http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/6/152631/1600It seems that whenever the Bush administration has a religion problem, a special political swat team turns up to handle it.
When the National Association of Evangelicals were preparing a statement expressing concern about global warming the Institute on Religion and Democracy helped lead a campaign of religious right leaders to derail the statement. When gay families, organized by Soulforce, planned to participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll, an IRD staffer published a shrill "expose" in the neoconservative Weekly Standard. And when Methodist ministers and Bishops organized a campaign to stop the placement of the George W. Bush Presidential Library and related Institute at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, (including a petition signed by 10,000 Methodists so far including 14 bishops and 600 clergy) -- IRD once again stepped in on behalf of Team Bush, issuing a press release denouncing the effort, and organizing a letter-writing campaign in support of the complex.
IRD's Bush complex-related activities are not to be taken in isolation. Rather, they are part of the war of attrition it has waged against the United Methodist Church and mainline Protestantism generally for a generation. The IRD Orwellianly describes its efforts as "renewal," of the churches, but their activities may be better described as "divide and conquer."
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Of course, IRD does not represent anyone but their self-perpetuating board of directors, and their politically motivated philanthropies associated with the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife, and Howard and Roberta Ahamanson that have bankrolled their efforts for a generation. These funds are used primarily for attacking mainline Christian churches, organizing conservative factions into forces of division and schism at all levels of the church; and especially attacking the churches when they diverge from the policies of the Bush administration.
This is unsurprising, since the man who wrote the original game plan for IRD, and remains a driving force, Catholic priest and neoconservative theorist John Richard Neuhaus, has been a political advisor to George W. Bush since 1998, according to former Neuhaus aide Damon Linker in his recent book The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege. Neuhaus has also been influential in developing White House policy on abortion, stem cell research, cloning and marriage. While Neuhaus is not the only IRD leader with close ties to the administration, he personifies the neoconservative and religious right alliance with the Bush administration as well as being the architect of the IRD's prime mission which has been to neutralize and to dismember the leading member denominations of the National Council of Church as important influences in American culture and politics.
Indeed, the primary backers of the IRD have for 25 years been the same foundations that bankroll the leading institutions of the conservative movement in Washington, DC and around the country. Several of these funders explicitly stated that the purpose of their grants to IRD were to challenge "the religious left using reports, publications, conferences and an aggressive media strategy."
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In recent years, IRD-connected activists have explicitly organized for schism in both the Episcopal and the United Methodist Churches. As I summarized last year in The Public Eye magazine:
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As it happened, the Methodist schism was thwarted, (at least for now,) but the Episcopal schism is well underway.
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Indeed. Control over presidential documents is shaping-up as a matter that will likely be resolved in federal court; and the Bush complex, complete with its joint neoconservative and religious right politics, is shaping-up less as think tank, and more like the Bush White House in exile.
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Bush sources with direct knowledge of library plans told the Daily News that SMU and Bush fund-raisers hope to get half of the half billion from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million a pop.
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So, let's recap: The IRD is attacking the Methodist Bishops and clergy who oppose siting the Bush Government In Exile at the university owned by their church -- the same church the IRD has been seeking to dismember, in part because it gets in the way of the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies. Those are the same policies that he and his wealthy-but-secret domestic and foreign patrons will continue to promote from the Bush complex. Methodist opponents of the Bush complex see it as a Trojan horse and an occupational force at odds with the academic mission of the school and at odds with the religious and public policy views of the church. Clearly, the IRD sees it that way as well.
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"Bush White House in exile"
you really should read the whole thing
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