'Going Green' Good for Mainlines' Relationship with Castro, Says Columnist
by Jim Brown
March 24, 2006
(AgapePress) - - A Christian columnist says Fidel Castro's concerns about protecting the environment may bring mainline Protestant church official and the Cuban dictator even closer together. With some regularity over the past 40 years, mainline church officials in the U.S. have headed down to Havana, met with Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and have returned with laudatory things to say about the communist dictator. Occasionally, Castro has traveled to New York and met with those church leaders at the United Nations.
Castro recently invited Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold to a three-hour meeting in which the two discussed their common concerns about "global warming" and other environmental issues. A sympathetic Griswold -- who earlier had preached at the Episcopal Cathedral in Havana, where he denounced U.S. sanctions against the Cuban government -- reportedly listened to the communist leader express his belief that environmental care is among the core "values we should try to carry on."
Mark Tooley with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, DC, says the U.N. meeting between the Episcopal leader and Castro was warm and engaging.
"Fidel Castro's brand of Marxism has gotten old even for church officials of the Left," Tooley observes -- then adds that perhaps the Cuban leader's new interest in environmental issues, particularly in global warming, will "re-ignite the friendship and the seeming sometime alliance between U.S. church officials and Fidel Castro."
Tooley believes that Griswold and many other mainline leaders would rather condemn the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba instead of Castro's numerous human-rights abuses.
"Almost all the mainline church denominations have official stances opposing U.S. sanctions against Cuba," Tooley acknowledges, noting that "people of good will" can obviously disagree on that policy. "But the major problem with that is that these same church bodies have almost nothing to say about the gross human-rights situation in Cuba and the fact that most of Cuba's poverty can be ascribed to its communist system -- and not to U.S. policies towards Castro's government."
Tooley has written a column for FrontPageMag.com titled "Castro and the Religious Left Go Green."
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
