What does an El Paso church have to do with the rightwing echo machine?

The marriage of the Republican party to theocracy is no accident.

The United Methodist and other mainline Protestant churches are the targets of a continuing, orchestrated attack by determined right-wing ideologues who use CIA-style propaganda methods to sow dissention and distrust, all in pursuit of a radical political agenda.

The leader of this attack is an organization called the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a pseudo-religious think-tank that carries out the goals of its secular funders that are opposed to the churches' historic social witness.

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Similar to the strategy employed against the Southern Baptists, the political right seeks to gain top leadership positions in the church by spreading misleading information and incendiary allegations against organizations and individuals. These groups employ the propaganda method of "wedge issues" like abortion and homosexuality to cause confusion, dissension and division. Mr. Howell persuasively demonstrates that the IRD and other self-proclaimed "renewal groups" are uninterested in genuine dialogue, desiring only to impose their belief systems on the target churches.

Who is funding IRD?

A major portion of IRD's funding, from its inception, has come from right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

What about Scaife's 'family values'? He's in the middle of a bitter divorce where his wife claims infidelity.

Here is real fallout from rightwing manipulation.

Congregants at Pro-Cathedral of St. Clement's Episcopal Church, one of the city's oldest places of worship with hundreds of members and more than a dozen ministries, is leaving the Episcopal Church to carry on with theological doctrines members said no longer fit those of its former denomination.

The church recorded a 460-41 vote from its congregation Sunday to dissolve its relationship with the Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande as well as Episcopal Church USA. It will remain part of the Anglican Communion Network.

More here and here.