Secular conservatives plot to take over Methodist Church

[starroute]

This is from last summer, but I don't recall it ever being mentioned here before. This is the most terrifying thing I've seen in a while. I'm not even a Christian, and it freaks me out. There's a lot more in the article than what I'm able to quote -- please read the whole thing and spread the information around.

http://www.mediatransparency.org/stories/irdi.html

The United Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches are the targets of a continuing, orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues who use CIA-style propaganda methods to sow dissention and distrust, all in pursuit of a radical political agenda. The leader of this attack is an organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a pseudo-religious think-tank that carries out the goals of its secular funders that are opposed to the churches' historic social witness.

<snip>

IRD was founded 23 years ago by three key leaders of the radical-right neoconservative movement that now dominates the George W. Bush administration, namely Roman Catholics Richard John Neuhaus and Michael Novak and the unchurched Penn Kemble (Clarkson, 1997). Neuhaus acknowledged that the IRD had a specific "political agenda" from the beginning -- Central America and opposition to liberation theology were top concerns (Lernoux, 1989). Kemble was a key player in the Iran-Contra scandal working as an agent between Oliver North and U.S. financial backers of the Nicaraguan Contras (Goshko, 1989; Massing, 1989).

<snip>

By the end of the 1980s IRD needed a new raison d'être. Its primary target became three mainstream Protestant churches, the very ones that had given it the most resistance in the years it attacked progressive forces in Central America. The United Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians replaced the Nicaraguans, El Salvadorians and Guatemalans.

Allied with so-called "renewal" groups like Good News and its wealthy patrons, IRD set its sights on orchestrating a hostile takeover of the UMC and other mainline churches (Howell, 2003). The institute's Reforming America's Churches Project aims to "restructure the permanent governing structure" of "theologically flawed" mainline churches like the UMC in order to "discredit and diminish the Religious Left's influence" (IRD, 2001a). To do so it systematically spreads misleading and inflammatory charges against organizations and leaders, as well as employing the propaganda method of "wedge issues" like abortion and homosexuality, to cause distraction and division (Howell, 2003; Lomperis, 2004).

[blm]

1. RevMoon has helped financing these projects since the 70s.

Under the guise of "anti-communism" they use religious language mixed with militancy and paranoia. They practiced the technique in South America throughout the 70s, especially targeting Catholics.

Many of the bishops and other clergy who were "murdered" during that period, were usually replaced with a so-called "minister" who was more in tune with the US political agenda.

My mother became a member of TFP (Tradition, Family, Property) during the mid70's and I discovered just a few years ago that Moon and the covert Bushforces were behind that arch-conservative Catholic movement in South America, many of whom broke away from the Pope. If you read David Brock's book, his father followed the same Bishop my mother did, Lefebvre.

This is most certainly a political agenda. All the key players just happen to be connected politically or financially, no matter what religion they claim as their own.

[DBoon]

2. Consistent with the RW goals of totalitarian fascism

No opposition organiation can be accepted. Any opposition to their agenda must be destroyed.

The flip side of "faith based politics" will be religious organizations run by political operatives.

[CindyDale]

3. Biggest contributor is a stockholder in Gulf Oil

People should be made aware that oil profiteers are conspiring against their religion.