Archive: The NCC and the New World Order

by Alan Wisdom

The long-troubled National Council of Churches (NCC) has a new general secretary who speaks of change. The Rev. Joan Brown Campbell has said that she is “very concerned about the ineffectiveness of our public witness.” She looks toward a kinder, gentler NCC, in closer touch with its constituency and its audience. “I am trying very hard as general secretary to bring a more balanced tone to our statements,” Campbell asserts. “I want them to be more pastoral, more rooted in theology.”

Campbell points to “unity” as the focus for NCC theology, which would appear to run counter to the council’s habit of “prophetic” witness. To be prophetic, by current CC standards, means to begin with the premise that social and class conflicts are fundamental and pervasive in American culture and international affairs—a “structural” problem that requires a radical response on behalf of “oppressed” groups. This requires taking clear side in all social and political issues, which necessarily makes a shambles of unity.

Hence, the dilemma: Will Campbell maintain unity as solidarity with the oppressed in the customary divisive, prophetic style? Or will she seek a broader unity of the Church, a true ecumenism—but at the cost of antagonizing the “prophets”, the self-proclaimed champions of the oppressed, who hold powerful positions in her organization?

There may be no better test for the new general secretary than her special project, a series of NCC consultations entitled “Toward a World Made New: The Public Witness of the Churches and the New World Order.” The project made its debut last November. Significantly, the first paper presented by Yale Divinity School Dean Thomas W. Ogletree offered a challenging re-evaluation of the last 30 years of ecumenical social activism.

Ogletree expressed his sympathy with “the central themes of the ecumenical Protestant witness” since the 1960’s: “racial justice, advocacy for the poor, resistance to an unjust war, and opposition to the nuclear arms race.” Nevertheless, he observed, there was a high price to be paid for adopting that agenda: intensified conflicts within NCC member denominations.

The problem, according to the Yale dean, was that the social witness repeatedly “went beyond—and in some respects, counter to—well-founded traditions of social thought in American Christianity.” For example, most U.S. Protestants have believed that our economy, if managed wisely and justly, could provide for all Americans. Likewise, they have “supported American wars out of a basic confidence in America’s positive role in God’s purposes in this world.” But, Ogletree said, increasingly sharp ecumenical criticisms of U.S. capitalism and U.S. military involvements “placed in question the Protestant presumption of America’s basic goodness.”

Ogletree argued for relinking the churches’ social witness to their peoples’ traditions. He asserted that an effective Christian witness must come to grips with “the reigning civilizational ethic of society.” In the U.S. case, that means our churches must draw critically on American ideals such as liberal democracy and a mixed capitalist economy in order to expand their Christian vision of peace and justice. Ogletree was not suggesting a blind blessing upon “Christian America.” He was affirming that “patriotism has by no means lost all legitimacy within a Protestant social witness, nor has it become improper to celebrate the social and political accomplishments of the American people.”

The Yale dean called for change not only in the churches’ message, but also it’s way of advancing that message. He described the clergy activists, starting in the 1960s, who “had a tendency to identify ourselves as individual prophets.” Their goal, he said, “was to gain control of ecclesiastical structures if we could, and use them in order to promote our own views.” These ecumenical leaders have not listened well to other religious voices, according to Ogletree, and they have the greatest difficulty in communicating with evangelicals in their own churches. They pass resolutions on all sorts of topics, presuming that the numbers (in decline) and prestige of their own mainline denominations would guarantee them a wide hearing.

Taking the Advice

Subsequent presentations indicated, however, that powerful sectors of the ecumenical world were not prepared to accept the Yale dean’s advice. Those in attendance—primarily NCC staff and General Board members, as well as denominational staff—received much more enthusiastically the arguments made by the subsequent parade of speakers who claimed to represent oppressed peoples around the world. These speakers stood fast in their deep suspicion of liberal democracy, capitalism, and the entire “reigning civilizational ethic” of this country. The victimizer, of course, is and was the evil West.

Dr. Ninan Koshy, former director of the World Council of Churches’ Commission on International Affairs, identified himself more generally with “the Third World” and “the South.” From that perspective, he viewed President Bush’s announcement of a new world order as a threat: “The message is heard as one of domination, of unipolar hegemony, of increasing dependency of the Third World on the West. It signals that the United States is unashamedly laying down the rules of the world order and is being prepared to enforce them.” Koshy warned against possible “false hopes” in “the wonders of the free market economy and even democratization.”

Professor Thomas Hoyt of Hartford Seminary sketched a vague vision of the ecumenical movement as “a rainbow coalition which surpasses that of Jesse [Jackson’s].” It would join “women, blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans, persons with disabilities,” and others. These would “learn new values of love and sharing” which “may call for a critique and challenge to the economic systems which privilege some and oppress others.”

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin—the epitome of the unreconstructed 1960s clergy activist-delivered the closing summary in fine utopian style. Coffin did not try to focus the NCC’ s concern on a few key issues. Instead he extended Hoyt’s rainbow to include yet another, a trendier oppressed being: “Mother Earth.” He suggested that schoolchildren should “pledge allegiance also ‘to the earth and to all the flora and fauna and human life it supports; one planet indivisible, with clean air, soil and water, economic justice, liberty and peace for all’.”

In addition, Coffin put in a pitch for two revolutionary changes: a redistribution of wealth and an end to all wars. He gave few clues to how these utopian goals might be achieved, except to claim that distinctive Christian doctrines might have to be jettisoned. “What the churches need most to ponder is less their many and differing creeds, more a single ethic of global responsibility” common to all major religions, Coffin contended. The NCC’s speakers knew much better what kind of world order they opposed than the kind of world order they favored. Speakers raged—again and again, often with almost the same words—against President Bush, the United States, and capitalism. The Rev. Dr. Charles Adams of the Progressive Baptist Convention set the tone at the opening worship service: “The President’s New World Order is nothing but the perpetuation of Old World racism, selfishness, hatred and greed.”

Most of the time, there was nobody—at the podium or from the floor—who questioned the repetition of these angry attacks on America. Nobody would directly challenge the anointed spokespersons for oppressed peoples.

Dissent from within

The lone voices of dissent came from the Eastern Orthodox. Most prominent was the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church in America. He had just ended his term as NCC president, and his own church, with four other Orthodox communions, had suspended its participation in the council. At the closing worship service, Kishkovsky spoke directly: “There were at this conference gaps and absences in our consciousness of human suffering and injustice.” The litany of suffering by oppressed peoples seemed selective, limited to the victims of western capitalism and Christianity. “Why is it that 20 million dead under Lenin and Stalin are not part of the litany?” Kishkovsky asked.

The Orthodox leader also made two points in apparent rebuttal of William Sloane Coffin. First, he urged that the churches’ ideal of community be more strongly grounded in a transcendent theology. Second, Kishkovsky insisted that the council clarify that “the Christian vision of justice and God’s kingdom is not the same thing as a political and economic utopia.” He remarked grimly, “The examples of political utopia from our time are images of hell and genocide.” Kishkovsky’s call “to find a way to make the policies of our government, especially our American government, more obedient to the cause of justice” appeared quite modest in comparison to Coffin’s agenda.

When the former NCC president finished speaking, only about one-quarter of the audience clapped vigorously. Another quarter clapped half-heartedly. And fully half of those attending the conference sat stony-faced with hands folded. They hadn’t liked what they’d heard. They were, after all, some of the very people whom Kishkovsky was criticizing for their selective solidarity, their weak theological grounding, and their embrace of false utopias. These were among the activists who, according to Ogletree, had damaged the ecumenical movement by their radical break with the traditions of their churches.

It was very clear that the NCC elite was not ready to change its tune. Too many ecumenical leaders have too much moral capital invested in the “prophetic” mode of social witness to give it up easily. Joan Campbell and others are to be commended for including voices, like Ogletree’s, suggesting healthier ways for the council to make its witness. But if she wants those voices to be heeded, and the NCC truly to get back in touch with its roots in the churches, she and others like her will have to put up more of a fight. At present, neither Joan Campbell nor any other NCC leader has shown a taste for such confrontation.

Alan Wisdom is a senior research associate with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D. C. This is reprinted with permission from Religion & Democracy.