Yesterday Sunday 5 PM,
Air America aired an unprecedented radio show segment : a collaboration [produced by
Isaac-Davy Aronson] between
Talk To Action and
Interfaith Alliance head
Rev. C. Welton Gaddy's, "
State of Belief" : a 4-way discussion between Gaddy and three leaders (and also writers on Talk To Action) in the fight against the far right effort to take over and destabilize mainline Protestantism , to split up, neutralize, and take over churches and potentially even entire denominations.
Enormous financial resources, and the traditional heart of liberal democracy in America, are at stake.
The conversation - a collaboration between Talk To Action, and State of Belief - had no precedent. If you consider yourself to be on the Christian or religious left or if you just consider yourself to be politically knowledgeable, listen to the show
You won't find out about the Shadow War from reading or listening to Jim Wallis or Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun. You WILL learn about it by reading Talk To Action and by listening to this show.
Here is the mp3 podcast
Renee in Ohio has a
partial transcript of the show up on her site [ she's typing away at this moment ]
I've included Some Possibly Useful Material At The end of This Post, anthologies of writing on "The Shadow War". For a an example of a recent IRD attack on the United Methodist Church, see the very end of this post.
THE CONTEXT :
. Why would the IRD want to attack the mainline Protestant Denominations ? Andrew Weaver, in his review of Hardball on Holy Ground, by Stephen Swecker, explains:"Think about this: While the members of churches affiliated with the National Council of Churches account for about a quarter of the population, approximately half of the members of the U.S. Congress say they are members of these communions. NCC church members' influence is disproportionate to their numbers and include remarkably high numbers of leaders in politics, business, and culture.... Moreover, these churches are some of the largest land owners in the U.S., with hundreds of billions of dollars collectively in assets, including real estate and pension funds. A hostile takeover of these churches would represent a massive shift in American culture, power and wealth for a relatively small investment. "
Frederick Clarkson adds his perspective:
In a feature article in the current issue of The Public Eye magazine, I reported that the war of attrition against the mainline churches, bankrolled with millions of dollars from rightwing foundations, has been underway for a generation. The targeted churches include the major member denominations of the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches, (international ecumenical agencies that have also been under attack), inclding the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA). Smaller denominations, notably the United Church of Christ, have also been systematically undermined from within by a network of self-described "renewal" groups associated or aligned with the Washington-based Institute on Religion and Democracy, the hub of the network. - Frederick Clarkson, from a post on Talk To Action
Here's the State of Belief press release :
This Sunday, May 21, on the national radio show State of Belief, Rev. Welton Gaddy exposes the coordinated effort to undermine mainline Protestantism -- and render America's largest denominations incapable of standing up to right wing politics.
In conjunction with the website Talk to Action, State of Belief takes an unprecedented look into the takeover of America’s churches, revealing the ugly truths, personal experiences, and exhaustive research of four leaders:
Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists, is, like Welton, a veteran of the purges that marked the conservative takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. The strategy, says Prescott, is to keep mainstream denominations in turmoil over wedge issues such as gay marriage, so that conservative leaders can be free to achieve their political and religious goals.
Dr. John Dorhauer, minister for the St. Louis Association of the United Churches of Christ, has seen congregations around him descend into in-fighting, provoked by right-wing propaganda. Dorhauer explains, “What the politically motivated achieve is the silence of the religious conscience voice that has historically led this country....If you take out the 45 million people that are represented by the National Council of Churches, you are going to hollow out one of the cores of our nation's democracy.”
Dr. Andrew Weaver, a United Methodist pastor and research psychologist, has traced the campaign against mainline Protestantism largely to the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a think-tank funded by uber-conservative industrialists such as Richard Mellon Scaife and the Adolph Coors family. Weaver says that the IRD and so-called religious “renewal” groups are funneling money in "a systematic effort to undermine mainline churches that still have democratic, transparent processes." The problem in countering these efforts, he says, is that "All of these traditions have niceness at the core; while we've been thinking it's touch football, they've been playing tackle."
Welton offers listeners a wake-up call: "The Southern Baptist Convention was lost not because of those trying to take it over, but because of people arguing that it wasn't a big deal."
This issue has never before been discussed on national radio, and continues State of Belief’s focus on how religion is being manipulated for partisan political purposes. It may stun listeners – and it is sure to inspire Protestant congregations to reclaim their role as a positive and much needed healing force in our nation. State of Belief: religion and radio, done differently.
State of Belief is heard nationwide on Air America Radio on Sundays from 5 to 6 PM EST. Information about affiliates, listening live via the internet, or podcasting can be found at www.StateofBelief.com.
Much more information on this issue, including the research and writings of Welton’s three guests, can be found at the website Talk to Action.
Also, I set this show up. I wrote a dKos diary on it last week, an essay on
making a difference.
___________
UPDATE:
Since this diary was recommended [ I was out for a bit and just noticed it ] I'll be adding some additional material.
Here is an excerpt from a recent Talk To Action post by John Dorhauer that's very relevant here :
Perhaps one of the most often used devices circulated amongst our churches under attack is a document we refer to as "The Matrix."
[above: sample 'matrix']
This particular document purports to be an objective analysis of how the United Church of Christ compares to biblical principles, orthodox theologies, and the historic faith. It is most often presented as the work of a "Research Committee" whose purpose it is to present objective analysis about the merits of staying or leaving the UCC; and it is presented with the assumption that the members of the committee came up with this information on their own.
It is, in fact, a document that - though in each location it goes through some editorial revision to appear "new" and particular to that church - began circulating almost 20 years ago and which gets handed to the activists in a local church by whomever it may be that is coaching the takeover.
more resources:
I've written two anthologies, so far, that give overviews of some of what's been written on attacks on the UCC and the Methodist Church:
Here is a general framing of what I've come to call "The Shadow War" which includes material on the UCC.
Here is an anthology on attacks on the United Methodist Church: Spotight: United Methodism Under Attack
Meanwhile, a few weeks ago the Episcopal Church published a landmark expose tracing the financial ties of groups working to undermine the mainline Protestant denominations. Frederick Clarkson frames the issue :
The Washington Window, the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington has joined a growing number of publications inside and outside mainline Christianity that have published exposes of the efforts of rightist agencies to destabilize the historic mainline Protestant churches in the U.S.
The two-part series by former Washington Post and New York Times reporter James Naughton examines, according to a press release, the network of conservative groups, "their donors and the strategy that has allowed them to destabilize the Episcopal Church.... The groups represent a small minority of church members, but relationships with wealthy American donors and powerful African bishops have made them key players in the fight for the future of the Anglican Communion "to warn deputies that they must repent of their liberal attitudes on homosexuality or face a possible schism."
The expose, which demonstrates the unambiguous motives of rightwing activists to foment a permanent schism in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. and in the world Anglican Communion, comes in the run-up to the American church's triennial meeting in Columbus, Ohio in June.
Here is an excerpt from
Following The Money", by Jim Naughton :
Since the 1970s, charitable foundations established by families with politically conservative views have donated billions of dollars to what the National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy, a watchdog group, has called "an extraordinary effort to reshape politics and public policy priorities at the national, state and local level."
Five foundations are of special note for the magnitude of their donations to political and religious organizations. They are: the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; the Adolph Coors Foundation; the John M. Olin Foundation, which ceased operations last year; the Smith-Richardson Trust and the Scaife Family Foundations. Much of the foundations' largesse supports institutions and individuals active in public policy, including think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute and individuals such as William Bennett, Charles Murray ( The Bell Curve ) and Dinesh D'Souza ( The End of Racism ).
However, the foundations' activities also extend into the nation's churches-particularly its mainline Protestant churches. The foundations have provided millions of dollars to the IRD 2 which, in a fundraising appeal in 2000, said it sought to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" Protestant denominations and to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence."
The IRD was established in 1981 by neo-conservative intellectuals hoping to counter the liberal public policy agendas of the National and World Councils of Christian Churches.
ADDITION:
here's an extensive Talk To Action post from 5 minutes ago, on a
hostile and deceptive document from the IRD which was circulated among Methodists in an attempt to influence internal church politics
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/5/22/19557/7929
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