07/07/2004: "Not just your average church group"

I only got interested in this because it appeared in the news summary at Christianity Today's Weblog, as well as at Yahoo news. This AP story illustrates the hazards of relying on the mainstream press for religion-oriented stories. There are certainly two sides to the Cuban embargo issue�personally, I think we're more likely to effect genuine change in Cuba by lifting the embargo and flooding the country with the benefits of freedom. The group mentioned in this story, however, have something completely different in mind:

Church Groups Lead Annual Relief to Cuba

By LYNN BREZOSKY, Associated Press Writer

HIDALGO, Texas - School buses and other vehicles loaded with medical and office equipment crossed the border into Mexico on Wednesday on a relief trip to Cuba that violates the U.S. embargo.

It was the 14th straight year that Pastors for Peace, an American humanitarian aid group, has sought to bring supplies to the impoverished Communist nation despite the embargo.

"It's a policy that has no redeeming value," said the Rev. Lucias [sic] Walker, a New Jersey [sic�it's New York] pastor who founded Pastors for Peace. "What we're doing is an act of civil obedience to a higher power that says you should love your neighbor."

Sounds innocuous, doesn't it? "Church groups," "Pastors for Peace." In fact, P4P (and its parent, the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization) is one of the founding coalition partners of International ANSWER, the far-left umbrella organization dominated by the Stalinist Workers World Party. Pastors for Peace maintains that Cuba is more democratic than the US, and that Fidel Castro is one of the world's great statesmen. Lucius Walker has been stooging for various Communist regimes, especially Cuba, for years (he also spent a stint as an Associate General Secretary of the National Council of Churches back in the 70s). Here's an example of Walker's perspective on the world:

Addressing the May Day crowd, the Rev. Lucius Walker Jr., an American pastor who has long backed Castro's government, said that Cuba is "loved, respected, appreciated and supported by millions of U.S. citizens."

But he also called on Cuba to abolish the death penalty. "Cuba: you are a world leader in human rights and respect for human life," said Walker, pastor of Salvation Baptist Church in Brooklyn and executive director of New York-based Pastors for Peace. "The death penalty demeans that. You are better than that."

Walker exhorted the U.S. government to "cease its hypocritical lies and distortion about Cuba's human rights record because the United States itself is the worst violator of human rights in this hemisphere." (From the May 1, 2003 Washington Post via blog Travelling Shoes.)

But one would never know any of this from the AP article. Now you know at least some of the rest of the story.