may as well be this week's mantra for the United Church of Christ's fledgling `renewal group' "Faithful and Welcoming."

A bit of background: every two years the UCC holds a national gathering (called General Syond) at which we deliberate about policy initiatives, priorities, and resolutions that establish the foundation for the work of the church.

A bit more background: the polity of the UCC is such that those deliberations have NO BINDING EFFECT ON ANY LOCAL CHURCH IN THE DENOMINATION.  That is important to know. We are a free church tradition bound by covenant alone: the only thing our covenant binds local churches to do is to take seriously decisions made and actions taken by any other covenantal partner.

President and CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

We are delighted to welcome Rev. Veazey as a guest front pager. His post is a timely counter to yet another divisive and disruptive campaign by IRD. -- ed

With mainline Protestant churches in the midst of their large regional and national conferences, so-called "renewal" groups are trying to stir up turmoil by attacking the churches' historic support of women's reproductive choice. As in many years past, the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is a target of these "renewal" groups, in particular of The Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), an ultra-conservative political lobby in Washington DC.  The IRD's campaign against the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is perhaps best characterized as an effort to distort our mission and work and vilify our good name. Repeatedly over the years, the mainline denominations have seen through this deceitful effort and rejected it.

Reproductive choice is not the only sensitive issue that is exploited by the IRD and its allies. Gay rights and doctrinal interpretation are also targets of their attacks.

 Two "ads" appeared this week on the Biblical Witness Fellowship web site. The BWF is one of the Institute on Religion and Democracy's renewal groups - one of its minions of trained activists (or, as they are referred to on the BWF website, trained `renewalists.')

They are supposed to be clever - they are not. They are supposed to somehow mimic or mirror the award winning ads which the United Church of Christ have run for the last three years - they do not.

Forget about all of that.

What is most striking is the manner in which the second of these equates the aftermath of General Synod last July with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

A new story, on the United Churches of Christ website, highlights the snubbing of United Council of Churches leaders by mainstream American media. In Amplifying the Mainstream, J. Bennet Guess ( with editor Rebecca Bowman Woods ) ties the media's pervasive unwilligness to allow leaders of the substantial religious body on television and radio to a decades-long campaign, wth origins in American neoconservatism, to undermine and cripple the mainstream Protestant denomimations. Unfortunately the article also misses recent and upcoming developments in "The Shadow War" including the role of the progressive blogosphere as a vector to publicize IRD-coordinated attacks on the mainline American Protestant denominations. The omissions, likely quite unintentional, underscore the need for greater cooperation among those opposed to the Christian right push for theocratic governent : the whole, as always, is stronger than the sum of its parts.

"Year after year, on issue after issue, progressives work with the church on these questions  (of social justice, and peace) while conservatives often oppose the church's view. Yet come election time, only the progressives get punished. This is a practical problem. And for many of us who are progressive Catholics, it is a source of genuine anguish."  --E. J. Dionne Jr., June 2006

(In this, the fourth installment of my series on the Catholic right, the focus shifts to a bulldog, independent lay organization, the New York-based "Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights")

Liberal and even some libertarian-minded conservative Catholics often come to a common realization: a number of the Church's hierarchy often overlook doctrinal disagreements (and in some cases, outright disloyalty) it has with its friends on the political American Catholic Right. More often than not, this policy of inconsistent admonition favors with those who advocate unrestrained self-interest economics--provided they also act to enable secular society to become more conducive to an orthodox practice of the faith. Many of these same princes of the Church will simultaneously wage a scorched earth policy toward what it sees as its opponents: progressives within as well as without the Church.  

This is not true of the entire Catholic Church, but of a reactionary, "Church within a Church" whose followers often employ ultra-traditionalist lay groups (1) to do this dirty work, many of which were elevated during the reign of Pope John Paul II. Members of this Rightist clique will constantly scream their opposition to choice and stem cell research, while, in sotto voce, give lip service to the death penalty and war  -- and say nothing at all, to name one example, about the influence of big tobacco in politics, and the addiction, ill health, death and -- the destruction of families that it leaves in its wake.  This is a highly selective use of Church doctrine that cleverly promotes friendly non-mainstream conservative political action often designed to further the personal interests of friendly individuals of superfluously wealth. It is also an outrageous abuse of church teachings to thwart the views of the Church in other areas.

University of Illinois Doctoral Student John Anderson, producer of Media Minutes and DIYmedia may have covered the "Great Translator Invasion" more thoroughly than anyone, and he's here to bring Talk To Action another tawdry religious broadcasting scandal involving "illicit ungodly relationships", Victoria's Secret, auto parts, and a gun. Oh my. Now, I'm not immune to the charms of salacious, sleazy scandal, but let me say this - after the principals have clawed each other's reputations and bank accounts to bits and are living out of carboard boxes, it's likely some deep pocketed Dominionist media mogul will magically appear to salvage Calvary's LPFM empire - as a good investment and because it's  a useful platform for for saturation bombing the hinterlands with certain ideologies. So the scandal will likely amount to another soporific.  In the mid 1980's, several televangelists fell from power and the "religious right" was noisily pronounced dead.  Several years later, the Christian right had powered the GOP takeover of Congress. But enough of these annoyances called facts - let John be your guide through the Calvary muck.

Oh, this really is too much fun.

On April 1, the Biblical Witness Fellowship posted an invitation (which was enveloped in another not so clever attempt to smear the United Church of Christ - the church over which they have wet dreams trying to come up with new ways to castigate them). The invitation was to the "thousands" who belong to the "Fellowship of the Ejected."

What is the "Fellowship of the Ejected?" Oh, you really are going to love this:

Talk To Action contributor the Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer has kindly provided me with these scanned examples of literature ( see full story for complete set of full size images ) used in attacks on United Churches of Christ churches by fundamentalist "renewal group" para-church groups associated with the far-right funded Institute on Religion and Democracy Listen to a recent, groundbreaking Talk To Action / State of Belief radio show [ link to archived podcast of show ] on these attacks, hosted by Interfaith Alliance head C. Welton Gaddy. See "State of Belief" show description.

John Dorhauer writes an ongoing series here, on Talk To Action, detailing methods used to attack individual UCC churches and also methods for protecting and innoculating churches against takeover efforts.

Such takeover efforts can be highly traumatic to church congregations, and even among those which succesfully resist such attacks - which often feature covert tactics of innuendo and misinformation - those who have lived through such conflicts can be loath to talk openly about the experience.

That has worked to cast a veil over the subject which has in turn facillitated this ongoing "shadow war" which is detailed in Dorhauer's writing and also in a dedicated section of collected writings here on Talk To Action which - although very far from comprehensive - nonetheless may have no equal, in its range of material and sustained treatment of "The Shadow War"

All mainline Protestant denominations are under such attack ( see: The Shadow War ), and both the Presbyterian and Episcopalian churches face possible schism this summer.

Thanks to Renee in Ohio, here is a complete transcript of the unprecented may 21, 2006  Talk To Action / State of Belief radio show, hosted by Interfaith Alliance head C. Welton Gaddy,  on the "coordinated effort to undermine mainline Protestantism -- and render America's largest denominations incapable of standing up to right wing politics.". Here it is:

On the Sunday, May 21 episode of State of Belief, Rev. Welton Gaddy interviewed:

Dr. Andrew J. Weaver United Methodist pastor and clinical psychologist, and contributor to Hardball on Holy Ground: the Religious Right versus the Mainline for the Soul of the Church

Dr. Bruce Prescott, Executive Director of Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists host of Religious Talk on KREF radio Norman, OK, on at 11 each Sunday morning. Also President of Oklahoma chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Dr. John Dorhauer, minister for the St. Louis Association of the United Churches of Christ

[ editor's note : this story, by TTA member cross and flame, has been promoted from the member post section ]

"Earlier last month, the Institute on Religion and Democracy sent a letter to most (if not every) United Methodist conference and leader urging a petition of censure against the agency of the UMC that speaks out regularly on social justice issues and is often the counter-opinion to the IRD.  The following is the rebuttal and point-by-point response by that agency: the General Board of Church and Society of the UMC.

 Here's a teaser:We alert you to a resolution attacking the GBCS that is being circulated by the IRD.   The IRD has forwarded this draft resolution to United Methodists around the United States asking them to submit it to their annual conferences for consideration and approval. The hostile nature of this resolution and its inaccuracies concern us and demand a response...We are providing you with the text of the IRD draft resolution along with a point by point response from the GBCS.

"They got to hate the Church because they hated the friends of the Church, who exploited them and whom the Church did nothing to rebuke or correct."  --Rev. Wilfrid Parsons, S.J., circa 1936

INTRO

And now the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the faith to which I belong, is not only embracing questionable friends, she is allowing them into positions of power -- and increasingly letting them set official doctrine. After being denied requests for greater power by both Pope John XXIII and Pope Paul VI, wary of its intentions, the more orthodox-leaning Pope John II elevated Opus Dei to the status of being the Church's only  Personal prelature and had made many known members bishops and cardinals. Pope Benedict XVI has continued this embrace.  

This struggle for the heart and soul of the Catholic faith extends to America. And to a very large extent, what eventually transpires within the Church in Rome may well determine the fate of religious liberty in our own country.  

The Catholic Church is now at a crossroads. Will she lead by following the religious tolerance of a Sister Rose Thering, the progressive nature of a Pope John XXIII, the humility of Catholic Worker founder Peter Maurin, the empathy of distributive justice advocate Monsignor John A. Ryan? Or will control return to Church Plutocrats who allign themselves with the true agents of apostasy, the practitioners of "trickle-down" faith?  

One of the areas upon which we have been focusing a lot of attention as we analyze the attacks on our churches has been the development of key stategies. Some of those are responses to activities already begun in the life of a church, while others are more proactive - designed to protect a church from an attack in the future.

Of the former, one of the most effective has been the identification and training of what we call "allies." In many churches, the ability of the pastor to name, train, and deploy key lay leaders in defense of their church has proven critical.

I will briefly describe this strategy, and then talk about a congregation wherein the work of key allies has - to this point - thwarted the concentrated attack that they have been enduring for the past two years.