In 1981, IRD was founded by concerned United Methodists and other Christians distressed that denominational and ecumenical officials were openly supporting Marxist causes and opposing democracy and human rights.

from the pen of  it’s President.

“Marxist causes”.  As if the right label is what matters,  and matters more than actually working to support the causes of people struggling against corrupt and cruel state hegemony over their lives.  I remember the nonsense of this group, bad mouthing Methodist missionaries working with people living under brutal oppression in the midst of a political civil war in El Salavador and Nicaragua among other countries in Central America.  For this right wing political group,  anything that “sounds and acts different” from their accommodated stance toward the Bible is “Marxist” or,  today,  “Socialist”.  OPPOSING Democracy and Human rights?  They were opposed to it in the case of Central America and in nearly every other case.  So I continue to “shake my head” at these oblivious pharisees of theological orthodoxy that is,  in the end,  only concerned with  “orthodoxy” if it comes with the stamp of approval of the right wing political establishment.

More of what they actually stand for:
Many church elites, often claiming to speak on our behalf, lobby for abortion rights, homosexual rights, big government, extreme environmentalism, pacifism, and anti-Americanism

Very straight forward, to their credit.  But appalling.  Hear the “standing up” for the state and corporate evils that they cant seem  to recognize in their accommodating support for them? Against “environmentalism” (because , well,  they are told to be ‘agin it”.  NO questioning of the talking points.  Clearly an economic disaster to let massive companies NOT to whatever the hell they want,  even if it means rendering the earth increasingly uninhabitable and unsustainable.  That’ll never happen , they say,  since the earth is God’s creation (translation: God will protect it and humanity can not touch it, in blatant disregard and denial of all science).

And “Anti-Americanism”,  a must for those who worship the state and consider critique of it tantamount to blasphmey.  America is blameless when it follows the dictates of the “truths” that guide the neocon, corporate-controlled,  militaristic , violent suppression of whatever it is that some American companies and tell their political arm to make sure it happens.  THAT America is anathema,  and yet they act as if it’s a part of the God-head. When such pursuits take the place of God,  for those who wander into those idolatries,  they have become the effective god.