I must be insane
That this is their style only confirms what I and others have been trying to say about them. That in the last week alone the IRD has tasked Matthew May (blog writer for the Newt for President website), Rebekah Sharpe (staff writer for the IRD), and now Steve Rempe to author an essay about my new book Steeplejacking says a lot about just how threatened they are by what the book reveals. Needing to make sure that his employer is well defended and that it is established beyond a shadow of a doubt that my research is discredited, Rempe writes:
One of the first truths I learned when I started working at the Institute on Religion and Democracy eight years ago was that IRD has its critics. While some of these opponents are fairly reasonable and honest in their critiques, others can only be described as, well, insane. From the Bay of Pigs fiasco to their grandmother's phlebitis, and pretty much everything in between--if it is bad and happened in the last fifty years, these individuals are convinced that IRD is the driving force behind it. That has to embarrass them - really. Giving it their best shot - they decide that they can convince the world that I can't be trusted by calling me insane. Just for the record - I'm not. Really, I'm not. I've graduated with honors from two different seminaries. I've been married to the same woman for 23 years. I'm in my office every day with very smart people who affirm my gifts for ministry. I preach every week in a different church. I mediate difficult discussions between church leaders engaged in all levels of conflict. I engage covenant partners in the kinds of conversations that induce creative resolutions to complicated, complex problems. Given the level of intimate contact I have every day with people who are always ready to evaluate my performance, I would have thought that were I insane one of those many thousands of people with whom I have worked very closely over the last few years would have figured that out. But no, it took a man I have never met, employed by an organization whose exploits I have been writing about for the last few years to tell the world I am insane. Why else would I have written that - let me make sure I get this straight - the IRD was behind the Bay of Pigs and caused my grandmother's Phlebitis (a malady with which I had no idea my grandmother was afflicted)? I must truly be insane. (And just for the record - I've never made those claims.) There is a point here: they have to do this. Fred Clarkson (author of Eternal Hostility), Michelle Goldberg (author of Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism), Andrew Weaver (contributor to Hardball on Holy Ground), John Thomas (General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ), Bill Moyers (about whom the IRD wrote "rarely heard a more bitter, angrier man than Bill Moyers whose bile is exceeded only by his self-delusion and denial of complicity in the very things he decries"), Welton Gaddy (Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance), Leon Howell in his book United Methodism at Risk - and so many others have been sounding the alarm bell, calling out this small, clandestine organization and writing about their machinations. They are feeling threatened. They are fighting back. They are lashing out. And to prove to the world that what I write can't be taken seriously, they call me insane and accuse me of accusing them of starting the Bay of Pigs and causing my grandma's phlebitis.
And as if that was not enough to push the final nail in my coffin, Rempe actually quotes an actual `observer of the United Church of Christ' to discredit me and my work: For the record, that UCC observer is Jim Hutchins, who wrote what Rempe quotes here on his own web blog. My deficiencies are piling up: I am now not only insane, I am `literally debilitated.' How do I get through the day (much less muster the capacity to actually write a book)? Whatever you do, don't read that book.
I must be insane | 25 comments (25 topical, 0 hidden)
I must be insane | 25 comments (25 topical, 0 hidden)
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