Imagine my surprise when the first google link offered was for apprenticeships!

http://www.google.com/search?q=STEEPLEJACKING&sourceid=ie7&rls=com.microsoft:en-US&ie=utf8&oe=utf8
http://www.citb-constructionskills.co.uk/traininglearning/nationalconstructioncollege/courses/apprenticeships/appsteeplejacking.asp

In England, steeplejacking is another word for church based roofing. There is a similar profession in Germany. Lots of cathedrals have places "normal" roofers fear to tread.

Chuck is such a self-parody. He thinks Jesse Jackson is a good politician to partner with. Heh. He thinks the church should take a stand on global warming, but he doesn't think the essentials of the faith are worth defending (mainly because he disagrees with them yet falsely calls himself a Christian).

P.S. I'm not sure how you drew the conclusion that they refuse to criticize their conservative brethren. Unless the tone of his blog has changed a lot, he does it regularly.

Liberals have disrupted Methodist conferences for years and still were treated much more graciously than they deserved. They demonize conservatives for holding views on the basics that defined Christianity from the beginning. If they don't hold those views, that is fine. They are just grossly dishonest to call themselves Christians.

Neil,

I was referring to specific liberal Christians I know. Many of whom have already very likely read your response and turned the other cheek in brotherly love.

I feel very sad that you have to feel so persecuted just because others disagree with you and still call themselves Christians that you have to support a group that goes around destroying congregations it doesn't like.

Sorry if this comment gets on twice - not sure what happened the first time.

My comments were about Currie and his ilk. My apologies if other readers were offended. I don't know their views and wouldn't want to mischaracterize them.

If your comment about "destroying congregations" is about IRD then I don't follow that. I know Currie hates the IRD because they have the audacity to call his denomination on their apostacy. But just check out their site. They are quite reasoned and fair.

Teresa, you don't pull punches with your critiques of the church (which is fine with me most of the time - I don't care for the theology of many of your enemies, either). So please don't expect me to pull any with false teachers like Chuck Currie et al. They are quite religious, but let's just say that Christianity is not their forte'.

Neil,

I don't expect you to pull any punches, and if I did, it would only mean that I haven't been paying attention. :-)

However, the goals of the IRD sound kind of "Inquisitionish" to me. Enforcing religious uniformity in order to achieve political power to support imperialist adventures seems not-so-Christian in the modern sense...although you are right it is very, very traditional.

They share the goals of the Reconstructionist movement, as well as their politics and rhetoric. I don't know how I can be expected to view that as a good thing. Even if the IRD DOESN'T want to impose theocracy and deny liberal "Apostate" Christians citizenship and execute the for prostelatizing, they are doing the work of those who do, and gaining power for those very people.

Hi Teresa,

Did you arrive at those conclusions by reading the <a href="http://www.4simpsons.com/misc/james.htm" rel="nofollow">About IRD</a> page? I've read their publications, web sites and emails for years and they never hinted at the kind of things you describe.

Here's an example of what they criticize: The World Council of Churches now gets a lot of funding from secular liberal political organizations. For an allegedly ecumenical Christian organization that seems odd. Most of the rest of the money comes from denominations whose base have typically not held those views and often don't know that is where there money is going.

They also criticize church leaders who actively reject essentials of the faith (Biblical authority, the substitutionary atonement, Jesus is God, Jesus is the only way, etc.) That seems like fair game to me. It also explains why people like Chuck Currie hyperventilate at the mere mention of this tiny renewal organization with a budget a fraction of the size of the WCC.

Oops - I pasted the wrong link there. If you go to it you'll be really confused, because it is a page I set up for a friend whose brother recently died.

Here's the IRD link - http://www.ird-renew.org/site/pp.asp?c=fvKVLfMVIsG&b=308891

Neil,

The IRD ALSO gets most of it's funding from non-religious sources that fund highly political right-wing groups.

Here's where their funding comes from: http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?174

Interestingly enough, one name that keeps popping up is Paul Weyrich. Many of the foundations that give money to the IRD have also given money to the numerous organizations that Paul Weyrich has founded or co-founded for example, The Heritage Foundation, and the Moral Majority, and the Council for National Policy, which in made up almost entierly of Dominionis and Christian Reconstructionist members included in it's leadsership Tim LaHaye, and (unitl his recent death) R. J.Rushdoony.

And it continues the right-wing irony of publicly accusing the opposition of using tactics that the right-wing is actually guilty of.

Seems as though the IRD is a group funded by politically active organizations bent on giving us a world where ENRON wouldn't be illegal, the Iraq war is a standard of foreign policy and a theocracy runs our lives.

Does the IRD claim to be the World Council of Churches? Look at what the IRD says and does. It speaks for itself. I have no idea where you came up with the Enron reference or the theocracy bit or Iraq, for that matter. Much of what they've done lately is about traditional marriage and getting churches back to a Biblical model.

The IRD serves a useful purpose. For example, the Methodist church was given a valuable building decades ago to use for prevention of alcohol abuse, but instead they are using it for liberal political lobbying. If it weren't for the IRD I would have had no idea they were abusing the original agreement.

Neil,

I'm saying that they SAY their purpose is one thing, but the people funding them have a very different purpose, and the IRD is serving that purpose. As Ralph Reed says stealth is so important to the movement of the religious right.

I agree what the IRD does speaks for iteself. Targeting moderate and liberal churches and disrupting their congregaqtions and clergy speaks for itself. Also, their alliances and entanglements speak for themselves. Almost exclusivly anti-regulation pro-big-business, pro-imperialist, Dominionist and Reconstructionist organizations.

Look at their history, in the Reagan years, they targeted churches that spoke up against the policy of destabalizing democratically elected governments in South and Central America, funding "freedomfighters (AKA death squads) etc. Their actions show that their goal is to stifle moral opposition to Republican policies.

They are an important part of the strategy to create a theocratic plutocracy. Harassing and further marginalizing the religious left is their small part in it.

Their allies ARE the people you claim to oppose as much as I do.