I have served in our Conference's judicatory office for three years now, and shortly after my arrival I began circulating information to our pastors about church takeovers. Many of the churches in the Conference were currently under attack, and my colleague - Rev. Sheldon Culver - had done years of research on the nature of these attacks. Her work has been invaluable.

Pastors, upon encountering this information, would typically go through a series of reactions: denial, off-handed interest, disbelief, curiosity, recognition, and finally a demand to know more. At first, there can be the appearance of grand conspiracy theories thought to be fed by a perceived paranoia. Few want to believe that their church could intentionally be targeted for a takeover. But we have been persistent with our message, thorough with our research, and before too long the preponderance of the evidence leaves no doubt as to the intentions and tactics of those who target churches for attack.

The IRS is making big news in annoucing the results of a comprehensive review of complaints of illegal electoral activity by non-profit, tax-exempt organizations, including churches, during the 2004 election season. Although the agency was scrupulously neutral in how it presented it's findings from the period leading up to the 2004 elections, and it's planned educational and enforcement activities for 2006, it stated as simply and plainly as possible:

"...all section 501(c)(3) organizations are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office."

This is certainly bad news for the Christian Right, which has encouraged churches to bend if not break the rules proscribing electoral activities by non-profit, tax-exempt groups.

[image left: partial map of IRD associations with media and religious organizations. click here  for full version from Media Transparency]  As material - mostly courtesy of Andrew Weaver's leadership in guiding research efforts - has acrued on John's Dorhauer's ongoing series I've created a new Talk To Action anthology dedicated to IRD associated attacks on the United Methodist Church

. 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. "

In my column last week, I began a conversation about the role the pastor can play when a church has been targeted for takeover. We looked briefly at the "Pastor as Aggressor:" we will return to that subject at another time as there is more to be said about that.

But this week I want to write about the Pastor as Pacifier. Other titles come to mind.. Were I to be more clever, I would have entitled this the "Pastor as Passivist." Its not a word, but it gets across the meaning I am intending: some pastors watch the machinations and ministrations undertaken by activists in their church and choose to remain, well, passive. I could have called this article the "Pastor as Enabler," for the result of choosing to remain passive is that one further enables the church to continue to be attacked.

I choose the title "Pacifier" because it comes closest to naming the underlying motives of this pastor: keep peace at all costs. For whatever reasons there may be - and there are many (we will explore some of them) - some pastors engage this conflict in their church with a predicated avoidance.

Last week, I wrote took a first look at actions that led to the hostile takeover of an unsuspecting United Church of Christ. I want to return to that church soon, for there is more of that story to tell.

But first I want to write about the role of the pastor in a church attack, for the outcome of the attack - while dependent on countless factors - is certainly most dependent on the actions and intentions of the pastor.

This will be a three part series. Though admittedly a bit of an over-generalization, my experience reveals to me that a pastor can play one of three roles once a church has been targeted for an attack: she can be an aggressor, one whose role is central and vital to the orchestrated takeover; he can be a pacifier, one whose role is very dismissive while an attack is going on and who either sits back afraid to take a side, or acts and speaks only to fulfill a desire for his members to just stop fighting; or she can be a protector, one willing to fight and defend her church against all would be attackers in order to preserve the church's history, vitality, and integrity.

Today we look at the Aggressor.

New Talk To Action anthology:United Methodism Under Attack

John Dorhauer's new weekly series on Talk To Action may be unprecedented : Dorhauer's series concerns an over two decade long campaign, by the far-right wing financed Institute For Religion and Democracy and so called "renewal" groups advocating literal interpretations of the Bible and far right social and political views, to destroy mainstream Protestant Christianity in America. Operating from within mainline Protestant denominations "renewal" groups work to sow dissension via wedge issues such as gay marriage, incite schisms, and so break apart mainstream and liberal denominations and neutralize them as an effective force in American politics.

Before now  this campaign has seldom been discussed so publicly, and with John Dorhauer's series we have an ongoing chronicle from the heart of one embattled denomination, the United Churches of Christ.

There are more Christians on the left/liberal side of politics than on the right, observed George Lakoff, but they are not organized to even remotely the same degree as the Christian right.

Well, here's the reason for that. Here are excerpts from the first three parts of a continuing series by John Dorhauer on Talk To Action, along with a related post by retired Methodist Ministers Andrew J. Weaver and Fred W. Kandeler, and a related series - on the takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention -  by Dr. Bruce Prescott.

In a "short take" posted on Alternet the day after the last national election, Max Blumenthal credited the outcome of the election to reaction against gay marriage and the legacy of Francis Schaeffer.  He said:

In many ways, the evangelical crusade against gay marriage is the latest outgrowth of the ideas of evangelical theologian Francis Schaeffer. Schaeffer is the intellectual godfather of the evangelical movement; in the 1970's Schaeffer penned "A Christian Manifesto" and "How Should We Then Live," bestsellers still unknown outside of Christian circles which articulated the evils of relativistic secular humanism through the lens of cultural and intellectual history. Secular humanism had resulted in a daily genocide of unborn babies in America's hospitals, Schaeffer argued, and evangelicals should vent their outrage by making politics their focus. His analysis resonated with a new, highly educated evangelical class which had rejected the premillenialist doomsday theology of preachers like Oral Roberts in favor of an aescetic lifestyle and a hyper-politicized agenda which stressed putting the country under the control of biblical law.

By the early 1990's, Schaeffer's teachings had spawned the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue and provided an ideological structure for influential evangelical leaders like Jerry Falwell and Rev. Rob Schenck, who is John Ashcroft's former pastor. Today, with Operation Rescue and Moral Majority leaders in congressional offices and the White House, gay marriage has replaced abortion as the issue propelling the next wave of the evangelical grassroots.

In the coming weeks, I want to begin to look specifically at local congregations that have been targeted for attack from the right. Each will have its own distinct set of circumstances and characters: but over time patterns will emerge. And if at any point along the way it should dawn on you that something like that is happening in a congregation you know about, then that should be brought to the attention of the church's pastor, Council, and judicatory offices.

On November 16 2003, Evangelical Church of the Redeemer United Church of Christ voted to disaffiliate with the United Church of Christ. Just how that happened is a long and sordid story of deceit, coercion, and manipulation that played out over years. Today we catch just a glimpse of their story. You will soon hear more.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force National Religious Leadership Roundtable has released an important study that should be of interest to all of us concerned about the Christian Right. While the study does not reveal anything substantially new, it does give a very comprehensive and detailed picture of the influence of both the anti-gay and pro-gay forces currently at work in the various religious groups. Most disturbing is the empirical verification of what we already knew; that secular conservative groups are aggressively funding the spread of anti-gay ideas within religious denominations as a tool for political control.

Three years ago I was approached by a group that called themselves STOP (Stop Theocracy in Oklahoma Policy) who, knowing that I was President of the Oklahoma Chapter of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, wanted me to join them in leading a protest of the National Day of Prayer. National Day of Prayer events around the country are organized by Shirley Dobson, wife of Domionionist broadcaster James Dobson.  They are an annual rally for "Christian Nation" activism.

Before they told me of their plans I knew that what they had in mind was counterproductive.  I'm also a Baptist minister.   Few Baptists of any stripe -- conservative, moderate, or liberal -- would be enthusiastic about protesting prayer.

I declined to participate in their protest, but offered to work with them to organize an event at the state capitol that could unify our entire community around the common value of respect for religious liberty and freedom of conscience.  A year later, we organized the first Interfaith Day of Prayer and Reflection in Oklahoma.

Political candidates vetted and controlled by powerful religious leaders? Small cells of dedicated but covert believers operating within the upper reaches of government to pursue ideological agendas? Public declarations pledging to destroy government and rule only by God's laws? Sounds like a stereotypical Hollywood or cable news description of Islamic terrorists on the march...

But, in fact, it's right here in America. Jeff Sharlet's expose of Kansas Senator Sam Brownback in the current issue of Rolling Stone (entitled God's Senator) reveals more details on these special interest groups and blatantly anti-democratic elected officials in Washington today, and the similarities between them and the mullahs and terrorist "sleeper cells" they vilify.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet."

Leave it to Shakespeare. Who else could state with such precision and beauty the simple truths that, once disclosed, reveal so much of human behavior, practice, and principle?

And what Juliet here reveals to Romeo is relevant: call it what you want, it is what it is. The naming of a thing does not alter the essence of the thing.

So let's talk about renewal groups.

In what has been a comprehensive and decades long effort to obfuscate, perhaps the ultimate obfuscation of this movement has been the unfortunate moniker by which they have chosen to be called: Renewal Groups.