AFA Journal: Considering that the mainlines have been on a path away from orthodoxy for more than 40 years, do you ever feel that IRD is a voice crying in the wilderness, that no one is listening?
Mark Tooley: No! God clearly has preserved a strong voice of orthodoxy and renewal within all the mainline denominations. We should be careful not to conflate the views of church elites with the views of all church members. They are part of the Body of Christ. None of us has the liberty to write off any part of the Body of Christ, no matter how troubled.
In a more temporal sense, the mainliners still bring a powerful history and legacy to American Christianity from which modern evangelicals can and should learn. As we see from distressing current evangelical trends, doctrine, church structure and appreciation for church history are vital for strong churches.
Interesting article. Mark Tooley’s comments point to a deeper, more thoughtful side than he shows in his weekly IRD e-mail messages.
I’ve been reading those messages for the past 4 months. Much of what Tooley writes could as easily have come from a purely secular politician. He pushes the same buttons: Unrestricted Big Government! Welfare State! Higher taxes! Giddy Leftists! Higher taxes! Misguided Lib’ral busybodies! Higher taxes! Black helicopters! Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!
Tooley thus lends credence to critics who assert that the IRD exists mainly to advance a right-wing political agenda.
Reading Tooley’s e-mails, you might think the IRD was simply another affinity group (like the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, the Club for Growth, the Federalist Society, Young Americans for Freedom, or Latvians for Lower Taxes) organizing its particular constituency for the common political cause. We should resist mainline churches’ leftist political and social agenda, he seems to suggest, to help shift the balance of power in conventional secular politics.
Indeed, you might infer from his messages (which always climax in a fundraising appeal) that one of the best reasons for supporting the IRD is to avoid higher taxes: i.e., that the IRD’s niche voice, constituency, and expertise make it a particularly cost-effective way for me to save on my taxes.
Tooley often sounds more like Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed than like Diane Knippers. His quasi-secular sales pitches dishonor Diane’s vision for the IRD. Nor are they what you’d expect after reading the IRD’s [url=http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=215]founding document[/url] and [url=http://www.theird.org/Page.aspx?pid=216]mission statement[/url].
I hope that going forward we’ll hear more of the thoughtful Tooley and less of the conventional political operative.