Steven D. Martin’s film on the Institute on Religion and Democracy–Renewal or Ruin–is now available online at talk2.action.org. It’s an easy way to understand this organization, its donors and their campaign against mainline Protestantism.
Talking heads include: Jim Winkler of the General Board of Church and Society of the Methodist Church, Columbia University Professor Randall Balmer, author and pastor Andrew Weaver and someone named Naughton.
A transcript is also available, and it includes this from Frederick Clarkson of talk2action.org:
Every single major denomination is racked from within over a host of issues. Though some of these kinds of things are normal in any institution, particularly democratic institutions where people disagree and agree to disagree. But what if there were an outside agency that was created for the sole purpose of fanning those flames and creating divisions—creating mutual distrust and suspicions and hatreds to the point of people leaving each other, breaking their communions, breaking their covenants apart rather than trying to reconcile their differences or finding ways to live constructively with their differences. If you have an outside organizing agency whose sole purpose is to foment distrust and suspicion and to break organizations apart, well you have the kinds of things that we see in the Presbyterian church and the Episcopal church and the United Church of Christ and the United Methodist church every single day.
The IRD has responded, and Clarkson has analyzed the response. Daily Kos is running an article as well.