IRD/Good News: How the right wing targets United Methodist women

Church & Scaife, Part II

by Andrew J. Weaver, JoAnn Yoon Fukumoto, Mary A. Weathers and Fred W. Kandeler

For the past two years, Media Transparency and the Boston Wesleyan Association have published research on a steady stream of attacks against the United Methodist Church (UMC) and other mainline American denominations carried out by conservative philanthropy sponsored institutions and people.

The primary actor in this unethical and mendacious attack is the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a political "think tank" that operates more like a shark in a fish tank as it attempts to undermine mainline Protestant ministries to form an unholy alliance with far-right politics.