"Swiftboating" Bush's Bishops.

Navigation: Main page

Author: Weaver, Andrew J.

IN NOVEMBER OF 2005, ninety-six United Methodist bishops from every region of the United States as well as Europe, Africa, and Asia, released a joint statement of conscience entitled, "A Call to Repentance and Peace with Justice" [see Tikkun, March/April 2006 for an excerpt]. The bishops are the elected officials who constitute the consecrated leadership of the 11 million member United Methodist Church (UMC), which includes President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

In the statement, the bishops confess, "In the face of the United States Administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent." They commit themselves to pray for the end of war in general and "the unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq" specifically, to reclaim their prophetic authority to speak out against war and injustice, and to engage in advocacy and peacemaking because it is integral to Christian discipleship. The diversity in age, gender, location, and theological bent of the signers reflects a wide consensus.

The statement of conscience was widely reported in the media, but when Fox News contacted the White House for a comment, they got no response. Think about it--what exactly could Karl Rove say when the leaders of the president's own church stated en masse that his war and the occupation of Iraq are immoral? Nothing! Rove has left his right-wing "think tank" troops to smear them, "swiftboat" style.

The primary instigator of the trashing is a neo-conservative Washington "think tank" which calls itself the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). In an article published in the Weekly Standard, the IRD follows the neo-conservative party line, accusing the bishops of being out-of-touch "liberal elites" who promote "anti-Americanism" and harbor "hostility to capitalism."

In a Christmas fundraising letter, the IRD claimed that the bishops' statement of conscience is "insulting" to the "brave young men and women" who are serving in Iraq. The IRD also scoffs at the bishops' call for peace, justice, and reconciliation in Iraq as sounding "like warmed-over 1960s utopianism" and proceeds to mock them as "flower children and chronic demonstrators who never really grew up and faced the real, sinful world." Challenging the patriotism of the bishops with rhetoric that would "warm the heart" of Joseph Goebbels, the IRD declares that, "No doubt, if transported back in history, these bishops likewise would have impartially 'lamented' the 'continued warfare' between Allied and German forces in Normandy in 1944, while blaming the plight of millions of victims of fascist aggression on the United States." This malicious accusation comes despite the fact that that among the bishops are decorated World War II combat veterans.

Mainline Protestant denominations, such as the UMC and the National Council of Churches (NCC), as well as other progressive leaders such as Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun and Rev. Jim Wallis of Sojourners, have been the targets of IRD-orchestrated "swiftboat style" smears since the IRD was formed with the assistance of the Reagan administration. Founded in 1981 by several key leaders of the neoconservative movement, including Roman Catholics Michael Novak (the Institute on Religion and Public Life) and Father Richard John Neuhaus (American Enterprise Institute), the IRD has relentlessly used unethical propaganda methods to carry out the radical political agenda of a handful of secular benefactors. The IRD systematically spreads misleading and inflammatory charges against progressive organizations and leaders, as well as employing jingoistic patriotism and "wedge issues" like homosexuality to promote dissention and division.

The IRD's secular political patrons have contributed millions of dollars to attacks on progressive religious leaders. The backers include the Bradley, Randolph, Smith Richardson, and Olin foundations, as well as ultra-conservatives Adolph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife, and Howard Ahmanson. The truth is that without wealthy right-wing patrons to foot the bills, the IRD would soon be out of business. But the question remains: How could Richard Melon Scaife, Adolph Coors, the Bradley Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and other secular political benefactors be persuaded to fund a multi-million-dollar crusade for a quarter of a century against mainline churches and the NCC?

Think about this: While the forty-five million members of the mainline Protestant churches affiliated with the National Council of Churches (NCC) account for only about a quarter of the U.S. population, approximately half of the members of the U.S. Congress identify themselves as members of these communions. The influence of mainline Protestant church members is disproportionate to their number, and, remarkably, extends to many progressive and moderate leaders in politics, business, and culture. Much of the prevailing ethos of American culture has been shaped by the leadership and membership of these churches.

Unlike today's Roman Catholic Church where debate and dissent are discouraged, these churches are heirs to forms of governance that are representative and transparent. It is the openness of these denominations that the radical Right exploits to turn them into battlegrounds in the culture wars. The Right's attacks on mainline Protestant churches and their leaders are meant to discredit these democratic bodies in order to impose rule by strict dogma and autocratic control while simultaneously neutralizing their social justice tradition. This tactic is often on view when conservative "renewal" factions in the mainline denominations, in alliance with the IRD, foment internal dissent and division.

Moreover, these denominations are some of the largest economic players in the United States, with hundreds of billions of dollars in collective assets, including real estate and pension funds. A hostile takeover of these churches by the Right would represent a massive shift in American culture, power, and wealth for a relatively small investment. If this sounds farfetched, one need only consider how right-wing groups during recent decades have taken over second largest American Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention.

What can be done? Progressive Christians need a long-term plan with sufficient funding to build an infrastructure to support the work of the most visionary and thoughtful in their communions. They need state-of-the-art publications to build an effective counter to right-wing distortions and lies about the Christian message. They need to articulate a new vision of who progressive Christians are and what the Holy Spirit is calling them to do.

The problem is that even now, after decades of being mercilessly bashed, many progressive Christians are only beginning to grasp that they are in a "war of ideas" with right-wing true believers. Most problematic of all is the fact that philanthropists who should and could help in this fight have been either absent or largely ineffective. If Scaife, Ahmanson, Olin, Coors, Bradley, and their like achieve a hostile takeover of mainline Protestantism and the dismantling of the NCC, they will have muted an important part of America's social conscience and significantly diminished its capacity for civic discourse. The soul of the church and its positive influence in the life of the Republic are at risk.

~~~~~~~~

By Andrew J. Weaver

Reverend Andrew J. Weaver, M. Th., Ph.D., is a United Methodist pastor and clinical psychologist living in New York City. He is associate publisher of Zion's Herald and a contributor to Hardball on Holy Ground.