VOLUME 6 NUMBER 6 - JUNE 1, 2001

The New World Order's

SUSTAINABLE INDICATORS

The International Survey is the product of 30 plus nations. It is for proactive governments to gage the status of society. Each question and answer constitutes a "sustainable indicator". "Sustainable indicators" provide a snapshot of a community's progress toward sustainability. Later the same questions will be asked again and by comparing scores governmental and private planners, working in social and environmental fields can determine if their propaganda is accomplishing the desired outcomes. If not, effecting a change may be accomplished by working with like minded individuals in the media--news and sitcom scripts may be altered to reflect that normal behavior is abnormal and abnormal behavior is normal. Tell the big lie often enough and it takes on the appearance of truth.

How such a survey found its way into a very conservative congregation is not a mystery. Checking the progress of social change is not accomplished by quizzing the already abundant liberal congregations, although a sampling of their opinions was taken. Judging movement in society, then, is accomplished by surveying the conservative congregations. It is sad, but understandable, that the most conservative pastor can be easily be swayed into thinking that the questionnaire from government are benign, when in fact they are being used to alter our cultural perspectives.

Due to space limitations we will examine but a sampling. Contact the Mustard Seed* if you would like a complete copy.

Category - You and Your Congregation

Question - 4. Do you regularly take part in any activities of this congregation that reach out to the wider community (e.g., visitation, evangelism, outreach, community service, social justice?)

• a) Yes, in evangelism or outreach activities
• b) Yes, in community service, social justice, or advocacy activities of this congregation
• c) No, we don't have such activities
• d) No, I am not regularly involved

Notice the query about "social justice". Few people understand the meaning of "social justice". Answering b indicates the church is involved in activities dealing with social justice.

Category - About Your Faith

Question - 9. Do you agree or disagree with this statement: "All the different religions are equally good ways of helping a person find ultimate truth"?

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral or unsure
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

The answer to this questions reveals much, and helps the change agents determine how much more work they will need to do.

Category - About Your Involvement

Question - 22. Which of the following aspects of this congregation do you personally most value? (Mark up to three options.)

• Wider community care or social justice emphasis
• Reaching those who do not attend church
• Traditional style of worship or music
• Contemporary style of worship or music>
• Sharing in Holy Communion, Eucharist, or the Lord's Supper
• Social activities or meeting new people
• Sermons, preaching, or homilies
• Bible study or prayer groups, other discussion groups
• Ministry for children or youth
• Prayer ministry for one another
• Practical care for one another in times of need
• The congregation's school or pre-school
• Openness to social diversity
• Adult church-school or Sabbath-school class

Again, notice the references to "social diversity" and "social justice."

Category - About You

Questions 28 through 43 deal with employment, age, gender, martial status, number of children, income, zip code, how much you give to the church, is your spouse filling out the same survey and how many of your children live at home?.

Category - More About Your Faith

Question - 57 My religious beliefs are really the basis of my whole approach to life.

• Strongly agree
• Agree
• Neutral or unsure
• Disagree
• Strongly disagree

Remember one question plus one answer equals a "sustainable indicator". How are these "indicators" used? In different ways by many organizations. As an example, there is a partnership/agreement between the EPA and the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development (NCRCRD). Their reference page lists the International Social Survey Program as a source of information. The following is how their "partnership" will use the information:

"The goal of this agreement is to examine and promote community and watershed indicators of environmental quality and social well-being. Our hope is that this product will help identify social indicators that will be of use to communities, government agents and others in locally-based initiatives to conserve, protect and enhance watershed and water quality." 

You may ask how the one relates to the other?

"....social movements are forming around the United States to monitor water quality. Government agencies are using catchwords such as "partnership" and "participation" as key parts of their strategies for protecting the nation's water. Local water quality associations should be the groups with which government works. Those who do the work with water quality are well versed in the literature regarding the environmental indicators that help to guide citizen action, government action and policy. However, they often know little about the social indicators that tell us about citizen organizations themselves. What are the key contextual issues in the formation of a water quality association? What kinds of activities are important to maintain the sustainability of the association? How do we know if the association is successful? Social indicators can help us answer these questions. They can help us understand why environmental organizations must consider issues of social justice, poverty, equity and civic participation within a particular community."

Social indicators are a product of surveys similar to the one that was administered to the Baptist congregation. In this case, the connection is made to several United Nations goals, among them--"social justice"

"....our review of social indicators dates back to 1960. It was in this year that the President's Commission on National Goals submitted their report, Goals for Americans, to President Eisenhower (#34). This report, researched and written with private monies, provided a major overview of the status of Americans as they entered the 1960s and presented possibilities for moving beyond the problems of inequities in wealth and government services among ethnic and social groups. It called for more organized government efforts to track and respond to social developments in the United States.

"Soon afterwards, government programs began debating how they might develop a social report that would mimic the economic reports on the state of the nation. Through the 1960s and 1970s, interest in being able to better collect and analyze data on social conditions grew in the bureaucracies of the U.S. and other governments. As the field developed, so did the number of areas where social indicators were deemed important. Community health and quality of life were added to the provision and availability of social services. Researchers began to link indicators of environmental quality and social indicators such as health.

"We have strayed from the strictly defined social indicator literature to include some of the important literature about sustainable communities, healthy communities and healthy ecosystems (including humans)--although we focus on that body of literature that either explicitly deals with indicators of social well-being or the interaction between social well-being and ecosystem quality. We have also included annotations of web sites, both on social indicators and sustainable communities.

"Since the beginning of the 1990s, there has been growing interest in finding better ways of analyzing society's progress than through looking at the levels of GNP and GDP (see Henderson 1996, #5, and Clifford 1995, #167). By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the state of the environment and the future of economic prosperity were cause for concern. International conferences on environment (the Earth Summit of UNCED in 1992), population (the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in 1994), social welfare (the United Nations Social Summit in Copenhagen in 1995, and the UN Conference on Women and Development in Beijing in 1996), and climate change (in 1997) emphasized the need to consider environmental quality and social development together.

"All of this has led to a new movement to look at indicators in a different way. While the social indicators movement of the 1960s and 1970s was intended for institutions and governments, the new indicators movement is additionally meant to be popular in nature. Using the new technologies of the Internet and putting measurement strategies into less academic forms (for instance, easy-to-read workbooks), the goal is to empower citizens to conceive, design and implement projects to increase local sustainability. The new movement is about allowing citizens to carry out the job of monitoring progress (Flora et. al. 1999, #35; Green Mountain Institute 1997, #45; and Redefining Progress et al. 1997, #46). That movement includes both citizen activists and government initiatives. It is strongly related to the sustainable development movement and relates social justice to environmental quality. Social indicators become part of a holistic system for monitoring progress. While non-governmental organizations (such as Redefining Progress and the Green Mountain Institute) are core to the movement, so are government initiatives that count on citizen participation, such as the President's Commission for Sustainable Development and the Environmental Protection Agency's Community-Based Environmental Protection initiative.

The above quotes tie the United Nations, sustainable development, social indicators and social justice together. The Mustard Seed has inquired and examined many reference materials in an effort to define "social justice". Our efforts have not been altogether fruitful. What we have found would likely be of interest to our readers and we will devote a later newsletter to those findings.

*You may contact the Mustard Seed through e-mail at our web-site or at: themustardeed@mindspring.com

Get Ready to give up your guns

"The sweep has just gone global. Patrons of The Million Mom March have formed a pact with internationalists at the UN to accomplish what, up until the present, has seemed impossible at the domestic level. Rip the heart out of the Second Amendment."

The above quotation is the first paragraph of an article by Dr. James Hirsen, "Global Moms and Kofi Annan," that appeared on NewsMax.com May 14, 2001.

The fact that the UN has been voicing its concern about Americans being armed is not anything new. From its beginning it has pushed for total arms control, not just for nations but for the citizen populations as well. When the goal is to enslave the people it becomes necessary to take away their guns. Tyrants have always done this.

What this "Billion Mom March," as the effort has been dubbed, hopes to do is to use a massive e-mail effort to convince world leaders that there is a ground-swell of public opinion demanding that citizens give up their weapons to save the children from death by shooting. Expect the major media to fall in line with this globalist propaganda.

Dr. Hirsen continues: "The public relations campaign launched by activist global moms and their internationalist allies will culminate with a UN conference on small arms, which will be held in July at UN headquarters in New York. The Billion Mom March will appear to be a spontaneous outpouring of concern from average, everyday people who have reached an apex of frustration with regard to wide-spread violence. Conference leaders will claim that the effort at control is intended to regulate global trade of light weapons and small arms. For the most part, the rhetoric that will flow from both camps will be disingenuous.

"In the usual tradition of UN conferences, the left-fest will be pawned off as "consensus building" to an unsuspecting public. But the agenda that will ultimately be agreed upon will have been established long before the event ever begins."

As long as we continue to play footsie with the UN, we can expect our toes to disappear one-by-one.