This explosive, and informative, article, which is recent but not new, has just been sent to me. It addresses the attempted takeover of just one of the many American institutions the Right is determined to control.
Power, Money, Control . . . It's the Church!
By Daniel Webster
....Here is the backdrop of what is “tearing at the fabric” of the Anglican Communion in the U.S.A.
Episcopal Church USA is considered a “mainline” Protestant denomination in the U.S. We share that moniker with Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Congregationalists and American Baptists. Mainline Protestantism is generally considered to be the bedrock for much of the social gospel teaching in the U.S. In recent years it has been demonized by the extreme right as “liberal.”
Less than 25 years ago, disparate groups of conservative Christians formed the Institute on Religion and Democracy to stop the liberal-leaning mainline churches from spreading their social and political message. The idea for the IRD came from David Jessup, a staunch anti-communist Methodist and union activist, who objected to U.S. churches sending aid to leftist regimes in Vietnam and Nicaragua, according to Diane Knippers, IRD president. From that time, the IRD attracted a few conservative donors with deep pockets, including the Scaife, Bradley, Olin and Coors foundations. Its biggest contributor is Howard Ahmanson, a Los Angeles area Episcopalian, heir to a savings and loan fortune who has previously proposed teaching creationism in public schools and replacing the American legal system with “biblical law.”
In 1995, many people with close ties to the IRD formed the American Anglican Council. The Rt. Rev. James Stanton, Bishop of Dallas (Texas), has been a director of both the IRD and AAC. Mrs. Knippers, an Episcopalian at Truro Parish, Fairfax, Va., has served as treasurer of the AAC while heading up the IRD. The AAC also has shared office space with the IRD in Washington, DC.
Originally the IRD's tactics were to infiltrate the governing bodies of the mainline churches, many of which are democratically constructed, to internally change their direction. (ECUSA is governed by its tri-annual General Convention, not by its Presiding Bishop). But in recent years the focus shifted. After the founding of the AAC, allies were sought in more conservative parts of the Communion. The stories from Lambeth 1998 of wealthier ECUSA bishops entertaining African bishops, some with more than one wife, were widely reported. About four years ago, the AAC began funding the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians, “paying stipends to university groups and religious educators in half a dozen African countries, as well as groups in Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines and India,” reported Kevin Jones in Every Voice News, August 2003. INFEMIT's funding between the year 2000 and 2001, according to Jones, editorial director of everyvoice.net, increased from US$500,000 to more than US$1 million. The AAC, and its IRD support structure, were seeking like-minded allies throughout the Communion....
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The stage was set for General Convention 2003. At this Convention in Minneapolis, a “super-majority” – that is, at least 75%, of deputies (the lay/clergy house representing all 110 ECUSA dioceses) – and a majority of all sitting diocesan bishops voted there to affirm the election of the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson to be Bishop of New Hampshire. Those same two houses voted overwhelmingly to allow the blessing of same-sex unions to be locally offered, the decision resting with each diocese....
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“Fundamentalist religion is cast in the ancient male-dominant tradition and is preoccupied with an imminent and violent end of the world,” writes the Rt. Rev. Bennett J. Sims, retired bishop of Atlanta, Ga., in his new book Why Bush Must Go. But, he writes, “A nonliteralist and biblically profound Christianity understands the central petition of the Lord's Prayer as a manifesto: ‘Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.' This places a firm priority on the life of the world, not on heaven....Anglicanism has struggled to maintain openness to a diversity of thought. In our time that may be difficult in the face of strong-willed, well-funded, ideologues bent on imposing their narrow vision and interpretation of Christianity on millions of their sister and brother Anglicans.
http://thewitness.org/agw/webster101504.html
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