and mainstream religious leaders. The WorldNetDaily article uses a series of falsehoods and distortions to portray Wallis as “Obama's new controversial pastor” and a “champion of communism” whose magazine “has published a slew of radicals.”