NCC forum explores salvation by politics
The Layman Online, November 11, 1999
CLEVELAND – “Most of us know that Christians should keep their distance from the ‘evil empire,'” said National Council of Churches leader, Jay Lintner, “but we also know that we are called to save the world.” For Lintner, who is the council’s associate general secretary for public policy, saving the world means politics.
Litner moderated a forum at the NCC’s 50th anniversary meeting titled “Campaign 2000” in which he invited four of his colleagues to discuss “how we can make an impact on the coming elections.” A recurring theme throughout the two-hour meeting was the need to do away with the Republican majority in Congress.
Learning the limits
Rev. Oliver Thomas, NCC’s special counsel for religious liberty, reviewed current IRS restrictions on political activities by religious groups. Churches have a right to engage in partisan politics, he said, but “if you do that, you’re going to do it on your own nickel.” Thomas urged forum participants to learn exactly where the IRS line is drawn as they work to influence the next election. The focus, he suggested, must be on issues, not candidates.
Thomas emphasized the fact that the year 2000 is a redistricting year which will be “pivotal” in determining the composition of the Congress. He suggested that churches undertake activities to ensure full public participation in the national census, followed by a voter registration campaign.
Voter registration
Rev. Archie LeMone, Associate Director of the NCC’s Washington Office, picked up on Thomas’ voter registration recommendation and offered specific strategies. The United States has developed “a decidedly urban population” which has clear political implications, said LeMone. He suggested that aggressive voter registration in these high density areas would be very important to those who support liberal causes.
LeMone said that when encouraging people to sign up it is important to remember that they operate out of self-interest. Recognize what their issues are, he said, and build your registration efforts on those issues.
Speaking the language
Rev. Felix Carrion, associate for multiracial, multicultural church empowerment in the United Church of Christ, talked about the growing importance of Hispanic voters. “Over 76 percent of the Latino vote went to Bill Clinton,” he said. “That is why you hear the Bush brothers speaking a lot more Spanish.”
Carrion said that the United Church of Christ is working hard to help Latino churches “see this as an empowerment issue.” His office has a mandate, he said, to help Latino people “express their faith politically.” Carrion said he finds there is a lot of suspicion among Latinos about mixing faith and politics and that as a cultural group their political activism is not as advanced as among African Americans. “We have to work on this theologically,” he said.
Rev. Welton Gaddy,
Executive Director of the Interfaith AllianceThe Interfaith Alliance
The forum’s centerpiece was its final speaker, Rev. Welton Gaddy, Executive Director of the Interfaith Alliance. In his introduction of Gaddy, Jay Lintner lauded the Interfaith Alliance for having jumped ahead of most liberal church movements in its preparations for Campaign 2000.
Gaddy spoke with a sense of urgency. Recent opinion polls reveal that religion will be one of the top five issues in the year 2000, he said. “No campaign in recent memory will include as much religious language as the one we are embarking on now,” he said. “It is difficult to know whether the candidates are running for the office of president or for the holy person of the year.”
Religion is a problem
Gaddy said one might assume the Interfaith Alliance would be pleased that, according to the polls, 60 percent to 80 percent of the people believe that religion holds the answer to the nation’s problems. That would be a false assumption, he said, for “there are problems with that religious rhetoric.”
Gaddy said that “the full-moon behavior of Congress” in its decision to affirm the Ten Commandments was a case in point. The presumption of a state religion flowed through much of the rhetoric, said Gaddy, and this presumption is dangerous to religious liberty. Gaddy did not specify what he meant by a state religion.
Civility as an election strategy
Gaddy announced that the Interfaith Alliance [an organization that was launched with a $25,000 contribution from the Democratic Party’s campaign committee] has started a pre-election program that is “congregationally based and faith laced every step of the way.” The essence of the program, he said, is a commitment to “civility” and to “faithful decisions” during the coming elections.
Interfaith Alliance discussion
group at NCC forum. Rev. Welton Gaddy,
shown in center of group.”We have formed a civility component to our election strategy,” he said. The Interfaith Alliance will conduct a campaign to discourage the distribution of voter guides produced by the “religious right,” but they will encourage distribution of statements by mainline denominations that relate to various campaign issues. Gaddy described his Interfaith Alliance material “voter education,” but he termed guides distributed by the Christian Coalition “voter indoctrination.”
Faithful decision weekend
Gaddy said that the Interfaith Alliance will name a weekend in October the “faithful decision weekend” and ask participating congregations to make use of materials produced by the Alliance’s Washington office on this pre-election occasion.
As the forum drew to a close, Lintner distributed papers describing 12 issues that he said the National Council of Churches would like to see addressed during the campaign. The issues include: third world debt cancellation, child poverty, domestic hunger, universal health care, guns and violence, affirmative action, rights of immigrants and refugees, religion and public schools, campaign finance reform, environment, comprehensive test ban treaty, and financial support for the United Nations.