BACKING DOWN

from Midwest Conservative Journal by The Editor

Surprise, surprise. Suddenly Jim Naughton doesn’t believe that the Institute for Religion and Democracy is as much of a threat as it used to be:

The American conservative movement treats the IRD like the bladder on a set of bagpipes, pumping air into it when certain notes must be hit, leaving it more or less empty the rest of the time. At the moment, it serves no real purpose, in part because the schismatic Episcopal churches no longer need it to act as their financial agent, and in part because the world now sees it coming. People know the IRD has a special relationship with Howard Ahmanson, an extremist on just about anybody’s yardstick, and that it is driven by a political rather than a religious calculus.

This, in its way, can be quite helpful. The fact that Ephraim Radner was a member of the IRD’s board of directors while serving on the Covenant Design team has done much to undermine the credibility of the covenant process. However, members of the mainline denominations have a tendency to overestimate the influence of the IRD. (Whatever you may have read, it had almost nothing to do with the fact that Kevin Thew-Forrester did not get consents sufficient to become the Bishop of Northern Michigan.)

Says the man who wrote a long exposé on the IRD’s allegedly nefarious activities and associations a few years ago.

I think Jim realizes that the recently-passed Diocese of New York resolution calling for, among other things, the Episcopal Organization to join the Presbyterians and Methodists in assessing “the threat to religious freedom” allegedly caused by the IRD (i. e. come up with a plausible excuse to sue them) will backfire and will backfire in a big way.

What with the IRD not having done anything actually, you know…illegal and all.