January 2007 UCCtruths.com Archive

This is a story I really wanted to avoid but the reality is that questions about Presidential candidate Barack Obama's religious background keep coming up in the media. For the United Church of Christ, it's the elephant in the room.

To it's credit, the UCC isn't grandstanding on Obama's membership with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago while media outlets absurdly speculate about his attendance at a Muslim school in Indonesia - when he was a little kid.

First, Obama doesn't exactly come off as a religious zealot and he certainly does not come off as someone driven by a religious agenda - so why are questions coming up about his faith?

Secondly, he seems like a decent guy... a "nice guy". While he's still a rookie Senator, he has plenty of positions on the record that someone could legitimately challenge or question... so why should his faith mean anything?

Lastly, lets not forget the last time a UCC Presidential candidate's faith was questioned. Howard Dean, another Presidential candidate who was hardly a religious icon, was creamed in the media when he mixed up Old Testament books with the New Testament books. Although the incident demonstrated Dean's lack of knowledge about the Bible, it hardly illuminated anyone to his qualifications as President.

Obama said he was drawn to Christ after college while working with black churches on inner-city projects. Soon he knelt "beneath the cross" at one of them, he said in a recent speech, and "embraced Christ." If he were Muslim, this act alone would be punishable by death.

Trouble is, Obama embraced more than Christ when he answered the altar call 20 years ago at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Southside Chicago. The 8,000-member church describes itself as "unashamedly black" and holds classes in "African-centered Bible study." He also pledged to honor something called the "Black Value System," which is a code of nonbiblical ethics written by blacks for blacks.

This is what should give American voters pause.

According to its Web site, Trinity puts the "black community" first. Black members are encouraged to pursue education and skills exclusively to advance their community, and allocate their money exclusively to support "black institutions" and black leaders.

In short, it preaches from the gospel of blackness and black power. There's little room for white Christians at Obama's church. It disavows the pursuit of "middleclassness" — code for whiteness — arguing that middleclassness is a conspiracy by white leaders to keep talented African-Americans "captives."

The problem is that the editorial doesn't connect the belief system at Trinity UCC to Obama. As a Presidential candidate, Obama certainly exposes himself to questions about his beliefs, but shouldn't he be judged by what he says and how he acts?

We might as well accept it now that we will see more mistakes like this in the media as pundits try to piece together what Obama's belief system. To draw any conclusions about Obama based on his membership at Trinity UCC would be a huge mistake. As much as it disturbs the national offices of the UCC, the membership of the church isn't as monolithically liberal as our leaders portray us to be in the media. From Wikipedia:

In essence, it would be premature to attach the values of a single church or our national leaders on Obama.

Lobbying reform bill could force the UCC and other religious institutions to disclose backers

A proposed Senate "Lobbying Reform" bill would compel grassroots organizations that pressure Congress on issues ~including religious institutions~ to disclose their financial backers. From Bloomberg:

A provision in legislation in the Senate would require financial disclosure from lobbying groups, often backed by companies, religious organizations or industry groups, that represent themselves as grassroots organizations to pressure Congress on issues.

Christian groups say the measure would block their efforts to pressure lawmakers on abortion, gay marriage and other moral issues such as embryonic stem-cell research. The ACLU says it would chill ``core political speech,'' and the National Association of Manufacturers agrees.

``The Democrats and a few Republicans are trying now, very, very quickly to insulate themselves from the public and to do it by muzzling people like us,'' Dobson said on the Jan. 10 edition of his daily ``Focus on the Family'' radio broadcast.

Proponents say the measure is necessary so citizens can know who is behind various lobbying campaigns.

``The idea is to identify and uncover attempts by special interests to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on public relations campaigns that look like grassroots efforts,'' said Celia Wexler, vice president for advocacy at Common Cause, which is backing the provision.

A vote on the measure may come as soon as today.

``We call those groups `Astroturf' because they don't really have members, they just have money to be able to whip up interest,'' said Gary Kalman, a lobbyist with U.S. Public Interest Research Group in Washington.

This wouldn't just effect conservative groups like Dobson's. In 2003, the United Church of Christ participated in an 'astroturf' campaign against WorldCom and was featured in a Washington Post article. Last week, an IRD report disclosed that a majority of NCC funding comes from partisan foundations.

It's sad when it takes a law to force religious institutions to do what they should be doing voluntarily as a matter of ethics.

Update from Washington Post: Bob Edgar gets cocky at IRD news conference: "I was brought in to do three things: raise money, raise money and raise money. Thank you for highlighting that secular as well as religious organizations now recognize the importance of the National Council of Churches."

IRD vs. NCC

Report: Is the National Council of Churches still fundamentally "a community of Christian communions"?

The Institute on Religion and Democracy, the conservative religio-political watchdog group, has released a report detailing the funding sources for the National Council of Churches. The report details how actual financial contributions from member churches has declined while the shortfall has been made up by non-religious foundations with clear political motives. The report is significant since the National Council of Churches and it's leadership has not been transparent at all about the sources of funding it receives. From the executive summary of the report:

For 25 years the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) has questioned whether the NCC truly speaks for the 45 million believers in its 35 member denominations. The council's uniformly liberal positions have not corresponded to the moderate and conservative views of most active church members.

Inevitably, the political alienation between the NCC and its claimed constituency begot a financial alienation. Gifts from member denominations dropped through the 1980s and 1990s. By 1999 the NCC was in desperate financial straits. Amidst multi-million dollar debt, unsustainable deficit spending, and open talk of the council's possible dissolution, the NCC brought in a new general secretary, the Rev. Dr. Robert Edgar.

Edgar has been widely credited with rescuing the dying church council from collapse. But the NCC's fiscal stabilization has not resulted from a renewed surge of support among member denominations committed to Christian unity. In fact, those gifts have continued to decline, from $2.9 million in fiscal year 2000-2001 to $1.75 million in 2004-2005—a drop of 40 percent in four years.

Instead the council was saved by other means-means that have brought about a little-noticed transformation in the NCC's identity. First, Edgar granted financial and administrative independence to the NCC-affiliated Church World Service relief agency. Then he sharply trimmed expenses and staffing in what remained of the council. Most important, Edgar has pursued new income from non-church sources. The NCC's "other" income has grown from $800,000 in 2000-2001 to $2.9 million in 2004-2005-a more than threefold increase.

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The NCC has also sought and received funding from secular foundations and other non-church organizations. In fact, in the fiscal year ending June 2005, it received $1.76 million from such organizations. This total surpassed the $1.75 million that year from member communions, signaling a radical new development in the council's history.

In analyzing the council's financial statements, we found a number of surprising funding sources for a church group that has as its primary purpose seeking Christian unity. Among those institutions contributing at least $50,000 to the NCC in 2004-2005, ten of the sixteen were non-church bodies. These included:

$344,514 from the National Religious Partnership for the Environment
$300,000 from the Knight Foundation
$225,000 from the Tides Foundation
$150,000 from the Ford Foundation
$141,450 from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation
$100,000 from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund
$85,000 from the AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons)
$80,000 from the Wyss Foundation
$60,000 from the Sierra Club
$50,000 from the Connect US Network

These gifts are far greater than the donations that the NCC receives from most of its member denominations. They suggest, for instance, that the council is more dependent financially upon the Ford Foundation than upon 32 of its 35 member denominations.

For years, the National Council of Churches and leaders of Protestant denominations have attacked the Institute on Religion and Democracy as being part of a right-wing conspiracy against mainline churches. UCC President John Thomas last year called the Institute on Religion and Democracy "a sophisticated 'inside the beltway' organization well funded by conservative foundations and closely aligned with a neo-conservative political agenda" and "encourages grass roots dissenting movements within denominations using classic political organizing around 'wedge issues,' issues such as gay marriage or ordination, or Middle East policy." As we mentioned last June, the IRD is hardly "well funded". According to GuideStar.org, which provides financial information on 1.5 million non-profit organizations, the "well funded" Institute on Religion & Democracy generated $1.1 million in contributions in 2004 (the most recent IRS 990 form available online). Contributions to the "well funded" IRD equate to less than 10% of the UCC's OCWM basic support for the same year and less than 1% of all mainline churches combined. More from the report:

It is curious, in light of the NCC's own funding and programmatic partnerships, that the council has faulted the IRD for receiving support from conservative foundations. One wonders if NCC leaders would be willing to subject their own funding to similar scrutiny.

It should be noted that there are some important differences between the NCC and the IRD:

The NCC is a church body, supposedly focused on achieving unity among all Christian churches and believers in the United States. The IRD is a parachurch group devoted to advancing a particular set of convictions about democracy and Christian faith.
The NCC receives very few donations directly from individual church members—most of whom would not support its one-sided political focus. The IRD receives most of its funding from church members who know and support the IRD's theological and political positions.
The NCC lobbies for and against legislation on dozens of different issues every year. By contrast, it is rare that the IRD takes positions on specific pieces of legislation.
In its lobbying, the NCC claims to speak for "the churches." The IRD has never claimed to speak for anyone other than its own friends and supporters.
The NCC and its allies have been trying to influence the outcome of elections. The IRD avoids any activity that would imply endorsement or opposition to particular candidates or parties.

We should be clear that there is no necessary sin in a Christian organization—the NCC, the IRD, or the Salvation Army—accepting contributions from or forming alliances with persons or groups who may not themselves be Christians. The problems come when the non-church funding and alliances loom so large that they cannot help but change the nature of a Christian organization. Then serious questions arise: Are the non-church funders and allies determining the programs and positions of the Christian organization? Or are organization leaders reshaping their programs to fit the priorities of the funders and allies?

These sorts of questions have surfaced within NCC circles on at least four occasions in recent years—without receiving a clear answer. So the questions remain open: Is the NCC still fundamentally "a community of Christian communions"?

Regardless of your opinion of the IRD or the NCC, the report raises serious questions about the National Council of Churches and it's sources of funding. Bob Edgar, like the UCC's John Thomas, doesn't like to have his motives questioned and will undoubtedly respond by claiming a right-wing conspiracy instead of actually explaining why the National Council of Churches hasn't been more transparent about it's sources of funding. In September, 2005, the United Methodist Church (Edgar's own church and the largest member of the National Council of Churches) sent a "letter of concern" to the NCC over the departure of the Antiochian Orthodox Church and called for “immediate steps to understand” why the Orthodox church left the NCC. In the same letter, the United Methodist Church also expressed it's "disdain" over a politically loaded fund raising letter that Edgar sent out in June of 2005.

Edgar's initial reaction to the criticism he received from the letter was to suggest a conspiracy by "those who try to dilute our witness and mislead our friends by suggesting that the National Council of Churches is a partisan, left-leaning organization." However, his tune changed after the UMC letter. Thomas Hoyt, then President of the National Council of Churches, said that Edgar now “has acknowledged that the letter was sent from the development office without proper review."

The IRD, on the other hand, has a clear political agenda. Unlike the National Council of Churches, their agenda is transparent and their sources of funding are very public. But the biggest difference between the NCC and the IRD is their constituency. Whether you love them or hate them, the IRD's members voluntarily and directly subscribe to their values and principles. The 45 million members that the NCC claims to represent are so buried under multiple levels of bureaucracy between their local churches, associations, conferences and denomination offices that there is literally no connection between the NCC and it's members. Further, since the NCC claims to speak with a prophetic voice on a range of issues, it has a moral obligation to publicly disclose it's sources of funding and political alliances - but it does not. At a minimum, the IRD report provides a level of transparency that the NCC won't disclose on it's own.

UCC continues to promote media access myth

In a press release today from the National Council of Churches, leaders in the United Church of Christ are again promoting the myth that big media is locking them out:

This really isn't all that surprising. Bob Chase and other UCC leaders have lied continually about the reasons why the television ads were rejected. As we demonstrated back in February, 2005, the ads were not rejected because they "promoted welcoming and inclusion," they were rejected because criticized other churches. In fact, one ad was even accepted. From NBC's response to the FCC:

As the UCC admits, it never requested the Station to air the advertisement at issue, called "Night Club." Instead, in February 2004, the UCC, through its advertising agency, approached the Network with the ad, which portrayed other churches and religions as discriminatory in their refusal to accept people who are African- American, Hispanic, disabled, or gay. The Network concluded that the "Night Club" ad inappropriately suggested that churches other than the UCC are not open to people of diverse races and backgrounds and therefore violated the Network's policy against addressing issues of public controversy through paid commercial advertisements.

Accordingly, the Network refused to air the ad.

In November 2004, the UCC approached the Network a second time with the "Night Club" ad and also offered another commercial announcement. The other commercial, which the Network accepted, contained a positive message asserting only that UCC churches are welcoming and inclusive. The Network again rejected the "Night Club" ad as unacceptable under Network policy, however, and offered suggestions to the UCC for modifying the "Night Club" ad to address the Network's objections. The UCC responded to these offers not by telling the Network to run the acceptable ad or modifying the objectionable ad, but rather by filing the Petition – more than 10 months after the objectionable ad was first presented – against a station to which the ad had not even been offered.

There's also another problem with this press release. Rev. Gerald F. Kicanas, bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tucson states "We represent a vast number of people in this country and it is that voice that needs to be heard." While that might be true for Roman Catholics, the UCC national office does not and can not speak for or represent it's members. While the public debate on media ownership rules is a good one, UCC leaders can't speak for denomination members anyways. It's also a bit absurd for a Roman Catholic Bishop to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church is somehow under-represented in the media.

Moralizing Saddam's Execution

UCC General Minister and President John H. Thomas wrote the following op-ed commentary, in response to the Dec. 30 hanging of Iraq's Saddam Hussein:

The execution was greeted by UCC Prersident John Thomas as one more opportunity to address the world with moral sounding platitudes.

Will the issuance of more moral platitudes become a milestone in addressing a nation struggling to emerge from the justice of Saddam's torture chambers?

Are moral equivalencies over the failings of the US in carrying out justice in the midst of war some kind a milestone in the teaching ministries of the UCC?

Will moralizing over the execution of Saddam become a milestone in drawing attention away from the UCC's failures in addressing Saddam's murderous reign in the past, always willing to call for more time and more talk- with callous indifference to the terrible collateral damage of suffering and death paid by Iraqis?

The milestone so desperately needed in the UCC for this new year was not one more press release filled with carping at the Bush administration under the thin guise of "justice" and "peace", but a radical willingness to address the failures of leadership in our Church to forgo partisan politicking, a moral imagination free from it's own demons of an occupying ideology, and fulfillment of the task of a teaching ministry, both within the church and to the world that rightly discerns the respective roles of Church and State in the world.

Alternative opinion on Damra

The Case of Imam Fawaz Damra in Persecution Perspective

As bombs exploded in front of the Clifton Mosque in Cincinnati shortly before Christmas last year, Imam Fawaz Damra, the spiritual leader of Ohio’s largest mosque, was spending his 30th consecutive day in jail. For nothing, other than his sacrificial love for God and country. He remains there today, far from his beloved family and congregation, awaiting deportation. For nothing, other than ethnic hatred and religious persecution.

Imam Damra was whisked away outside his home while on his way to early morning prayers the day after Thanksgiving 2004 and thrown into a prison in another state.

Why? To ensure that the deep pain of isolation and the cruel punishment of attendant psychological torture would guarantee his compliance with deportation? How does this differ from kidnappers who demand a ransom from their victims? Or from witch-hunters who, having failed to capture actual evil-doers, fabricate them for use as demonized scapegoats for failed policies? Or is this all just another edition of institutionalized madness driven by fear and hatred, the kind that drove half the Chinese population from our shores in the 1880s; massacred hundreds of Native Americans in the 1890s; electrocuted a couple of outspoken Italian immigrants in the 1920s; threw thousands of Americans of Japanese descent into internment camps in the 1940s; lynched countless African-Americans during Jim Crowism; and drove some of our most creative minds and progressive voices into exile and disrepute during those dark days of McCarthyism in the 1950s?

One of those victims of McCarthyism, the great American playwright Arthur Miller, who died during Damra’s persecution, captured the ugliness of the times in his prophetic play, The Crucible, which was cast in the context of the Salem witch trials during which one judge said to the accused and innocent John Proctor: “Your soul is the issue here, Mister, and you will prove its whiteness or you cannot live in a Christian country”. Those words, in essence, are now being directed not only at Imam Damra, but the entire Muslim community in America today.

How else to explain the secret monitoring by government officials of the radiation levels at Muslim businesses, Muslim mosques and even Muslim homes throughout our nation, a state-sponsored implicit indictment of all Muslims ordered by the US President without any authorization or oversight by a court order? How else to explain the sharp rise in hate crimes directed against Muslims and widespread post-9/11 selective prosecution of Muslims? How else to explain the enormous amount of time, energy and money expended by the government to prosecute an innocent – and now exonerated, but still jailed - Muslim professor in Florida? Or the anti-Muslim sentiment commonly expressed by such influential religious figures as Franklin Graham, who unrepentantly called Islam a “very evil and wicked religion”?

It is in this context of active Islamophobia stretching from the White House to Main Street that the official obsession to deport Imam Damra needs to be understood, and resisted. His is not a case of criminal prosecution, but rather religious persecution.

The pound of flesh extracted by those who have tormented him and his family for years does not come without its price for the rest of us. With Damra’s deportation comes an inversion of traditional American values and standards of justice. Historically a haven for victims of religious persecution, America under Bush now actively produces, jails and then deports them. Such moral decay leaves a hole in the soul of any nation under God. It makes a mockery of the last three words of our Pledge of Allegiance.

For us to live up to our high national calling, it is vitally important that we not repeat but rather learn from the mistakes of the past. And that we listen to the prophetic voices of those American heroes who showed us the way out of former national quagmires. One such voice we celebrate every January. Writing from his jail cell in Alabama, Rev. Martin Luther King, another victim of official persecution, said to us then and to us now: “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people”.

That appalling and roaring silence is upon us still. It is the voice of complicity, a silence which all tyrannies relish and rely upon for usurped power. It, not Imam Damra, should be deported from America forever.

A Christian minister given an interfaith peacemaking award by Imam Fawaz Damra during the 2005 Iftar dinner at the Islamic Center of Cleveland.

Obama and the UCC

Lobbying reform bill could force the UCC and other religious institutions to disclose backers

IRD vs. NCC

Report: Is the National Council of Churches still fundamentally "a community of Christian communions"?

UCC continues to promote media access myth

Moralizing Saddam's Execution

Alternative opinion on Damra

The Case of Imam Fawaz Damra in Persecution Perspective

Damra Finally Deported

UCCtruths.com poll, Top Story of the Year: Puerto Rico Conference Leaves

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