From CIA to IRD

Religion | Advocate Mark Tooley knows that 'God often has surprises for us' | Marvin Olasky

James Allen Walker for WORLD

When Mark Tooley's opponents don't know how to refute his precisely tooled arguments, their last refuge is his patriotism. He joined the CIA out of college during the last years of the Cold War to fight that era's evil empire, so one attack headline from a leftist publication in 1996 read, "Covert ops, Christian-style—former CIA operative Tooley now works for the religious right."

Well, not exactly the religious right: The Hartford Courant in 2001 described the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), which Tooley now heads, as "the more intellectual, sherry-sipping, mainstream 'conservative' voice of Protestantism . . . men and women of faith within the traditional Main Line churches who think that transcendence has been replaced by the latest pronouncements on air pollution and tax policy."

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October 10, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 20

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