The controversy about the current advertising campaign sponsored by the United Church of Christ, (UCC) has been mostly about the odd refusal of CBS and NBC to air the church’s ads. The networks claimed that the ads were “too controversial.” The church and its supporters charge the network with censorship. The ad’s message is quite straightforward: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.” So, its been hard for almost everyone who has actually viewed the ad to see anything controversial about it. But a conservative think tank, that is also the parent organization of a network of conservative dissident factions in the mainline protestant denominations, has found reason for controversy where others could not.

The Association for Church Renewal, (ARC) a project of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, says the UCC should withdraw the ad. While the press release of a seemingly obscure conservative group would seem like a minor footnote in the current controversy over censorship by major television networks, it actually provides a window into an historic struggle that has been playing out in the mainline American Protestant churches for several decades.

“We defend the right of the UCC to communicate its message in mainstream media,” Diane Knippers, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and Vice-Chair of the ACR, explained. “But we believe that this ad is dishonest and insulting to other Christian churches.”

Wow. That’s a serious charge. What does Knippers have to support her charge? Farther down in the press release Knippers states, “Its current ad tries to boost the UCC by maligning all the other churches. It insinuates that the typical American church turns away ethnic minorities, the disabled, and homosexuals, whereas the UCC is uniquely welcoming of all persons.”

So in fact, Knippers has nothing to support the charge. The ad names no other churches, let alone “all of the other churches,” nor does the ad make any claims or insinuations about the “typical American church.” I think it would be fair to say that the ad suggests that while some churches do not welcome all — the UCC does welcome everyone.

Its more than a stretch to say that the UCC is “maligning all the other churches” - in fact it is more like a smear.

As it happens, this attack is of a piece with IRD’s longterm campaign against the progressive social gospel that has animated the mainline churches over much of the past century.

For many years, conservative dissident factions — most prominently in the United Methodist Church, the Episcopal Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA), have been informed and coordinated to a considerable degree by IRD. Founded 20 years ago, IRD was bankrolled by the conservative funders like the foundations controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife, that were, at the time, laying the foundation for the institutions of the conservative movement that now dominate public life. IRD has sought to oppose, neutralize, and overturn the social justice tradition of the mainline Protestant churches — as well as the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. In the 20th century the mainline churches, and these large ecumenical institutions played pivotal roles in advancing the civil rights of African Americans and women and opposing the Vietnam War. In the 1980s, the churches were leaders in opposing, among other things, the policies of the Reagan administration in Central America.

One of the long term strategies of the Right has not just been to encourage the growth of the conservative evangelical churches, it has also been to systematically neutralize and divide the mainline churches and thereby diminish their once powerful voice in public life. These campaigns have had considerable success, and the IRD has played a central role.

Of course, divisions and disagreements are the stuff of any human institution. This is especially true in organizations that have very democratic structures — organizations whos decision making is grounded in reasoned debate. In hierarchical and authoritarian institutions, like today’s Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention, debate and dissent are suppressed. But the mainline denominations, which are steeped in American traditions of congregational forms of governance, are far more democratic. It is the very openness of the democratic polities and judicial systems of these denominations that the Right has exploited to turn them into battle grounds in the culture wars.

A key tactic of antidemocratic movements in history has been to monkey wrench the norms of democratic institutions,not only to thwart the direction of the institution, but to discredit the legitimacy of democratic governance in favor of absolutist doctrines and authoritarian governance. This tactic is often on display when the conservative “renewal” factions in the mainline denominations and the outside agencies that support and inform them, sew internal dissent and generate conflict.

It is fair to say that over the past two decades, the public role of the mainline churches has been significantly diminished. One cannot attribute this solely to the IRD or any of its constituent organizations, but their roles as catlysts, instigators, and resource agencies deserve to be better understood by all who value the role of the mainline churches as bulwarks of moral progress in the areas of civil and human rights.