NCC leader’s strange tack
The Presbyterian Layman January/February 2001 Volume 34, Number 1, January 1, 2001
During five terms in Congress, Robert Edgar was considered an astute Democrat politician. He still might be in office if he had not become overly ambitious and tried to unseat Pennsylvania’s Republican Sen. Arlen Specter.
But for Edgar, there was life after Congress. A Methodist minister, he was named president of the troubled Claremont School in Theology. By all reports, Edgar was enormously effective in financially rehabilitating a seminary that had been rocked by two major embezzlements.
Then the National Council of Churches summoned Edgar to repair an organization that had wasted millions of dollars and teetered on the edge of bankruptcy. Under Edgar and a mandate by the NCC General Assembly, the ecumenical body has prolonged its life long enough to project a break-even budget for the first six months of 2001.
But there’s a big if. The NCC must raise money at a record pace from its own members, half of whom pay no dues at all. And the ones that do not pay dues – including Orthodox denominations – are the ones that hold to a more conservative theology. Obviously, Edgar sought to improve relations with the non-dues-paying members through his recent efforts to align more closely with evangelicals, Pentecostals and Roman Catholics.
As a sign of the breadth of his ecumenical commitment, Edgar joined representatives of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Roman Catholics and the Southern Baptists in signing a “Declaration on Marriage,” a thoughtfully crafted statement that urges Christians and their congregations to work to strengthen marriages.
All of that seemed to make a lot of sense until the moment that Edgar did something that made no sense at all. He retracted his signature from the marriage declaration. He said he did so because he personally favors gay unions. He apologized to the NCC’s General Assembly for signing the marriage statement in the first place.
But, the marriage statement had nothing to say about gay unions. It simply called on Christians and their congregations to shore up traditional marriages between a man and a woman. Of the 36 member denominations in the NCC, only the United Church of Christ officially sanctions gay unions. One of the most outspoken defenders of gay unions is Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert, whose own denomination voted 2-1 to prohibit them. Twice, the NCC has voted against admitting the nation’s largest gay denomination, Metropolitan Community Churches, into the organization.
In effect, Edgar apologized for what has been NCC policy. His strategy seems unusual considering the good will that is necessary to raise enough money to keep the NCC afloat.