New Clergy Group for Liberals Indicates Effectiveness of Conservatives, Says IRD Leader
by Jody Brown
November 19, 2003
(AgapePress) - A group of liberal Christian leaders have decided to launch their own advocacy group to counter the efforts of similar groups on the conservative side of issues. At least one conservative leader sees the formation of the Clergy Leadership Network as an indication that reform groups in the mainline denominations are doing their job effectively.According to Family News In Focus, the Clergy Leadership Network plans to launch their campaign on Friday in Washington, DC. Members of the new group include two former officers with the National Council of Churches -- Rev. Albert Pennybacker and Rev. Joan Brown Campbell -- and Rev. William Sloane Coffin, an anti-war activist. According to the report, the CLN will "operate from an expressly religious and partisan point of view -- organizing for issues the left holds dear."
Diane Knippers is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a Washington, DC-based group that for two decades has promoted reform in American churches, as well as democracy and religious freedom around the world. She observes that over the last several decades, the "religious left" has employed such church structures as offerings, mission agencies, and prestige to propagate a liberal political agenda.
But she says she is hopeful that the birth of this new organization "means that leaders of the Religious Left are moving toward developing independent voluntary associations for their partisan purposes -- rather than using our churches themselves." The IRD president believes the fact that Christian liberals feel the need for a group such as the CLN indicates that reform groups are being successful in making the churches "less fertile ground for political agendas."
But even though she expresses encouragement at the shift by liberal church leaders to seek an avenue for independent advocacy, Knippers is doubtful that the Clergy Leadership Network will be successful in pushing its agenda.
"I must admit that I don't believe the Clergy Leadership Network will be particularly effective," she says in a printed statement. "In significant ways, it represents a generation that came of age in the 1960s and is trapped by that mindset. I see no evidence that these leaders have the energy or initiative to bring forward creative solutions to 21st-century problems."
Another conservative leader in the nation's capital agrees with Knippers regarding the CLN's potential effectiveness. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, predicts the group will have difficulty getting off the ground.
"When politics tries to permeate the church, they find themselves unsuccessful," Perkins tells Family News In Focus. "It's when the issues that concern the religious community are running parallel to their mission as the church, that's when you find the two joining together and being successful."
Knippers also believes the new group is taking a chance by emphasizing clergy in its name, observing that "clergy have no particular political expertise." By doing so, she says, the Network "risks beginning its life with the taint of arrogant clericalism that will undercut its aims."
