Once headquarters to most of America’s premier Protestant
denominations, the Interchurch Center on New York’s upper
West Side, was recently rededicated on its 50th anniversary.
Its cornerstone laid by President Eisenhower, and funded by John
D. Rockefeller, Jr., the imposing 19-story structure near
Grant’s Tomb and Columbia University was envisioned as a
“Protestant Vatican” symbolizing the power Mainline
Protestants once wielded over the national religious
culture.
Much of Mainline Protestantism has imploded since 1960, and
many denominational agencies have since quit the building. The
much diminished National Council of Churches (NCC), now
struggling with its financial solvency, remains there as a shell
of its former self, as do some United Methodist agencies. But the
building, in pursuit of occupants, has become
“interfaith.”
“The Interchurch Center is a richly diverse community of
many faiths — Protestant, Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim,
and more,” celebrated NCC chief Michael Kinnamon at the May 26
rededication. “We are theologians, administrators, actuaries,
health professionals, food preparers, building management
specialists, educators, students, communicators and more. We are
a community of many races, ethnicities, languages, nations. The
Interchurch Center family today is almost a perfect
microcosm of God’s world.”
Kinnamon admitted the building never lived up to its dream
as a “Protestant Vatican” but instead became “The God Box” on
Riverside Drive. “Clearly, the fact that we did not
evolve into what our creators expected us to be is part of the
eternal promise that God is not through with us yet, not with
these bricks and mortar, and not with the human beings who work
here,” Kinnamon said.
Certainly Kinnamon put the best possible gloss on the
50-year decline of his own NCC and its member Mainline Protestant
denominations, which have really become more sideline. He noted
that the NCC once occupied “three whole floors of
The Interchurch Center.” He did not mention that the NCC is now
down to a few dozen employees, compared to 700 in 1960. (This
larger figure likely included the NCC’s relief arm, Church World
Service, which is now semi-autonomous.) Originally the building
was to house up to 3,000 church workers. Today, perhaps there are
only a few hundred, with many tenants no longer tied to churches.
The Presbyterians and United Church of Christ, among
others, relocated their headquarters to the hinterlands
years ago. Declining churches, even with the endowments that
follow age and former glory, struggle with Manhattan
expenses, even though the rent is subsidized at the Interchurch
Center.
Of course, President Obama did not participate in this
rededication, nor did apparently any prominent public officials.
Contrast their absence with 1958, when Eisenhower flew in to lay
as the cornerstone a piece of rock from the marketplace of
ancient Corinth, where St. Paul once preached. John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., himself a devout modernist Baptist, made
the block size building site available, provided the
Interchurch Center with a rent-free 99-year lease, and donated
over $2 million towards the over $20 million construction
cost. Rockefeller also funded gothic-spired Riverside Church and
Union Seminary across the street, envisioning the
Morningside Heights neighborhood as the hub of Mainline
Protestant prestige. Also joining the 1958 cornerstone laying was
David Rockefeller, representing his father, and United
Nations chief Charles Malik, a Lebanese Christian. Aging
famed Social Gospel proponent Henry Emerson Fosdick, founder of
Riverside Church, was also present. Thirty thousand spectators
looked on.
Eisenhower laughed as he splashed concrete on his suit
while cementing the cornerstone. He laughed again when the
Methodist minister who introduced the President compared himself
to the forgotten orator preceding Lincoln’s Gettysburg address,
Edward Everett. Eisenhower had earlier walked to the construction
site from Riverside Church, along with 200 choristers, 300
religious leaders, and 37 banners representing each participating
denomination, collectively representing 40 million American
church members. Today, the NCC member churches still claim 40
million, though the U.S. population has doubled since
1958.
Young David Rockefeller hailed the Interchurch Center as a
“bold experiment in interchurch cooperation.” Malik praised the
center for seeking to “draw together the scattered sheep” of
Christian churches. The center, then as now, was described as
“interfaith,” which in 1958 America meant involving many
Christian churches.
“The freedom of a citizen and the freedom of a religious
believer are more than intimately related; they are mutually
dependent,” Eisenhower declared in his speech. “Freedom is the
priceless opportunity for self-discipline.” He quoted George
Washington, who rejoiced “that in this land the light of truth
and reason has triumphed over the power of bigotry and
superstition, and that every person may here worship God
according to the dictates of his own heart.”
Eisenhower contrasted Washington’s hopes with the then
recent bombing of an Atlanta synagogue. “I think we would all
share in the feeling of horror that any person would want to
desecrate the holy place of any religion, be it a chapel, a
cathedral, a mosque, a church or a synagogue,” Ike said.
“Washington believed that national morality could not be
maintained without a firm foundation of religious principle.”
Noting that every President since Washington had taken his oath
on a Bible, Eisenhower surmised: “Clearly, civil and religious
liberties are mutually reinforcing.”
“Our churches have always been sturdy defenders of the
Constitutional and God-given rights of each citizen,” Eisenhower
concluded. “They have sought to protect, to broaden and to
sustain the historic laws of justice and truth and honor which
are the foundations of our community life. May they always be
so.”
Eisenhower’s celebration of civic faith embodied the once
dominant Mainline Protestant ethos, an ethos those denominations
have themselves largely abandoned. Presciently, in 1960, at
the Interchurch Center’s dedication, a German Lutheran
bishop warned against the “institutionalization” of churches,
insisting a beautiful building was “of no avail without true
faith.” Citing the persecution of Christians in communist East
Germany, the bishop urged the building’s tenants “not to shy
away from thinking of the whole church universal.”
The NCC and its member churches infamously ignored the
church universal in subsequent years when they apologized for
persecuting communist regimes in the ostensible pursuit of peace.
“God, grant us the wisdom, vision, generosity and devotion, that
in our use of the high privilege here given us, we will not fail
humankind or God,” intoned NCC
chief Kinnamon at the rededication, rehashing Henry Emerson
Fosdick’s prayer in 1958.
Arguably, the Interchurch Center’s tenants over the last
half-century have failed both humankind and God.
