Liberal Denomination Fires Salvos at Right
By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: April 7, 2006
After years of turning the other cheek, the United Church of Christ, among the most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations, has recently staked out a more pugnacious stance toward the Christian right.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination's president, has sharply criticized the Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative religious watchdog and advocacy group, for supporting groups within mainline denominations that would further a conservative theological and political perspective. And the church has undertaken new advertising and e-mail campaigns to combat more conservative forces.
"I.R.D. is using church members, and even outside groups, to disrupt and ultimately control the mainline to promote its own political agenda," Mr. Thomas said last month in a speech at Gettysburg College.
In the e-mail campaign, the denomination is accusing the ABC News political program "This Week" of booking far more conservative Christian leaders than moderates for the Sunday morning broadcast. The network has called that assertion "unfounded and not based on fact."
And after stirring up publicity in late 2004 with an advertisement about tolerance, the church is distributing an even more pointed commercial that shows people who might not be considered mainstream, like a single mother and a gay couple, being shot through the roof of a church from an "ejector pew."...
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07ucc.html 
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