Saturday, November 22, 1997

Is there a new,moderate National Council of Churches?

By Mike McManus

WASHINGTON - After years of taking predictable liberal positions, the National Council of Churches of Christ moved closer to the center as its annual General Assembly met last week.

The General Assembly rejected NCCC's proposed policy statement on public education that said "public moneys should be used only for public schools," not in vouchers for nonpublic schools. Every speaker denounced the statement.

"We need to examine experiments, such as the testing of public scholarships for children in inner city situations, those who are most at risk," said a white representative of a mainline Protestant denomination.

Rev. Bennett Smith, president of the Progressive National Baptist Convention, and pastor of St. John Baptist Church in Buffalo, said "Many of our children have been pushed out of the public schools, and called 'drop-outs.' Johnny is not reading - not because he doesn't have the ability to read, but because his teachers are not teaching Johnny to read."

His inner city church has used Sunday School classrooms to open a Christian school that "liberated 120 pupils from the public schools."

Children who were all reading at far below grade level are all now at or far above grade level. They are taught by retired public school teachers. Class sizes are small, and the children are taught with a distinct Christian emphasis.

Therefore, Pastor Smith urged the NCCC to support similar efforts to support "the least, the lost and the left out. I don't think any of us can say it is happening in the public schools."

I felt I was attending a meeting of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), the conservative ecumenical counterpart of the NCCC. Of course, the black denominations in the NCCC are evangelical and more conservative than the United Methodists, Presbyterians and Episcopalians who are the larger and more visible Council members.

Another overlooked conservative element are the 16 Orthodox denominations, who represent half of the NCCC's 34 denominations, though only 5 million of the 52 million people whose churches are under the 48-year-old umbrella. The Orthodox oppose abortion and the ordination of homosexuals.

In fact, in 1992 the Orthodox "suspended" their participation in the National Council of Churches over the homosexual issue. I asked Greek Orthodox Archbishop Iakovos, who is now retired, for details.

"The decision of some Protestant churches including Episcopalians, toproceed with ordaining of homosexuals was an affront to our theology, an obstacle to unity," he told me.

The situation was resolved through the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell, NCCC General Secretary.

"Joan Campbell is an outstanding administrator and church woman, whose stand was always for reconciliation which can only be attained through dialogue," said Iakovos, who served as Archbishop for 37 years and has seen many General Secretaries.

But there is a limit to how much dialogue can be tolerated.

She recalls six years ago tabling the request of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, all of whose clergy are gay or lesbian, to be an observer of the NCCC because the ecumenical group would have "split down the middle with most of the black churches and the orthodox" exiting.

One result of the near-exit of the Orthodox, is that the NCCC undertook a four year study of "ecclesiology" or church doctrine and concluded that its churches only "pay lip service" to their "oneness in Christ." This is partly due to 20 to 50 percent declines of memberships of the mainline churches, to the growth of evangelical churches not in the NCCC and the perceived "ideological agenda" of the Council.

The solution? Remembering that Jesus prayed that his followers "may all be one" the NCCC has decided to reach out to Catholics and evangelicals to "engage the entire breadth of actual Christian communities." Dr. Campbell has already been meeting regularly with NAE President Don Argue and Cardinal William Keeler, past president of the Catholic bishops.

What issue could they cooperate on?

NCCC's new president, Episcopal Bishop Craig Anderson, says "We need to pool our resources and get a better return on our efforts and our money. If we are not to do that, why do we exist? We have half of marriages ending in divorce and many more living together without marriage, undergirding the narcissism of our culture.

"We can develop a new relationship with other denominations around issues of substance, such as the institution of marriage, involving evangelicals, Catholics and the NCCC. If we spoke with a clear voice, how powerful it would be."