by Frederick Clarkson    [3-20-06]

This article is posted here with the kind permission of its author.  You will find it, and many more resources on the Religious Right, on the website Talk to Action.

You can tell a great deal about an organization by its leader. That person is, after all, the person who was hired to carry out the agenda of the board of directors. That person is normally the principal spokesperson; the person who gives the speech; the person whom the reporter asks for even when he sometimes has to settle for someone else. And whenever an organization goes through a transition after the departure of a longtime leader, who the next leader is often signals the organization's direction.

Thus, the announcement of the new president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a Washington, DC-based organization with a 20 year history of seeking to undermine mainline Christian churches deemed "too liberal" – is a bellwether moment.

The Rev. Dr. James Tonkowich was trained at the Gordon-Conwell evangelical seminary and has worked for the past five years for conservative evangelical Charles Colson's Prison Fellowship. He has zero experience in mainline denominations. Perhaps most significantly, he is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). PCA is a small, rightwing schism that broke with mainstream Presbyterianism in 1973 over the ordination of women and membership in the National Council of Churches. (Women are not allowed to be ministers or elders in the PCA to this day.) PCA is also member denomination of the National Association of Evangelicals. The church is predominantly southern and according to its web site, the denomination had about 306,000 members as of 2000.

One of the leaders of the schism was televangelist and Christian Right operative, Rev . D. James Kennedy, who remains the PCA's best known leader. Other prominent PCA members include Rev. Lou ("Lucky Louie") Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition, who has emerged as a figure in the Washington scandal centered on lobbyist Jack ("Casino Jack") Abramoff; antiabortion militant Rev. Joe Foreman; Christian Reconstructionist author George Grant; U.S. Sen. James Talent (R-MO); U.S. Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO); Joel Belz, the founder of World magazine; and Marvin Olasky, the editor of World, and erstwhile advisor to George Bush.

Tonkowich's appointment is also symbolic because IRD is the hub of the Association for Church Renewal, a national network of conservative factions in the mainline churches, that are the operational end of IRD's campaign of disruption and dismemberment. This is altogether fitting of course, because the Association for Church Renewal in recent years has held meetings in tandem with the National Association of Evangelicals. And while positioning itself and related "renewal" groups as agencies of legitimate conservative dissent, IRD and the members of the Association for Church Renewal actively seek schism in the churches. The tactics of divide and conquer have occurred locally and nationally as Rev. Dr. John Dorhauer and Rev. Dr. Andrew Weaver have detailed at Talk to Action.

In its press release, IRD anticipates and seeks to deflect any criticism of Tonkowich's background. IRD Board chair Dr. Jay J. Budziszewski noted that Tonkowich's background notwithstanding, he is "firmly committed to reforming the mainline while at the same time helping the IRD to build alliances with other groups, such as evangelicals."

Rev. John Thomas, president of the 1.3 million member United Church of Christ, a member denomination of the NCC, said this about IRD in a recent speech:

The target is the Mainline churches whose leaders, they allege, "pursue radical political agendas, throwing themselves into multiple, often leftist crusades - radical forms of feminism, environmentalism, pacifism, multi-culturalism, revolutionary socialism, sexual liberation, and so forth." And, as a recent book about their activities puts it, they "play hardball on holy ground."

The IRD supports and encourages campaigns of disruption and attack in Mainline churches through its Alliance of Church Renewal. IRD has committees specifically focused on the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church (USA), committees which provide support for so-called renewal groups within each of these denominations ... More recently the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the American Baptist Churches, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) have increasingly come into their sights as well. The IRD pursues its political agenda in the churches through three strategies: campaigns of disinformation that seek to discredit church leadership, advocacy efforts at church assemblies seeking to influence church policy, and grass roots organizing which, in some cases, encourages schismatic movements encouraging members and congregations either to redirect mission funding or even to leave their denominations.

from Gene TeSelle   [3-24-01]

They are targeting the United Methodist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal Churches, since together they have a tenth of the total church membership and have disproportionate wealth and influence. One new enemy is environmentalism or "green theology"; IRD promises to spend the next for years "discrediting mainline church lobby efforts to spout environmental extremism in defense of liberal legislation that relies on the Kyoto Accords and unproven apocalyptic suppositions."

In the description of their Presbyterian Action Committee they are quite open about their intentions. They are trying to "abolish one or more church social action agencies" (the document implies that the IRD is the source of the Savannah Presbytery overture, which seeks to have several agencies evaluated and the bottom three abolished). They hope to expand their mailing list from 2,000 to 10,000. And if you didn't suspect it already, they say that their staff writes regularly for the Lay Committee's bimonthly newspaper (circulation over 500,000) and web site (over 6,000 hits daily).

A note from your WebWeaver:

I don't know whether progressive Presbyterians should be relieved or hurt to know that the projected 2001 budget for gaining power in the Presbyterian Church is just over $60,000, while the United Methodist Church merits over $480,000, and event the smaller Episcopal Church is allotted over $115,000.