"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got til it's gone?" sang
Joni Mitchell in her song, Big Yellow Taxi.
Will the religious right and their allies be able to errode the things we hold to be most important before we notice they are gone? How about the key allied institutions that make many of those things possible?
The National Council of Churches and it's member denominations have been at or near the forefront of every major social reform for a century. The African-American civil rights movement and women's rights, for example, would not have advanced so far, so fast -- if very much at all -- without them. But those churches have been under sustained assault by reactionary elements for two decades.
"Make no mistake," wrote
Avery Post, the national president of the United Church of Christ in 1982, "the objectives of the Institute on Religion and Democracy are the exact opposite of what its name appears to stand for. The purpose of its leaders is to demoralize the mainline denominations and to turn them away from the pursuit of social and economic justice."
Post's letter to church leaders followed a series of media attacks launched by the institute's operatives against the National Council of Churches and it's member denominations, that appeared in the Readers Digest and on 60 Minutes.
Both pieces were smear jobs. 60 Minutes producer Don Hewitt told Larry King in 2002 that it was the one program he truly regretted in his career. Twenty years late, but at least he acknowledge the error. But the damage had already been done, and in the meantime, the IRD has continued its attacks.
A few weeks ago, Methodist ministers Andrew Weaver and Fred Kandeler wrote about this dark chapter in media and church history at Talk to Action, the interactive blog site I co-founded with Bruce Wilson a couple of months ago. We have assembled some of the best writers, thinkers, and bloggers ever writing in one place to discuss the religious right and what to do about it
Now I am pleased to announced that starting this Tuesday, we will have a weekly post by Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer on the attacks on the mainline churches and what is being done about it. He is, as he writes in his Talk to Action bio
Associate Conference Minister of the Missouri Mid-South Conference of the United Church of Christ. Dr. Dorhauer serves on a task force for the United Church of Christ which tracks attacks from right wing groups intent on destabilizing Mainline Christian churches. The unique polity and liberal theology of the United Church of Christ has made them susceptible to church take-overs (because their polity confers complete autonomy on every congregation, right wing groups can perform takeovers and end up with millions of dollars in property, membership contributions, and endowments). Dr. Dorhauer has been tracking the tactics and actions of some of these right wing factions, and will write about their methods, his experiences, and strategies that are being developed to effectively counter and prevent such hostile attacks and takeovers.
Avery Post was spot-on in his analysis, and prophetic in his warning back in 1982. Unfortunately, he was not widely heeded at the time.
But there have been efforts in recent years, to better understand what IRD and its allies have been doing; accompanied by efforts to widen public understanding and response. We hope that John's posts can provide a further catalyst for those efforts.
[versions of this post appear at Talk to Action and Street Prophets]