Christian Anti-Communism Crusade

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Christian Anti-Communism Crusade

Acronym/Code: CACC

Updated: 12/91

Categories:Education, Religious.

Background: An aggressively anticommunist evangelical organization, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade (CACC) was founded in Waterloo, Iowa, by Dr. Fred C. Schwarz in l953. (3,6,14) In its promotional brochures, the CACC is described as a nonprofit, tax-exempt educational organization which is committed to the battle against communism and devoted to the spread of the Christian religion. (3,6) Now based in Long Beach, California, CACC sponsors "antisubversive" seminars in the United States and overseas. (3,10)

It produces publications, holds rallies, and organizes lectures, debates, and forums at universities, all with the aim of providing information about the "philosophy, morality, organization, techniques, and strategy of communism and related forces." It usually works with local citizens’ committees and has supported anticommunist projects in a number of countries worldwide. (10)

Funding: The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade has received financial support from the Pew Memorial Trust ($30,000 in 1969, $25,000 in 1972, $45,000 in 1974, $50,000 in 1977, and $65,000 from l977-78), the Berry Foundation ($1,400 from 1969-78). (6) CACC has also received funds from the Schick razor company, Richfield Oil, and the Lilly Endowment. (38)

Activities: In its efforts to disseminate its analysis of communism, the CACC conducts seminars and other public forums, transmits anticommunist radio and television broadcasts, and distributes literature, audio and video tapes, bumper stickers, pamphlets, books, and its newsletter to a variety of audiences. (3,l9,30,32) Seminar participants and targeted groups include teachers, students, military officers and soldiers, church leaders, business and government leaders, professional people, and recruits from CACC radio broadcasts. (20,21,30) The Crusade has also supported national anticommunism workers who are recruited and instructed by the CACC and are supplied with literature, tapes, tape recorders, and essential support. (23)

Orphans and neglected children have been supported by the Crusade which has offered child sponsorships to help cover its costs. CACC has provided food, clothing, shelter, education, and religious instruction for such children in India. (23)

The organization translates its materials into Spanish and local dialects in order to make them accessible to different populations. (27) Considered by some to be the most active of the "old" religious right groups in Central America, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade has no Central American branches, but conducts anticommunist seminars and distributes literature and tapes through evangelical groups. (1,9) It has conducted seminars in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Costa Rica which have been well-received not only by the evangelical pastorate but also by government officials in each country. (3,9) The Costa Rican police as well as the Salvadoran and Guatemalan armies have distributed CACC literature to their members, and the organization has reported positive responses from the National Alliance of Evangelicals in El Salvador, the Ministerial Alliance of Costa Rica, and two officers from the Salvadoran Department of Psychological Warfare. (9)

CACC has held seminars on the theory and strategy of communism for the Honduran Air Force Aviation Military Academy and with senior officers of the Honduran military. (21) CACC began working in El Salvador in about l983. In addition to its seminars and radio broadcasts, it has distributed literature, made telecasts, and set up a fund to provide artificial limbs for the victims of landmines. Members of the CACC team, including John Whitehall, Peter Padro, and James Colbert, held conferences with Salvadoran military leaders and were complimentary of the military’s greater attention to psychological warfare. The team members were asked for CACC study material by the commander of the Arce Battalion who said he would like to make those study guides the official course for his forces. (30) On a trip to El Salvador in l986, the group made a radio broadcast on Radio Imperial. The station had been broadcasting CACC recorded anticommunist messages three or four times a day for the previous two years. (30)

The CACC has held a number of seminars and conferences in the Philippines and supports a national anticommunist worker there. A conference was held between a Crusade team, led by John Whitehall, and senior officers of the Philippines military in l986. The Defense Ministry of the country arranged a series of seminars for CACC. Most of the participants consisted of members of the Committees for Peace and Order who have organized in all of the administrative districts of the Philippines. (36,37)

The CACC has sent its newsletters to all members of the U.S. Congress and the Cabinet, many state legislators, newspaper editors and columnists, and university and college libraries. (3) It has also sent newsletters to the president of the United States and his staff, the Canadian Parliament, all Supreme Court justices, many federal, state, and municipal judges, all state governors, and the news directors of radio and TV stations. (4) "The Communist Mind" pamphlet is testimony of Dr. Schwarz before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, May 29, 1957. (3)

In addition to the outreach mentioned above, the group has been known to mail letters to graduating U.S. college seniors warning them of the perils of communism. (5) At the Congreso Hispano conference organized by evangelist Alberto Mottesi in July l988, CACC had a table with literature. (7)

Christian Anti-Communism Crusade literature combines religious and political themes in an analysis of Marxism and international affairs. Drawing on Marxist publications, speeches, and newspaper articles, Schwarz, Whitehall, and other CACC luminaries attempt to show logically that Marxism demands repression, persecution, and even physical elimination of certain subgroups within communist societies. (18,19) The organization downplays the probability of nuclear war, claiming that communism is powerful enough without it and that MarxistLeninist regimes count on "External encirclement, plus internal demoralization, plus thermonuclear blackmail" to achieve the "progressive surrender" of the West. Western democracies, according to CACC, have been paralyzed by their fear of nuclear war into allowing Soviet-communist expansion. (21)

The organization has identified AIDS as a result of the "legality, respectability and growth of the homosexual movement." The spread of AIDS and of the acceptance of homosexuals, says the group, contributes to the "demoralization" of the United States and thus plays into communist hands. (22)

CACC advocates that the United States support anticommunist insurgent forces which are fighting communist regimes. (28) Countries in which CACC has supported national anticommunist workers include India

, the Philippines, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Argentina, and Kenya. (31) In its analysis of South Africa, CACC says virtually nothing about the oppression of apartheid. Instead it argues that the African National Congress and various black anti-apartheid leaders are controlled or influenced by communist groups. (32) The Christian Anti-Communism Crusade has identified the following countries as among those that communism must conquer in order to achieve its plan of the encirclement of the United States: Cuba, Ethiopia, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, the Philippines, and South Africa. (34)

CACC offers a "What Is Communism" correspondence course which takes from three to six months to complete. In its seminars, CACC teams occasionally explain the free market capitalist system, focusing on its advantages. (35)

Government Connections: "The Truth About Communism" film series was narrated by former President Ronald Reagan while governor of California, as was the film "Ultimate Weapon," about the brainwashing of American soldiers in Korea. (3)

CACC often presents seminars to and has conferences with members of governments and military forces (see Activities). CACC has worked closely with the Salvadoran military.

According to Christian Right expert Sara Diamond,"With help from the Salvadoran military, Dr. Fred Schwarz’s Christian AntiCommunist Crusade blares its virulent propaganda on government radio stations." CACC was also provided with a Salvadoran military helicopter to drop anti-communist literature over zones controlled by the FMLN guerrillas. (38)

CACC has conducted seminars in the Philippines in cooperation with the Defense Ministry of the Philippines. (38)

Private Connections: Seminar faculty have included Walter Judd, Dr. Stefan Possony of the Hoover Institute on War and Peace, Dr. Joseph Dunner of Yeshiva University, Juanita Castro (Fidel’s sister), Marion Miller and Herbert Philbrook (former FBI counterspies), Eugene Lyons (senior editor, Reader’s Digest), Charles Rice (professor of law, Notre Dame), James D. Atkinson (Georgetown University), John W. Drakeford (Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary), Raymond A. Joseph, J. D. Bales, Serafin G. Menocal, Rev. James D. Colbert, Rev. Raymond J. De Jaegher, and David N. Rowe (Yale). (3)

CACC has received favorable comments from Ambassador De Lesseps S. Morrison (ambassador to OAS), Billy Graham, and William Buckley. (3)

Dr. Aradom Tedla has participated in a CACC seminar team to South Africa. (32) Jose Roig and the Rev. Juan Korszyk have also participated in Crusade teams. (33,37)

In the CACC newsletter of Aug l, l988, there was included a summary of the status of the Christic Institute’s lawsuit against Gen. John Singlaub and an appeal for encouragement and support for his cause. (8)

In the Philippines, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade is in a networking relationship with the Intl Christian Outreach and Relief Services (INCOR), Baptist Bible Fellowship Intl, Baptist Mid-Missions, the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and the Intl Baptist Missionary Fellowship. (11)

Walter Judd is on the natl advisory board of the American Freedom Coalition, an organization with financial and leadership ties to the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church and its offshoots. (12,13)

Each of the following CACC supporters and officers have attended conferences of or been members of the World AntiCommunist League (WACL) or one or both of its U.S. branches (American Council for World Freedom or the U.S. Council for World Freedom): Fred Schwarz, Walter H. Judd, Stefan Possony, and Billy James Hargis. (15)

At one time, Billy James Hargis headed the Christian AntiCommunist Crusade. He has been head of another rightwing group, the Christian Crusade, since its founding in l948 and has run anticommunist training schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (15,16)

Walter Judd, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota, used to chair the Committee of One Million. Along with Fred Schwarz and Stefan Possony, Judd was a member of the first U.S. branch of WACL, known as the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF), which was set up in l970. (15) He is now on the national committee of the Council for the Defense of Freedom, as are both Schwarz and Possony. (17)

In the early l970s, Possony was author of a report on the Mexican chapter of the World Anti-Communist League, known popularly as the Tecos. In that report, Possony, a long-time League member who had successfully pushed for ACWF affiliation with the international group, noted the neo-Nazi links of the Tecos as well as their anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism. He did not, however, recommend either that the U.S. branch leave WACL or that WACL disaffiliate the Mexican chapter. Possony left the League in l975 because of the Tecos, and the ACWF itself collapsed in the same year following the exposure of WACL’s fascist elements by the British chapter. But he returned to the League in l98l–before the Tecos were finally ousted–when the new U.S. branch, the U.S. Council for World Freedom, was set up. (15)

Schwarz describes Reed Irvine of Accuracy in Media-an offshoot of the Council for the Defense of Freedom–as a friend. (19)

In India, the CACC has worked with the Indian Christian Crusade to support orphans and neglected children. (23)

CACC has conducted anticommunist seminars in South Africa in conjunction with an evangelistic group known as United Christian Action. (24)

CACC has promoted the work of the Puebla Institute’s Humberto Belli, author of volumes critical of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Belli is reputed to have relied on CIA assistance for the publication of his first book on religion in postrevolutionary Nicaragua. (25,26)

CACC delivered a presentation called "Cover-Up of Plans for Conquest" to an Accuracy in Media conference. (29)

According to a CACC newsletter, General Ramos, then-deputy commander of the Philippines army, kept a copy of Schwarz’s "You Can Trust the Communists (to be Communists)" on his bedside table during the insurrection which led to the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos. (29)

CACC has supported the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, a conservative labor organization that receives funds from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). NED is a grantmaking institute funded by Congress to support private organizations in foreign countries. (38,39,40) The labor organization also receives funding and other support from the Asian-American Institute for Free Labor Development, an arm of the AFL-CIO that is primarily funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development but that also receives funding from NED. (39,40)

Vice-president of CACC, Dr. John Whitehall, along with Humberto Belli (author of Nicaragua: Christians Under Fire) gave a presentation to 300 personnel managers in the Philippines telling them: "The capitalists have to unite and organize to fight communism."(38)

Sara Diamond relates, "According to the Philippine Council of Churches, Whitehall has provided cash, travel expenses and literature to paramilitary death squads throughout the Philippines."(38)

Misc: CACC’s interests extend beyond anticommunist battles in the third world. The August l988 newsletter suggested that readers request from CACC a publication by Brian F. McNamee, M. D. and Lawrence J. McNamee, M. D. : "AIDS, The Nation’s First Politically Protected Disease."(8)

A 1963 study of CACC supporters showed that more than half had college degrees and over 40 percent had incomes over $10,000 in 1963 dollars. (38)

Comments:United Christian Action, P. O. Box 35 737, 0l02 Menlo Park, Pretoria, South Africa. (32)

U.S. Address: P. O. Box 890, 227 E. 6th St., Long Beach, CA 9080

l-0890 (213-437-0941 Long Beach) or (213-775-2006 Los Angeles).

Principals: Fred Schwarz, MD (pres, founder). (1,2,10) Rev James Colbert (dir foreign missions, chair). (2,3) l977 Executive Officers: Fred Schwarz, Rev. James Colbert, George W. Westcott (vice pres), Floyd E. Burroughs, Robert E. Sackett, Lillian Schwarz (directors), Ella L. Doorn (sec). (3) Rev. Pedro Padro, Jr. (2) Dr. John Whitehall, Rev. Billy James Hargis, William P. Strube, Thomas J. Dodd (former U.S. Senator), Walter H. Judd (former U.S. Representative), Malcolm Comblin. (11)

Sources:1. Letter from Schwarz, Oct 30, 1986.

2. El Clarin, Oct 15, 1986.

3. "What is the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade?" booklet 1977.

4. Letter from Schwarz, Feb 15, 1986.

5. Letter sent to Alan Parker, Fall 1987.

6. Deborah Huntington and Ruth Kaplan, "Whose Gold is Behind the Altar? Corporate Ties to Evangelicals," Contemporary Marxism, Winter l98l/l982.

7. Deb Preusch, July l988

8. CACC Newsletter, vol 28, #15, Aug l, l988.

9. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant? Studies in the Politics of Evangelical Growth, (University of California, l988).

10. Encyclopedia of Associations, 23rd Edition, l989.

11. Letter from Peter Brock, Oct 8, l988.

12. American Freedom Coalition letterhead, undated but circa Fall l987.

13. Phone conversation with natl American Freedom Coalition office, Sep 9, l988.

14. Private Organizations with U.S. Connections: El Salvador (Resource Center, l988).

15. Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson, Inside the League (New York, NY: Dodd, Mead & Co. , l986).

16. Jerry Falwell, ed. , with Ed Dobson and Ed Hindson, The Fundamentalist Phenomenon: The Resurgence of Conservative Christianity (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co. , l98l).

17. Letter from Ian MacKenzie of the Council for the Defense of Freedom, Dec 7, l988.

18. Fred Schwarz, "Why Communism Kills: The Legacy of Karl Marx," CACC monograph, undated.

19. CACC newsletter, Jan l, l986.

20. Fundraising letter from Schwarz, Jan l5, l986.

21. CACC newsletter, Jan l5, l986.

22. CACC newsletter, Feb 1, l986.

23. Fundraising letter, Feb l5, l986.

24. CACC newsletter, Mar 1, l986.

25. CACC newsletter, Mar l5, l986.

26. Edgar Chamorro, Packaging the Contras: A Case of CIA Disinformation (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, Inc. , l987).

27. CACC newsletter, Apr l, l986.

28. CACC newsletter, Apr 15, l986.

29. CACC newsletter, May 1, l986.

30. CACC newsletter, May l5, l986.

31. Fundraising letter, June l5, l986.

32. CACC newsletter, June l5, l986.

33. Fundraising letter, July 1, l986.

34. Fundraising letter, Aug l, l986.

35. CACC newsletter, Aug l, l986.

36. CACC newsletter, Sep l5, l986.

37. CACC newsletter, Oct l, l986.

38. Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1989).

39. Beth Sims, National Endowment for Democracy: A Foreign Policy Branch Gone Awry (Albuquerque: Resource Center, 1990).

40. Beth Sims, Workers of the World Undermined: American Labor and the Pursuit of U.S. Foreign Policy (Boston: South End Press, 1992).

The underlying cites for this profile are now kept at Political Research Associates, (617) 666-5300. www.irc-online.org.