Program trains US Church leaders to convince people to obey emergency orders
Pastor Dale Morgan
*
Program trains US Church leaders to convince people to obey emergency
orders*
Posted: August 18, 2007
KSLA TV
Emergency Preparedness Director Sandy Davis, explaining to KSLA
television that clergy would already be known to people to whom they
would explain the need to follow federal orders
A government plan to use members of the clergy to quell dissent and
objections to government orders during a time of national emergency has
been revealed by a Shreveport, La., television station.
The story by reporter Jeff Ferrell on television station KSLA says such
"Clergy Response Teams" already have been used – following the hit on
New Orleans by hurricane Katrina.
The station's video is available on a link on its website, and also
available on YouTube. It asks if martial law ever could become reality
in the United States, following a nuclear, biological or chemical attack.
"KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government
with potentially their biggest problem: Us," the report said.
The teams were used to help with the management of the masses following
Katrina, according to Durell Tuberville.
He serves as chaplain of the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo
sheriff's office, and said the clergy team's mission was to express the
sentiment: "Let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll
settle the differences once the crisis is over."
Sandy Davis, director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security
and Emergency Preparedness, said there are several advantages, but
primarily, "these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in
which they're helping to diffuse that situation."
So government orders to abandon homes, turn over guns, leave livestock
behind, or whatever would come to the minds of various officials during
an "emergency," would be easier for people to accept, the report indicated.
The report said one of the biggest tools the clergy members would use
would be the Bible itself, specifically Romans 13, where Tuberville said
the Bible states "the government's established by the Lord, you know.
And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated
in the Scripture."
Civil rights advocates have raised questions about the idea of using
clergy in such a fashion, noting the balance clergy would have to
maintain when asked to do what the government wants under color of their
status as a religious leader.
A blogger for the Christian education site, Chalcedon noted that the
training has been going on in secret for over a year already.
"The clergy are being advised to use Romans 13 to encourage parishioners
to submit to the sudden and massive expansion of government control that
takes place during martial law," the writer said.
Already documented is a series of executive orders by the president,
that so far give the government broad new powers to address private
property if it's related to any one of several issues, all of which are
foreign so far.
One recent order, for example, gives Bush the power to freeze the assets
of people who threaten Iraq's stability. A former Reagan administration
officials says the wording is so broad it could be applied to any
domestic opponent of the Iraq war who has assets in the U.S.
White House press secretary Tony Snow explained the order targets
terrorist and insurgent groups not covered by existing authorities who
come across the border from countries such as Iran and Syria.
But constitutional lawyer Bruce Fein charged the order violates the 5th
Amendment's requirement that no person shall be deprived of property
without due process of law. Fein, associate deputy attorney general
under Reagan, asserts it "empowers the president to destroy anyone he
says plays a significant risk of undermining the rehabilitation or
political reform in Iraq."
"The order is a stunning assertion of executive power that creates a
Sword of Damocles over anyone opposed to the war or who might otherwise
come under the umbrage of the president," Fein said.
That order follows a series of orders Bush has issued under the
International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which so far have similarly
cited "blocking the property" of people who threaten stability in
Darfur, Zimbabwe , Ivory Coast , Syria , Belarus , Sudan and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. Of these countries, the only one in
which the U.S. is directly involved in a war is Iraq.