While I know that everyone with a thorn-in-their-craw tend to be a bit biased, here is a website/blog I just discoverd called Talk to Action: Reclaiming Citizenship, History, and Faith. There is a whole lot of stuff on the website about the IRD (Institute on Religion and Democracy).
I remember reading about the IRD years ago in a Christianity Today article entitled, “Turning the Mainline Around.” The IRD not only works in Washington to return American back to its ideas of a Christian and biblical government, it realizes that one of the primary ways of doing just that is through religions institutions. Within the IRD, there are five mainline denominational “communities” that work to, “…give flesh to the IRD’s mission of working to reform churches’ social witness, in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings, thereby contributing to the renewal of democratic society at home and abroad…” The IRD works with the “reformers” within the Episcopal Church and the four other mainline denominations. Look at what has happened to the Southern Baptist Convention over the last 30 years to see the desired outcome of the IRD with regard to the other mainline denominations.
So, anyway, the website that I came across has a section entitled, “The Shadow-War: the battle for mainstream faith.” The purposes, it seems, is to report on what is happening with the IRD as they fight to “reform” what they perceive as the heretical mainline denominations.
Well, I just thought it interesting. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I know that the published goals of the IRD suggest a leaning towards doing whatever they can to achieve their goals – either bring mainline denominations into line with their own “right” social, political, and theological beliefs or to see that those denominations are so discredited that they will not be able to stand in the way of the IRD achieving their goals in the social and political spheres.