Long time IRD critic John Dorhauer, United Church of Christ (UCC) president, blasted the IRD as a “Christian nationalist” group when speaking at Elmhurst University in April 2023. The title of his talk was “Christian Nationalism: A Threat to Both Democracy and Christianity.”
The UCC is a Mainline Protestant denomination that dates to the early New England Puritans.
In 2007 Dorhauer wrote a book called Steeplejacking that claimed the IRD was dispatching operatives into UCC congregations to create strife and ultimately to ensure their exit from the denomination. He repeated his claim about IRD “operatives” in his recent speech.
It was a creative explanation for the UCC’s decline. In 1960 the UCC had 2,246,610 members and 8,184 churches. By 2007 the UCC had 1,145,281 members and 5,377 churches. By 2022 the UCC had 712,296 members and 4,603 churches, making it one of the fastest declining religious bodies in America.
To what extent did IRD, founded in 1981, contribute to the UCC’s decline? Contrary to Dorhauer’s claim, IRD never had a program targeting the UCC. Nor were there ever any IRD operatives visiting UCC churches. Broadly, IRD for many years urged traditional Mainline Protestants to stay in their denominations as a faithful witness. A group called Biblical Witness Fellowship for several decades worked to renew the UCC from within but ultimately abandoned the project. Hundreds of traditional UCC congregations across the years quit the UCC. Thousands of churches were closed as membership imploded. It’s a story familiar to all Mainline Protestants.
In Dorhauer’s narrative, thousands of gullible UCC members were manipulated by IRD. Actually, as in all Mainline denominations across the last 60 years, millions of members left because their churches were no longer spiritually captivating. Old members died, while their children or grandchildren attended other churches or discarded formal religion.
But offering a conspiracy to explain denominational decline is simpler for church officials because it avoids accepting responsibility. Dorhauer in his recent speech added to his narrative that IRD was a “key player in both the rise of Christian nationalism and the disruptions we were experiencing in our churches.” Of course, “Christian nationalism” has become a popular trope to describe almost any appearance of traditional or conservative religion in public life. There are actual self-identified “Christian nationalists” who advocate a Christian confessional state and disagree with IRD’s message of democracy, human rights and religious freedom for all people. But Dorhauer prefers the wider brush.
Here’s an amusing excerpt from Dorhauer’s speech regarding IRD:
I was at the time working on the staff of the Missouri Mid-South Conference and I had been assigned the task of figuring out why so many churches around the conference in the country were all of a sudden exploding with conflict over religious doctrine and threatening to leave the denomination. The United Church of Christ was founded with the understanding that we hold no defining doctrine. You said we don’t have tests of faith. We have testimonies of faith and all Christians regardless of their individual beliefs are free to gather at the table in love and fellowship with us.
Actually, I’m being a little limiting and saying that it’s not just all Christians. All people are free to gather at that table with us, Christian or otherwise. To all of a sudden have churches threatening to remove a pastor who doesn’t believe in the Virgin Birth or to vote to leave the denomination because a church an hour away from them hired a gay pastor made no sense. So, I was a part of a small team asked to research what was happening and what I discovered were the early roots of what we now know as Christian nationalism. It’s a bit of a winding road to get from where I started in this exploration to what I know today. We don’t have time to unfold all of that here and yet it was happening all over with great frequency. Here’s what we learned. What I uncovered in our investigative work was that behind these disruptions in our churches was something we could have never anticipated.
A group known as the IRD, The Institute on Religion and Democracy, and if you’ve never heard of them you should know about them. Google them, The IRD. The Institute of Religion and Democracy, they were being funded by right-wing neo-conservative political big shots, heavy hitters in the far-right wing of the neoconservative Republican Party. These were heavy hitters with big sums of cash that they were using to fuel and fund right-wing politics.
The IRD is in and of itself worthy of an entire lecture on its own but for now just know that they are a key player in both the rise of Christian nationalism and the disruptions we were experiencing in our churches. The IRD is run by a former dark ops agent trained and working for the CIA, I’m not making that up, by the name of Mark Tooley. And the IRD funds in their language, not mine, to “train operatives” to foment dissent in otherwise content and happy congregations. Now it would be one thing if the churches decided it was time to have an open debate about homosexuality. It’s another thing when a trained operative was walking into the church and telling the church that if they’re truly Christian they would be having this discussion and embroiling them in controversy using field research to sniff out what they call wedge issues that can create division within the church.
The IRD sent out trained operatives into congregations to use their well-researched wedge issues to foment dissent and have them wreak all the havoc they can create. Now you may ask why political backers of right-wing politics would fund an organization to disrupt churches who were otherwise content. Well, they’re Christian nationalists whose view of the world in America are fairly shall I say racist and homophobic and misogynistic. And they grieve the coming of a time when white men will be in the minority and fear the threat of violence for their past sins against people of color and Native people. And so, using religious zealots with narrow theologies as a tool for their ambition makes perfect sense when you think about it. After all, progressive Mainline faith movements and congregations have always fueled almost every significant social justice movement we know from the abolitionists to the suffragists to the unionists to gay activists and so many more movements. Progressive faith of all stripes gave new life to these Justice movements. And silencing their voices, minimizing their impact while embroiling them in internal battles is a brilliant strategy and worthy of their funding.
Comment by Kay Short on January 24, 2024 at 11:17 pm
Dorhauer is either delusional, or engaging in mendacity. UCC, along with other mainline denominations, abandoned Scripture and biblical truth to worship a god of their imagination. The faithful bolted, and voted with their feet. The IRD has been a great resource, and encouragement of traditional churches. Dorhauer ‘s psyops fantasy exists only in his mind.
Comment by David Gingrich on January 25, 2024 at 6:41 am
Funny, if not so sad. I do not understand the delusion and dishonesty that dominates American Leftists.
Comment by Dan W on January 25, 2024 at 7:54 am
“to foment dissent in otherwise content and happy congregations”
Dorhauer has never served on a local church committee?
Comment by David on January 25, 2024 at 9:13 am
I do wonder what the UCC’s forebears in the former Reformed Church in the US and the former Evangelical Synod (the Niebuhr brothers’ church) would think of their amalgamated church today. “All people are free to gather at that table with us, Christian or otherwise.” In which case, why even pretend to be church? Why bother with a table? Wouldn’t college football fulfil this function quite nicely?
Comment by Tim on January 25, 2024 at 10:27 am
So God said, in effect, “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get.” It wasn’t long before they were living in a pigpen, smeared with filth, filthy inside and out. And all this because they traded the true God for a fake god, and worshiped the god they made instead of the God who made them—the God we bless, the God who blesses us. Oh, yes!
Comment by Bill Messersmith on January 25, 2024 at 10:36 am
Hasn’t he read the scriptures? Didn’t Paul fairly well instruct the Corinthians about the table!
Comment by Pem Schaeffer on January 26, 2024 at 7:53 pm
Belonged to a UCC Church for 6 years; we joined when we arrived in Maine. Our daughter was married there.
They lost us when the Minister could not ask for God’s Blessing on “the President” once W was elected. Then when a pivotal vote was coming up on Late Term Abortion (remember that term?), he said in a sermon that no matter what he thought on the issue, he could not “interfere in the relationship between a woman and her Doctor.” I thought that was the absolute worst cop-out ever. Spiritual advisor? Huh!
Then the weekly newsletter included a promo for the Vagina Monologues performance upcoming on the nearby college campus.
As I see it, they got what they wanted. They flushed away all those who disagreed with them.
Comment by Tony Heine on January 27, 2024 at 8:36 am
Mark,
Congrats on your retcon promotion to dark ops agent!
Concerning Christian Nationalism, you correctly state that this term is now used to “describe almost any appearance of traditional or conservative religion in public life.”
I, and many other Christians, have seen the myth of the religiously neutral state crumble. We watched the shift from Positive World to Negative World happen without a true Neutral World as described by Aaron M. Renn.
Because of this, orthodox Christians are not wrong to embrace a movement that seeks to return our public life, our laws and community values, to something closer to a Biblical standard. This would be a return, not to a medieval century when popes could boss emperors, but to just a few decades back when then Senator Obama could say “our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition,” and not be labeled a right-wing extremist.
As others have said, there will always be a god of the system; it is not a matter of whether, but of which. I desire and pray for our Heavenly Father to be our God, and not Allah, our bellies, the state, nor the demos. These false gods are not smashed at the ballot box or with the sword, but by the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Christian Nationalism seeks answers to an important question: Once a Christian has political power, how does he rule? The answers can vary and will have varying degrees of success, given the fallen nature of men and their institutions. But there is one answer that is unacceptable, and that is to rule as if God wasn’t God, as if He didn’t care what the laws of a nation were.
The law is a teacher, whether it is the Law of God or some positivist version. We are living in the culture trained up by a law written by false gods. Traditional, conservative Christians are horrified at the fruit of this culture.
For this reason, Mark, I think you should embrace the accusation of being a Christian Nationalist. To riff on Milton Friedman, all Christians who want to see their fellow countrymen embrace the Gospel and glorify God can say without shame: “We are all Christian Nationalists now.”
Comment by Jeffrey L. Crisp on January 28, 2024 at 4:03 pm
The disconnect here is so large that it amazes me that mainline leaders who should know better have no clue about it. The mainlines have gone from religious orthodoxy to religious diversity, yet we are told by our mainline leaders that political diversity is unacceptable in any form, without any self-awareness on their part how that comes across as being very bigoted.
Comment by Diane on February 1, 2024 at 11:11 pm
The UCC has moved on from Salem…the crazy evangelicals whose theocracy matched a bible verse with every law, that had them “seeing” imagined demons residing everywhere. Today’s evangelicals are no better. Thanks be for the UCC!
Comment by Mike Butler on December 19, 2024 at 3:58 am
Mark,
I read the book and I agree with both you and him. You do steeple jacking very well and it is your job. I would rather call it institutional seige, but instead of doing it for the right you have done it for the left.
Your a professional, the end. So I will not put a whole lot of weight on that “left” accusation. This is not about left or right to you, but the top vs others at bottom. I think you were hired as a plant by New York to divide the mainline denomination. In the intel business you would be a provocateur, a plant and part of a false flag operation to divide the majority, so the minority got what they want. And sir they need to give you a raise. You and your insurgents are good. You are solely responsible for the division and splits in most of the mainline denominations, working through Higher Education.
You are NOT A REALIST. Not in the least bit. I am a realist in International Relations, you are a IDEALIST NEO CON. As you know, but your readers are ignorant of, a neocon is a progressive Neo Liberal like Reagan. An idealist on meth driven by Military Oil Industry. You sir are a NEO CON.
Interesting. In the United Methodist Split, the divide is along the power nodes within the USA today. Before Civil War it was Virginia (Agri) and New York (industrial giants). Post Civil war, it is New York Industrial Giants (INTERNATIONAL BANKERS) and TEXAS or the Military Oil Industry. Your a neocon. A neoliberal who wants to export democracy by any means. As you know, the typical Neocon has no values, they only seek to engineer consent and expand the self interests of the US abroad by any means.
My point is the TEXAS Neocons and NYC Neoliberals are two cheeks on the same butt of Uncle Sam. I am a realist, not a nationalist. I do not share your idealism. Nor do I share your means of religious counterinsurgency with the United Methodist Church. You successfully used toxic sex politics/NGO’s as a wedge or leftist instigator to get power/wealth. You were the right instigator driving that wedge in the name of democracy. For the white 1 percenters who would never allow black Africans to dominate our governing body. Just like the State Department is doing starting the new Ukrainian Orthodox church linked to our Empires religious asset.
You got pride filled traditionalist victim herd to surrender their majority status w Africas rise and our demise. You got them to piss it away in a secret meeting w A BP OIL GUY, all in the name of democracy.
Sir, I applaud your skills. As a clergy I guess I could hold some ill feelings, but the powerful do what they want and the weak accept what they must. Sure you heard that before. As a neocon, just ends justifies any means necessary. Congrats. You were able to subdue and suppress those Africans and now they will be killing each other as we extract oil from Nigeria and use missionaries as assets. Five star performance.