Graciousness - and the Current Impossibility of Reconciliation

I think some sort of a split has been inevitable since before V.Gene Robinson and Same Sex Blessings. It is (among other things, as I have claimed before) the fruit of the Modernist / Fundamentalist controversy that has two different biblical theologies: one that has emerged (as prominent Methodist theologian John B. Cobb, Jr has said) "from reading the Bible as critical historians," and the other "from reading it only through the eyes of a tradition that has treated it as a sacred text."

I also believe that the inevitability of such a split has been made much more real and much more likely by the involvement of the IRD (Institute on Religion and Democracy) - backed by a great deal of neo-conservative money, liberally spread among the dissident groups.

These neo-cons don't really have a religious agenda. They're much more interested in the silencing of all mainline denominational commitment TEC, UMC, PCUSA (The Episcopal Church, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church United States of America) to, and therefore involvement in, issues social justice in the economic market place and therefore in the political arena. This is such a valuable objective that - to achieve their economic and political goals of shifting our country toward the far right - they are willing to spend big bucks, funneled, of course, through organizations such as the Institute for Religion and Democracy.

The book Hardball on Holy Ground (by Stephen Swecker, May 2005, BookSurge Publishing, ed.) documents this spending - voluminously, in fact - as well as identifying "the usual suspects", names by now very familiar to all of us in TEC. The funding of the Institute for Religion and Democracy comes from several very wealthy, politically active and well-connected neo-cons like:

• Richard Sciafe: 1.9 Million to IRD through 2003 (out of 620 Million he has given to ultra-conservative causes)
• Howard Ahmanson: 1.2 Million to IRD through 2004 (he of "Christian Reconstructionism": execute gays and adulterers by stoning etc...)
• the Bradley Foundation 1.5 Million up to 2001 (they're connected to the John Birch Society, and have stated they wish to return the U.S. to the days "before government regulation of business, and before corporations were required to negotiate with labor unions")
• John M. Olin: half a million ("to counter the political influence of the religious left")
• Adolph Coors family: a 100,000 grant ("to challenge the orthodoxy promoted by liberal religious leaders in the U.S." - plus regular annual donations)

And, of course, Howard Ahmanson was the initial funder that allowed the American Anglican Council to move from a minimalist organization with just a few members and affiliated parishes into a major force within TEC.

What's truly striking is that this book is written by United Methodists, and is about the United Methodist Church, not TEC, yet the similarity in both Churches is remarkable - stunning, in fact. And, no doubt, we'd find the same in PCUSA (For instance, the PCUSA has been told by the Korean Presbyterians - supported by IRD funding - that PCUSA has abandoned true Biblical Christianity and needs to repent, and accept scripture as its sole authority).

The UMC has their own equivalent of the American Anglican Council, called "Good News". Good News is doing (and has been doing for much longer, with IRD funding) EXACTLY the same sorts of things as AAC, such as recommending an "amicable separation", the withholding of funds, the removal of congregations from within individual Conferences (=dioceses) to form their own judicatories, and so on. Again, this is detailed extensively, with appropriate references to original source documents, in Hardball on Holy Ground. Read the book!

It is no longer necessary to wonder from where the AAC (and, now, members of the A.C.N., Anglican Communion Network.) got their language of "amicable separation", or their strategy of withholding funds, or their suggestion that congregations 'unaffiliate' from their dioceses. As with biblical criticism, it is possible to redact back to at least one major original source - not 'Q', but 'I' .....for IRD.

The UMC has a rough equivalent of the A.C.N. (remembering that the UMC is a world-wide denomination, different from the Anglican Communion, and that roughly one fifth of voting members at General Conference [=General Convention] are from overseas). Their equivalent is called "The Confessing Movement" (Bonhoeffer is spinning in his grave!)

And about "The Confessing Movement": Doesn't that name sound familiar in our contemporary context? After reading the book I no longer believe that the Archbishop of Canterbury really was the originator, or 'first suggester' of the use of "Confessing" to the dissidents back in '04. I believe that language originated within the group meeting with him, but that its first source was from within IRD.

Lastly, the Methodist Desk at IRD is doing much the same sorts of things in UMC (actually more so, in spades) as in TEC.

What is striking about the book is that it shows how the UMC has been more of a target and for longer than ourselves. THIS IS A WARNING TO US! We can respond before its too late. In the UMC the schismatic groups are not only well-entrenched, but had been so for longer before moderates within that Church realized the true danger.

As one commentator in "Hardball" said, reconciliation is simply not possible when outside forces are pouring so much money into the dissident groups seeking to engender a split within the denomination for non-religious purposes.

The Rev. Nigel J. Taber-Hamilton is rector of St. Augustine's-in-the-woods Episcopal Church, Whidbey Island, WA, in the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia. Posted with permission of the author.
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