New Video Exposes the IRD

By Steven D. Martin
Fri Mar 16, 2007 at 12:31:49 PM EST

For a long time I've noticed the destructive work of the IRD, and have long been aware that they were much despised and even feared by UM church leadership. But it seemed far off; I believed it was someone else's problem. I first recognized the divisive work of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) taking root in the United Methodist churches in my part of the country, a mostly rural area couched between the Appalachian and Cumberland mountain ranges of East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, at my Annual Conference session last June at Lake Junaluska, NC. When I wrote about my experience here at Talk to Action, ("A Sinister New Wind ") IRD staff attempted to intimidate me. That was when I decided it was my problem, and it was time to take action.