Post by Moses on May 25, 2004 15:46:45 GMT -5
www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/national/22CONS.html?th=&pagewanted=print&position=
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May 22, 2004
Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.
In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.
With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley [Founder an active member of John Birch Society] and Olin Foundations[Major funder of AEI, Heritage Foundation, Hudson, etc., but major impetus is to Republicanize academia] and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company[To get an idea of the poor quality of this man’s mind and education read his essay Great Commission Deism Where God is portrayed as CEO-- sickening][/b], [For the roots of these organizations, see The Origins of the Overclass the 23-year-old institute is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.
The institute has brought together previously disconnected conservative groups within each denomination to share resources and tactics, including forcing heresy trials of gay clergy members, winning seats on judicial committees and urging congregations to withhold money from their denomination's headquarters.
When the Episcopal Church elected an openly gay bishop last summer, the institute organized and housed a conservative secessionist group called the American Anglican Council, which still occupies an office down the hall. When a conservative Methodist minister floated a breakup proposal at a private breakfast earlier this month, an institute staff member transcribed the speech and posted it on the institute's Web site, where it instantly became a rallying cry for disaffected Methodists.
At the Presbyterian Church's assembly last year, the institute helped block a policy statement that said whether parents were single or gay made no difference to the moral status of a family, and in the process it won the appointment of one of its staff members to a committee to rewrite the policy for this year's meeting.
"It's pretty clear that the church elite in the mainline denominations are to the left of the people in the pews," said Diane Knippers, the institute's president and an Episcopalian who helped found the American Anglican Council and now sits on its board.
The group has often called on conservatives to change the liberal denominations from within, especially in the relatively more conservative Methodist and Presbyterian churches. But Mrs. Knippers said she could support the notion of divorce for irreconcilable differences, albeit perhaps with liberals leaving. "Rather than be embroiled in legal battles in church courts over sexuality, let's find a gracious way to say, `we will let you leave this system because you believe it violates your conscience.' "
More liberal Protestants argue that the institute's financial backers are interfering with the theological disputes mainly for broader, secular political reasons. "The mainline denominations are a strategic piece on the chess board that the right wing is trying to dominate," said Alfred F. Ross, president and founder of the Institute for Democracy Studies, a liberal New York-based think tank which produced a research report in 2000 on the Institute's influence in the Presbyterian Church.
"It will give them access to three important pieces," said Mr. Ross, a lawyer and former official with the Planned Parenthood Federation. "One is the Sunday pulpit. Two is millions of dollars of capacity internally, with control of church newsletters and pension funds. And three is foreign missions," the agencies that dispense missionaries, and with them their brand of Christianity, around the world.
Rev. Robert Edgar, a former Democratic congressman who is general secretary of the National Council of Churches, an ecumenical alliance that is dominated by the mainline churches and a principal target of the institute's criticism, argued that it spoke for only about a third of mainline churchgoers. "They have caused so many internal issues that some progressive leaders are afraid to take the courageous positions they would have taken a few decades ago because a third of their parishioners would cut their legs off."
But in an interview last week, Roberta Ahmanson, a member of the institute's board and the wife of Howard Ahmanson, a banking heir from California, contended that the institute's orthodoxy resonated far more widely.
In addition, she argued that the liberal churches were often operating off of endowments left by previous generations who were unlikely to share their modern views.
"The Christian community isn't just who is alive," Mrs. Ahmanson said. "Christians believe that we are in communion with the living and the dead. We pray each week for the living and the dead, and most of the previous generations are in disagreement with a lot of this stuff." [Any of you other Christians out there know about this?!-- I never heard of this-- ] She continued: "If you take the weight of Christianity for 2,000 years, all that weight is on the orthodox side." [What is this? The Zombies Theology?!]
Mrs. Knippers and Mrs. Ahmanson both noted that the impetus for the founding of the institute came from a labor union activist, not right-wing financiers. Mrs. Knippers said the initial idea came from David Jessup, a staunchly anti-communist union activist and Methodist who objected to church aid to Vietnam and Nicaragua under their leftist regimes.
(rest next post)
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May 22, 2004
Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.
In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.
With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley [Founder an active member of John Birch Society] and Olin Foundations[Major funder of AEI, Heritage Foundation, Hudson, etc., but major impetus is to Republicanize academia] and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company[To get an idea of the poor quality of this man’s mind and education read his essay Great Commission Deism Where God is portrayed as CEO-- sickening][/b], [For the roots of these organizations, see The Origins of the Overclass the 23-year-old institute is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.
The institute has brought together previously disconnected conservative groups within each denomination to share resources and tactics, including forcing heresy trials of gay clergy members, winning seats on judicial committees and urging congregations to withhold money from their denomination's headquarters.
When the Episcopal Church elected an openly gay bishop last summer, the institute organized and housed a conservative secessionist group called the American Anglican Council, which still occupies an office down the hall. When a conservative Methodist minister floated a breakup proposal at a private breakfast earlier this month, an institute staff member transcribed the speech and posted it on the institute's Web site, where it instantly became a rallying cry for disaffected Methodists.
At the Presbyterian Church's assembly last year, the institute helped block a policy statement that said whether parents were single or gay made no difference to the moral status of a family, and in the process it won the appointment of one of its staff members to a committee to rewrite the policy for this year's meeting.
"It's pretty clear that the church elite in the mainline denominations are to the left of the people in the pews," said Diane Knippers, the institute's president and an Episcopalian who helped found the American Anglican Council and now sits on its board.
The group has often called on conservatives to change the liberal denominations from within, especially in the relatively more conservative Methodist and Presbyterian churches. But Mrs. Knippers said she could support the notion of divorce for irreconcilable differences, albeit perhaps with liberals leaving. "Rather than be embroiled in legal battles in church courts over sexuality, let's find a gracious way to say, `we will let you leave this system because you believe it violates your conscience.' "
More liberal Protestants argue that the institute's financial backers are interfering with the theological disputes mainly for broader, secular political reasons. "The mainline denominations are a strategic piece on the chess board that the right wing is trying to dominate," said Alfred F. Ross, president and founder of the Institute for Democracy Studies, a liberal New York-based think tank which produced a research report in 2000 on the Institute's influence in the Presbyterian Church.
"It will give them access to three important pieces," said Mr. Ross, a lawyer and former official with the Planned Parenthood Federation. "One is the Sunday pulpit. Two is millions of dollars of capacity internally, with control of church newsletters and pension funds. And three is foreign missions," the agencies that dispense missionaries, and with them their brand of Christianity, around the world.
Rev. Robert Edgar, a former Democratic congressman who is general secretary of the National Council of Churches, an ecumenical alliance that is dominated by the mainline churches and a principal target of the institute's criticism, argued that it spoke for only about a third of mainline churchgoers. "They have caused so many internal issues that some progressive leaders are afraid to take the courageous positions they would have taken a few decades ago because a third of their parishioners would cut their legs off."
But in an interview last week, Roberta Ahmanson, a member of the institute's board and the wife of Howard Ahmanson, a banking heir from California, contended that the institute's orthodoxy resonated far more widely.
In addition, she argued that the liberal churches were often operating off of endowments left by previous generations who were unlikely to share their modern views.
"The Christian community isn't just who is alive," Mrs. Ahmanson said. "Christians believe that we are in communion with the living and the dead. We pray each week for the living and the dead, and most of the previous generations are in disagreement with a lot of this stuff." [Any of you other Christians out there know about this?!-- I never heard of this-- ] She continued: "If you take the weight of Christianity for 2,000 years, all that weight is on the orthodox side." [What is this? The Zombies Theology?!]
Mrs. Knippers and Mrs. Ahmanson both noted that the impetus for the founding of the institute came from a labor union activist, not right-wing financiers. Mrs. Knippers said the initial idea came from David Jessup, a staunchly anti-communist union activist and Methodist who objected to church aid to Vietnam and Nicaragua under their leftist regimes.
(rest next post)