EIN: 52-1265221
Institute on Religion and Democracy, Inc.
Washington, DC 20036
The Institute on Religion and Democracy was founded in 1982 to "promote religious liberty around the world and to "fight for church reform" domestically, believing that "the National and World Councils of churches are theologically and politically flawed."
Its early focus was international, supporting U.S. foreign policy in Central America during the Reagan years. Today, IRD publishes Faith and Freedom and monitors "mainliners and other Christian groups that often claim to speak for millions but really represent only an extreme few." IRD also published in 1994 Prophets and Politics: Handbook on the Washington Offices of U.S. Churches, whose author, Roy Howard Beck, is best known for his vociferous attack against the United Methodist Church."
[From Buying a Movement, PFAW]
The Institute on Religion and Democracy, supporter of the "Contract with America" and known for its attacks on the National Council of Churches, received 89 percent of its support in its first two years from six conservative foundations.
May 20, 2019
IRD at SourceWatch.org
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Institute_on_Religion_and_Democracy
May 20, 2016
IRD at IRC Right Web
http://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/1496
Frederick Clarkson
PublicEye.org
March 20, 2007
The Battle for the Mainline Churches
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v20n1/clarkson_battle.html
“Make no mistake,” wrote Avery Post, the national president of the United Church of Christ in 1982, "the objectives of the Institute on Religion and Democracy are the exact opposite of what its name appears to stand for. The purpose of its leaders is to demoralize the mainline denominations and to turn them away from the pursuit of social and economic justice.
Steven D. Martin
Talk to Action
March 15, 2007
New Video Exposes the IRD
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/3/16/123149/092/Front_Page/New_Video_Exposes_the_IRD
For a long time I've noticed the destructive work of the IRD...[now I've created Renewal or Ruin? The Institute on Religion and Democracy's Attack on the United Methodist Church, a twenty-five minute video created for a Sunday school or adult education class session near you. A trailer for this program can be seen here.
Frederick Clarkson
Talk to Action
February 5, 2007
Bush's Religious Right Swat Team Takes Aim at Methodists
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/2/6/152631/1600/Front_Page/Bush_s_Religious_Right_Swat_Team_Takes_Aim_at_Methodists
The IRD is attacking the Methodist Bishops and clergy who oppose siting the Bush administration's at the university owned by their church -- the same church the IRD has been seeking to dismember, in part because it gets in the way of the Bush administration's domestic and foreign policies. Those are the same policies that he and his wealthy-but-secret domestic and foreign patrons will continue to promote from the Bush complex. Methodist opponents of the Bush complex see it as a Trojan horse and an occupational force at odds with the academic mission of the school and at odds with the religious and public policy views of the church. Clearly, the IRD sees it that way as well.
Frederick Clarkson
Talk to Action
January 10, 2007
When False Equivalency Distorts the New
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/1/11/202318/102/shadow_war/When_False_Equivalecy_Distorts_the_News
Traditional Media reports seldom correctly characterize the IRD
You wouldn't know it to read the mainstream media, (or to listen to those who wring their hands over the alleged efforts by as yet unnamed secularists to drive also unnamed people of faith from public life) that the rightist Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), the inside the beltway, neoconservative agency has waged a war of attrition against the historic mainline protestant churches in the U.S. You wouldn't know about the ways the agency and its satellite groups have spent millions of dollars to destablize and even dismember these churches like they were a third world country whose government was disliked by the United States. You wouldn't know that the group has been bankrolled by the leading strategic funders of the conservative movement and the religious right such as Richard Mellon Scaife and Howard Ahmanson, and cheer-led by The Washington Times newspaper, which is owned, controlled and bankrolled by the Unification Church of Rev. Sun Myung Moon.
Andrew J. Weaver
Media Transparency
August 10, 2006
Neocon Catholics target mainline Protestants
Institute on Religion and Democracy leads serious breach of ecumenical good will
...Six of the 17 current members of IRD's board of directors, a full 35 percent, are prominent conservative Catholics. They include founders Father Richard John Neuhaus of the Institute on Religion and Public Life and Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, along with George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, Professor Robert P. George of Princeton University, Mary Ellen Bork (wife of Judge Robert Bork), and board chair, Professor J. Budziszewski of the University of Texas at Austin...
Neela Banerjee
NY Times
April 6, 2006
Liberal Denomination Fires Salvos at Right
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/07/us/07ucc.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin
After years of turning the other cheek, the United Church of Christ, among the most liberal of the mainline Protestant denominations, has recently staked out a more pugnacious stance toward the Christian right.
The Rev. John H. Thomas, the denomination's president, has sharply criticized the Institute for Religion and Democracy [sic - should be on], ...for supporting groups within mainline denominations that would further a conservative theological and political perspective...
"I.R.D. is using church members, and even outside groups, to disrupt and ultimately control the mainline to promote its own political agenda," Mr. Thomas said last month in a speech at Gettysburg College.
Frederick Clarkson
PublicEye.org
March 29, 2006
The Battle for the Mainline Churches
http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v20n1/clarkson_battle.html
“Make no mistake,” wrote Avery Post, the national president of the United Church of Christ in 1982, "the objectives of the Institute on Religion and Democracy are the exact opposite of what its name appears to stand for. The purpose of its leaders is to demoralize the mainline denominations and to turn them away from the pursuit of social and economic justice.
Frederick Clarkson
Talk to Action
March 16, 2006
New IRD President Is a Schismatic Presbyterian
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/3/17/215329/263
...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 as a mininister 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. ..
Frederick Clarkson
Talk to Action
March 12, 2006
Rev. John Thomas, President of the United Church of Christ, Denounces IRD Attacks on Churches
http://www.talk2action.org/story/2006/3/14/41257/7860
An historic battle is unfolding for the future of the of mainstream Protestantism in the U.S. and in the world. You might have read press reports about the battles over gay ordination and the threats of walk-outs by hard line conservatives. But that is only a small part of one of the biggest, and most underreported, religion stories in American history.
But the see-no-evil press coverage may be about to change. While this has been building for some time, the increasingly forceful and public stands of Rev. John H. Thomas, president of the 1.7 million member United Church of Christ may be the story that can no longer go untold. Thomas is standing-up for his church. He is speaking-up. He is speaking-out. He is making it clear that he won't back-off; and he won't back-down.
Speaking recently at Gettysburg College, Thomas blasted the 20-year war of attrition aimed at the mainline churches by a key grantee of neo-conservative foundations. The Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy is the hub of a national network of conservative factions operating inside mainline churches -- and seeking to bend them to their will or break them apart.
Weaver, Ellison, Kandeler, Binggeli and Clark
ZH World
June 14, 2005
The Radical Right Assault on Mainline Protestantism and the National Council of Churches of Christ
http://www.zhworld.net/articles/zhwperspective1.html
Theologically conservative Christians who are seeking spiritual renewal in mainline churches need to look carefully at the unchristian tactics of the IRD. The church needs spiritual renewal; what it does not need is more political hardball and takeover bids. If the IRD achieves a hostile takeover of mainline Protestantism along with the dismantling of the NCCC, 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, our faith and the nation are at risk.
Andrew J. Weaver and Nicole Seibert
MediaTransparency.org
August 1, 2004
Church & Scaife
story.php?storyID=42
Conservative Philanthropies waging unethical campaign to take over United Methodist Church
The United Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches are the targets of a continuing, orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues who use CIA-style propaganda methods to sow dissention and distrust, all in pursuit of a radical political agenda.
The leader of this attack is an organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a pseudo-religious think-tank that carries out the goals of its secular funders that are opposed to the churches' historic social witness.
New York Times
May 20, 2004
Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/22/national/22CONS.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=
...a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the [Presbyterian] church along liberal and orthodox lines...With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and Olin Foundations and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, the 23-year-old institute [Institute for Religion and Democracy] is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War...
Matt Smith
SFWeekly.com
February 24, 2004
Institute of Hate
http://www.sfweekly.com/issues/2004-02-25/news/smith.html
Right-wingers are targeting liberal pastors -- including at least one in S.F. -- who favor gay marriage
Atrios
August 5, 2003
Conflict of Interest
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_08_03_atrios_archive.html#106003838799971677
Fred Barnes ... who appears to have "broken" the "accusations" against Reverend Robinson, is a board member of the Institute on Religion and Democracy...
Tapped
August 4, 2003
Barnes' smear
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2003/08/index.html#001329
Barnes and the other character assassins should be ashamed of themselves for being part of this.
Andrew J. Weaver
U of Chicago Divinity School / Martin Marty Center
July 9, 2003
The Fighting Methodists
http://www.whosoever.org/v8i1/methodist.shtml
...A recent book, United Methodism @ Risk: A Wake Up Call by Leon Howell, a respected journalist, argues that mainline churches such as the United Methodist Church (UMC) can no longer afford to be naive about right-wing advocacy groups that are tightly organized, highly motivated and well- financed for a take-no-prisoners campaign against mainline Protestantism. He says that unless these denominations stand up and get in a "fighting mood" the political right-wing aims to take them over.
The political right-wing, operating in the guise of a gaggle of so-called "renewal groups," particularly one named the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), has acquired the money and political will to target three mainline American denominations: The United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church USA, and the Episcopal Church. The IRD was created and is sustained by money from right-wing foundations and has spent millions of dollars over 20 years attacking mainline denominations. The IRD's conservative social-policy goals include increasing military spending and foreign interventions, opposing environmental protection efforts, and eliminating social welfare programs.
In a document entitled "Reforming America's Churches Project 2001-2004," the IRD states that its aim is to change the "permanent governing structure" of mainline churches "so they can help renew the wider culture of our nation." In other words, its goal extends beyond the spiritual and includes a political takeover financed by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife, Adolph Coors, the John M. Olin Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation of Milwaukee...