A think tank allegedly used covert tactics to take over mainline Protestant churches

Evidence

The new alliance might have been less successful had it not also been paired, over time, with an organizational effort dedicated to capturing America’s churches for “life.” In the early 1980s, Novak and Neuhaus joined the board of the recently formed Institute on Religion and Democracy, which was created to oppose the social justice positions and liberal theologies of mainline Protestant churches. The IRD claimed to promote church “renewal” by amplifying conservative theological positions, but its real goal, as critics put it, might better be described as “steeplejacking.” … In their 2007 book, Steeplejacking: How the Christian Right Is Hijacking Mainstream Religion, Sheldon Culver and John Dorhauer assert the IRD used “covert methods” to wage a shadow war on mainline churches such as the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (USA), and the United Church of Christ. “In alliance with fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, the IRD uses trained activists, skillfully developed propaganda and clandestine tactics to infiltrate and hijack—or ‘steeplejack’—mainline churches in order to force out ‘liberal leadership’ and replace it with those who share their conservative world view,” according to Culver and Dorhauer. Through the use of same-sex marriage as a wedge issue, congregations are persuaded to separate from their denomination, the authors say, and when possible to seize control of the church-owned real estate and take it out of the denomination, too. The IRD’s initial sources of funds included Scaife family foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, and others. — Katherine Stewart, The Power Worshippers, 279

Categorization

• QUESTION: How does the IRD of the 1980s relate to the broader Christian nationalist movement this book traces, and was the steeplejacking claim verified beyond the Culver-Dorhauer account?
• XREF: connects to: Modern anti-Catholic conspiracy targets organizational secrecy, not theology — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic…, 625; Billionaire-backed radical-right networks manipulate politics through clandestine think tanks. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1768; Strategic group realignment gets camouflaged as religious piety in feuds — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1957 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Billionaire-backed radical-right networks manipulate politics through clandestine think tanks. #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1768
• Strategic group realignment gets camouflaged as religious piety in feuds #corroborates (0.80) — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 1957
• Modern anti-Catholic conspiracy targets organizational secrecy, not theology #complicates (0.78) — Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, 625
• Conspiracy theories rest on reifying a religion into a self-motivating agent #complicates (0.75) — Carl W. Ernst, Islamophobia in America_ The Anatomy of…, 174