Lenin once called these dupes "useful idiots". He certainly nailed that one: they were quite useful indeed, and were idiotic in the extreme to throw their support to godless revolutionary agendas. If this was true in Lenin's time, it is still true today unfortunately. Thus we seem to have not learned our lessons from the Cold War.

Indeed, the number of believers who actually sided with the murderous atheistic Marxist regimes around the globe was staggering. Godless Communism resulted in the deaths of at least 100 million people, but some gullible Christians thought that the Marxists were actually bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.

This has been documented by many. As one example, Lloyd Billingsley wrote The Generation That Knew Not Josef: A Critique of Marxism and the Religious Left (Multnomah Press, 1985). In it he documented numerous naive or just plain stupid religious folk who bent over backwards in their praise for Marxist dictators, communist police states, and other totalitarian hell holes.

Let me offer a few examples. Consider the Very Reverend Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury. This is what he had to say about communism in general: "Communism has recovered the essential form of a real belief in God which organised Christianity just now has largely lost."

And have a read of what he said about one of the most horrific mass murderers in human history: "No man of mystery dominates the Kremlin. Stalin is the embodiment of good-humored common sense, as much a man of the people today . . . . Stalin I found exactly like the speeches he had uttered through a quarter of a century as mouthpiece of the new Soviet Order. . . . A man, furthermore, who seeks friendship with Britain and believes in its possibility."

One suspects that if Johnson met Satan face to face he would also bow down and throw out similar hagiographic comments. Talk about deception. Billingsley mentions many other dupes. "Daniel Berrigan, another contributing editor to Sojourners, found the face of Ho Chi Minh reminiscent of Jesus Christ,"

Speaking of Sojourners, this is what Jim Wallis, its founding editor, said about the death of Soviet dictator Leonid Brezhnev in 1982: "If we could not call Brezhnev a peacemaker, we could at least recognize him as a moderate man, a man open to reason."

Says Billingsley, "Did Brezhnev deploy SS-20s? Invade Afghanistan? Repress Sakharov and other dissidents? No matter, he was someone who 'genuinely desired peace.' The latter statement is nearly identical to Rev. Johnson's pronouncements on Stalin. He would be proud of his disciple."

And Wallis actually had a prayer meeting convened after the death of Brezhnev, asking for forgiveness for anticommunism. One might as well ask forgiveness for Wilberforce and his efforts to free the slaves, or for Jesus in his efforts to defeat Satan and set human souls free.

Billingsley concludes his important volume this way: "People believe lies, not because they are plausible, but because they want to believe them. How else can one explain religious writers, clergy, activists, and college professors who are determined, come what may, to believe discarded dogmas, to overlook any brutality, to accept any explanation as long as it comes from the proper comandante.

"They want to preserve intact the hope that some of the most militant and obscurantist tyrannies ever to exist on earth can be relied upon to champion peace, Christian social action, the elimination of poverty, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good causes to which they have dedicated their lives. They believe this, not because of the evidence, but because they want to."

Sadly however it was not just during the reign of terror which the Communists unleashed upon the world that gullible and unthinking Christians went out of their way to support the wrong cause, while effectively betraying their own Lord and their own Gospel. Plenty are still doing it today.

And the radicals of today are still quite happy to tap into these useful idiots for their own purposes. Plenty of more recent secular left activists have noted how vital it is to capture the churches. Indeed, we need an up-to-date book on these radicals and their plans for the churches.

But as just one example, consider the radical activist Saul Alinsky. Back in 1971 he wrote his now classic volume, Rules for Radicals. It was a primer on how to organise and take power from a grassroots level, changing society along the way.

He fully agreed with Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci that social institutions must be captured from within, instead of overthrown from without. The long march through the institutions, instead of bloody revolution, was Alinsky's preferred means to achieve the same ends.

And he made it clear that capturing churches was a vital part in promoting the secular left's revolution: "I recognized that if I could win the support of the Church, we'd be off and running. Conversely, without the Church, or at least some elements of it, it was unlikely that we'd be able to make much of a dent in the community."

Thus churches have long been targeted by the radicals, knowing how much easier their task would be if they could infiltrate churches and con gullible believers into doing their dirty work for them. Obama, who was a great fan of Alinsky, has certainly known how to milk the churches for all they're worth.

And Australia has also had leftist leaders who have been able to co-opt the churches for their own ends. As always, history teaches us so very much. But sadly most people's historical understanding goes as far back as what they had for lunch the day before.

Without a proper understanding of history, we will continue to make the same mistakes. And the churches will continue to be fooled big time by the secular left who will play believers for dupes as they pursue their radical agendas.

END