"Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy"

Hoaky smokes, Bullwinkle!

A New York Times article that actually labels both conservatives and liberals.

A remarkable article at NYT, Saturday — remarkable for being rather well balanced. Though it tries to make orthodox / conservative / traditional movements in mainstream Protestant circles out to be but manifestations of the VRWC, it fails because... well, because the article is rather well balanced:

As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own.

In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.

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 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....

This paragraph brought a guffaw:

More liberal Protestants argue that the institute's financial backers are interfering with the theological disputes mainly for broader, secular political reasons. "The mainline denominations are a strategic piece on the chess board that the right wing is trying to dominate," said Alfred F. Ross, president and founder of the Institute for Democracy Studies, a liberal New York-based think tank which produced a research report in 2000 on the Institute's influence in the Presbyterian Church.

As if the leadership of the mainline Protestant churches hasn't been taken over by liberal-heterodox-secularist-leftist elements over the past several generations. But later — well, read it for yourself in amazement:

Bill Schambra, director of the Bradley Center at the Hudson Institute and a former director of the Bradley Foundation, one of the biggest conservative donors, said the foundations' supported the institute as part of a broader effort to build a conservative infrastructure after decades of liberal ascendancy had shut out the right.

All I know to say is this: the editorial staff must have left early for a long weekend.

And, you may want to print that article. And laminate it.

See also ut unum sint for another aspect.

P.S. And see also Mere Comments.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Mon. 05/24/04 06:49:41 AM
Categorized as Media & Religious.