Report Exposes NCC's 'Growing Non-Church Constituency'
by Jim Brown
January 11, 2007
(AgapePress) - - A new report says the National Council of Churches (NCC) is being propped up financially by secular foundations and other non-church organizations. At least two members of the clergy who were present at a news conference touting that report suggest that may be one reason why the NCC appears to have abandoned its original mission.
The report -- titled "Strange Yokefellows: The National Council of Churches and its Growing Non-Church Constituency" -- released by the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy highlights the National Council of Churches' growing dependence on liberal groups for funding and support. At a news conference at the National Press Club on Wednesday, IRD spokesman John Lomperis noted the NCC receives large amounts of funding from non-church entities that promote liberal social and political causes, such as same-sex "marriage."
Lomperis, co-author of the report, shared his observations of NCC board meetings he has attended over the last three years. At those meetings, he says, he was "surprised" to hear talk of the Council receiving and pursuing grants from such entities as MoveOn.org, the National Education Association, the Ford Foundation, and the philanthropies of billionaires George Soros and Ted Turner -- both of whom, he pointed out, are avowed atheists.
"At the NCC's Spring 2004 board meeting," Lomperis added, "no one expressed any disagreement or even words of caution when one board member exhorted the Council to actually alter its programming in order to appeal to such non-church benefactors."
Lomperis says the NCC behaves far more like a partisan political group than a church group that purports to promote Christian unity. Report co-author and IRD vice president Alan Wisdom concurred, saying instead of seeking Christian unity, the NCC under general secretary Bob Edgar has chosen to focus on political advocacy. He accuses the NCC of alienating much of its constituency and other U.S. Christians by receiving and seeking funding from liberal groups that have been described as part of the "shadow Democratic Party."
Lomperis and Wisdom were joined by several other conservative Protestants -- Methodists, Presbyterians, and Orthodox -- at the news conference denouncing the NCC's ties to left-wing political groups. Rev. Keith Almond, a United Methodist pastor, said reaching the unchurched for Christ and preaching the gospel are no longer priorities for many mainline denominations in the Council -- including his own.
According to Almond, the NCC has largely ignored the Great Commission outlined in Matthew 28. "Politics has supplanted theological imperative for the organization," stated Almond, who is president of the Evangelical Fellowship of the Virginia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church.
"The agenda [of the Council] hasn't been to win souls for Christ or to enable mainline Christians to work together for the greater good," the Methodist pastor continued; "it has been to advance a political agenda."
Also speaking at the press conference was an Orthodox priest who echoed Almond's allegations. John Reeves, pastor of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in State College, Pennsylvania, commented that many of the outside funding sources sought by the NCC do not seek to advocate for Christian unity, but instead for "political and social agendas antithetical to orthodox, moral standards -- especially in the areas of abortion and homosexuality."
For that reason, Reeves implored fellow Orthodox Christians to ponder the detrimental effect infusions of money from liberal political groups have had on the agenda of the National Council of Churches. "The position of the Orthodox church is unequivocal," he shared, "that both abortion and homosexual relations distort the image of God in human beings and are contrary to the clear, consistent teachings of our church throughout two millennia of Christian history."
Reeves, who is former director of the Office of Church Growth and Evangelism for the Orthodox Church in America, says Orthodox Christians who are still involved in the NCC should follow the lead of the Antiochian Archdiocese and withdraw from the Council.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
