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Hate and Discrimination

Far-Right IRD Blasts Church Group for Electing Openly Gay President

When the North Carolina Council of Churches, a coalition composed of mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, selected an openly gay man(link is external) as the body’s new president, right-wing activists jumped on the story in their efforts to foster divisions and anti-gay sentiment among church groups. Seventeen denominations, including (link is external)Episcopal, Lutheran, AME, Roman Catholic, Baptist, Reformed, and Methodist churches, are members of the North Carolina Council of Churches, and President-Elect Stan Kimer promised to make outreach, environmental stewardship, and social justice key parts of his agenda.

“I have a strong belief that as a Christian I'm called to make the world a better place,” Kimer told (link is external)the Charlotte Observer, “I like to spend my time with groups where I can see an impact.”

Now, the far-right Institute on Religion and Democracy(link is external) (IRD) is using Kimer’s election to advance its agenda of splitting Protestant churches by opposing any denomination’s support for LGBT equality.

IRD’s Vice President Alan Wisdom condemned the coalition’s decision to OneNewsNow, saying(link is external), “All major branches of the Christian church -- the Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, the evangelicals, the African-Americans, the historic Protestant denominations for the most part -- agree that God's standard of sexual morality is the marriage of man and woman and that homosexual relationships are not in accord with Christian teaching.” Wisdom also condemned the Metropolitan Community Church, of which Kimer is a member, for its foundational support of gay equality.

The New York Times reports (link is external)that the IRD opposes women’s and gay rights, and leads “traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders.” The IRD has ties (link is external)to ultraconservative organizations including Concerned Women For America’s Beverly LaHaye Institute(link is external), the anti-immigrant group Numbers USA(link is external), the American Enterprise Institute(link is external), the Heritage Foundation(link is external), Patrick Henry College(link is external) and The Weekly Standard(link is external), and receives (link is external)its funding from the right wing Scaife(link is external), Bradley(link is external), Olin(link is external), and Ahmanson (link is external)Foundations.

Reverend Kapya Kaoma of Political Research Associates reported (link is external)on how IRD mobilizes church groups in Africa to viciously oppose rights for gays and lesbians and to resist mainline Protestant denominations. In “Globalizing the Culture Wars: U.S. Conservatives, African Churches, and Homophobia,” Rev. Kaoma writes that the IRD encourages anti-gay congregations based in Africa to launch missions in North America as “part of a long-term, deliberate, and successful strategy to weaken and split U.S. mainline denominations, block their powerful progressive social witness promoting social and economic justice, and promote social and economic conservatism in the United States.”