Reading Mark Mendiola's Article, Allies or Adversaries? A Unique Alliance Imperiled (2001)

The twelfth issue of LCG's recruitment magazine, Tomorrow's World (January-February 2001), featured an article by Mark Mendiola of Pocatello, Idaho entitled "Allies or Adversaries? A Unique Alliance Imperiled." (pp. 20-24.) This was the tenth of several articles Mendiola would write for this recruitment magazine. Here Mendiola discusses relations between the United States and Britain to scare monger that these nations would soon endure military subjugation by a future European power.

Mendiola talks of the United States as being created miraculously linking respect for the sacrifices of the American revolutionaries with his religion.

Through a series of obvious miracles and decisive victories, Americans were able to defeat the red-coated British troops, overcoming incredible odds and predictions of imminent defeat. Following British General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, Va., in October 1781, British regimental bands appropriately played the tune—“The World Turned Upside Down.” Indeed, it was! (p. 21.)

He talks of the current friendly relations between the United States and Britain despite the history of war during the founding of the United States.

Despite what British officials considered brazen armed rebellion against royal authority, the two nations since developed a fraternal closeness unparalleled in history. That affinity has flared to prominence during times of crisis, when, invariably, Britain and the United States have come to each other’s defense like brothers. (p. 21.)

He insists that the political power of the United States and Britain is to be explained by their ancestry.

The extraordinary surge of the United States and British Commonwealth to economic and military global preeminence during the 1800s and 1900s can be explained by understanding their ancestral origins. (p. 21.)

But both nations also contain many peoples who happen to have no such blood relationship with those claimed to be modern Israelites among the Americans and the British. This problem is conveniently overlooked. Also other factors contributing to their political power are marginalized.

The United States and Britain have fulfilled remarkably God’s promise that Ephraim would develop into a multitude (a company, group or commonwealth) of nations, and Manasseh into a great superpower. History confirms unmistakably this incredible fulfillment. Collectively, the United States and Britain are modern Israel, and have been a blessing to people of all races, backgrounds and nationalities, as God promised, helping maintain peace, prosperity and civility throughout the world. (p. 22.)

Problems associated with territorial expansion of these nations are ignored. Due to the tragic fact that the Native Americans had no immunity to numerous diseases that existed among Europeans many Native Americans were killed by introduced diseases that reduced their population and rendered them unable to prevent being conquered by Europeans. Were these mass epidemics part of (LCG's) God's alleged miraculous fulfillment of this promise to Abraham as interpreted by British Israelism?

Also the conquest and dispossession of the Native American peoples are overlooked. The British Empire expanded by conquering the peoples of the territories upon which it expanded. Africans were abducted from the continent and kept as slaves in parts of the United States. These problems tend to be ignored among the Armstrongite COGs in favor of the discredited dogma of British Israelism.

Chronologically, the British Empire reached its zenith before the United States achieved its ascendancy, but just as the sun has set on that once-proud empire, the United States is now in decline, giving way to an empire forming on the European continent. ... Britain’s decline, from the most powerful nation in the world to a small offshore European island, was as swift as the rise of the United States. (p. 22.)

But why did the British Empire end? It is often assumed in COG writings that (their) God just ended it but this ignores what really happened. One of many reasons why it collapsed was that the colonized peoples could no longer believe in its claimed legitimacy. As the colonized peoples ruled over the British Empire gained more education and learned more about their colonial rulers they perceived that there was no kind of superiority that entitled the British to rule over the colonized peoples. Once a critical mass of the colonized peoples perceived this fact British colonial rule became nonviable and eventually the British government cut their losses and granted independent to the colonies in response to the widespread calls for independence. De-colonization was, among other things, a pragmatic concession to the fact that British colonial rule could no longer justify itself to the colonized.

Mendiola then talks of the various aligned interests between the United States and Britain in the 20th Century. But since this is an Armstrongite publication Mendiola then scare mongers that a future European Empire threatens Britain and the United States. He also stirs up crude sectarian hostilities by presenting this threat as part of a wider clash between Protestants and Catholics.

Since King Henry VIII’s split with the Roman Catholic Church in the 1530s, the British defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 and the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, British-descended nations have been bastions of Protestantism, most directly challenging Catholic religious supremacy throughout Europe and the western world. 

Just as the 20th century has been called the American century, the 19th century was the British century. As we enter the 21st century, the international dominance of those primarily Protestant peoples is being challenged by a resurgent Roman Catholic Europe, which for centuries has been at odds with British and American interests. (p. 23.)

HWA and many of the COG splinter groups teach that in the near future a European Empire will arise and militarily conquer the United States and Britain.

Mendiola then presents Britain as facing a choice aligning its political interests with the United States or the European Union. Note the crass appeal to anti-Catholic paranoia.

Queen Elizabeth II swore at her 1953 coronation “to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom according to their laws and customs” and “to maintain the Protestant Reformed religion established by law.” [A eurosceptic author] points out these pledges are being negated by Britain’s deeper integration with the European Union. Relations between the Vatican and London have become increasingly close in recent decades. (p. 23.)

He then scare mongers that the Britain under Prime Minister Blair was aligning itself with the European Union by helping to place some of the British armed forces under the command of the European Union. This claim is somewhat unusual among the COGs as they tend to assume that Britain and the United States will remain aligned with each until both nations are conquered by the future European Empire.

[Margaret] Thatcher has exchanged sharp words with Blair over the direction Britain should take. She favors maintaining a close relationship with the U.S., while he supports a pro-European course. Baroness Thatcher denounced Blair’s decision to commit troops to a European rapid deployment force apart from the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has maintained peace in Europe for more than 50 years. She called it “monumental folly.” (p. 24.)

He scare mongers that British military personnel would be propping up the European Union and would be dominated by Germany.

The European Union hopes to have 60,000 ground troops ready for deployment by 2003. British troops would account for about 20 percent of that force and would bear the EU’s 12-star insignia on their uniforms and vehicles. Ultimately, the force would have at its disposal more than 100,000 troops and some 400 aircraft and 100 ships ready to respond to crises. It would be dominated by Germany, whose militaristic past has thrust it into armed conflict with Britain and the United States in two devastating world wars. (p. 24.)

It is so strange how the COGs keep living as though we are in 1938 and not today. After World War II the United States placed military bases in West Germany and those military bases are still stationed there. How could a future German government possibly conspire to militarily conquer the United States if there are US military bases within German territory? But the COGs choose to just let HWA's dogmatic statements do the thinking for them.

The future of that historic fraternal relationship—that “grand alliance” [between the United States and Britain]—will be tested to the extreme in the years ahead.

Since the 1930s HWA and his imitators have constantly insisted that catastrophe would soon occur in the United States. Often (though not always) they have insisted that Germans would be the main perpetrators of this future military conquest. And always this dire threat has always failed miserably.

In September 2006 Mendiola left LCG and joined Dave Pack's Restored Church of God. Around 2008 he left RCG and joined Don Billingsley's Church of God-Faithful Flock.