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A Further Perspective
End of the Mainline
The declining National Council of Churches abandons New York City for shelter in D.C.
The once prestigious and now nearly bankrupt National Council of Churches is quitting its famous New York headquarters built with largesse from John D. Rockefeller, Jr. and whose cornerstone was laid by President Dwight Eisenhower. Down to a handful of staffers, the NCC will consolidate into the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
“It is important that we honor this moment with reverence and respect for the Council’s history as an iconic presence in the beloved ‘God Box,’” explained NCC President Kathryn Lohre in a press release. “It is equally important that we look with hope upon this new chapter in the Council’s life.” Last year, Lohre had told her board that the NCC faced an “ecumenical winter.” Her chilly prophecy is being fulfilled.
Searching for a positive spin, another NCC official declared: “The critical NCC policy work can be coordinated from any location but to be the prophetic ‘voice of the faithful’ on the ground in the places of power, it is best served by establishing our operations in Washington.” It’s not likely that the much-diminished NCC will be making a big political splash on Capitol Hill, where it has long maintained an office in the Methodist Building.
Such demise for the NCC could not have been foreseen in 1960 when the Interchurch Center, once called the “Protestant Vatican on the Hudson,” first opened on the upper west side of Manhattan next to Grant’s Tomb and Columbia University. More specifically the “God Box,” which originally housed dozens of denominational offices, is next door to architecturally magnificent Riverside Church, also built by the Rockefellers, and Union Seminary, collectively representing the once formidable but now faded power of Mainline Protestantism.
At the Interchurch Center’s 1960 dedication, a German Lutheran bishop presciently warned against the “institutionalization” of churches, noting that a beautiful building and organization were of “no avail without true faith.” Initially the NCC occupied four floors of the 19 story, $21 million imposing midrise that overlooks the Hudson River. The Methodists, Presbyterians, American Baptists, and Reformed Church in America, among others, also based their offices there.
His father having recently died, John D. Rockefeller III was present at the dedication to honor the Interchurch Center as the fulfillment of his father’s dream of a new Christianity without denominational distinctions. Although he didn’t then specify it, the Rockefellers also dreamed of a uniformly liberal Protestantism devoted to good works instead of doctrine. The elder Rockefeller donated the land for the Interchurch Center plus over $2.6 million for costs.
Ironically, nearly all the Mainline denominations housed there would begin their nearly 50-year membership decline just a few years later. A sanitized Protestantism without doctrine or distinctions simply became too boring to sustain. In the early 1960s, about one of every six Americans belonged to the seven largest Mainline denominations. Today, it’s one out of every 15.
Likely unable to conceive of such a dramatic spiral, the NCC’s chief pronounced at the Interfaith Center’s 1960 dedication: “It is the prayer of all who worked toward its creation that this will become more than a symbol of the growing spiritual unity of Protestant and Eastern Orthodox Churches in America.” Those days were heady times for the Mainline denominations, who were flush with members, money and influence. Church offices in the God Box then claimed to represent 40 million church members.
About 30,000 attended the Interchurch Center’s cornerstone ceremony in 1958 with President Eisenhower. He marched with 300 religious leaders under banners representing 37 participating denominations. David Rockefeller was present. So too was Charles Malik, the Lebanese Christian president of the United Nations. And Harry Emerson Fosdick, the dean of liberal Protestantism who built Riverside Church, was there also. In his brief speech, Ike condemned the recent bombing of a synagogue in Atlanta. Quoting George Washington, he hailed religious liberty and the importance of religion in sustaining morality.
The mainstream, Mainline Protestantism that Ike, himself a Presbyterian, embodied began its decline into radicalism in the mid 1960s, mostly in reaction to the Vietnam War. No longer moored to a firm theology, groups like the NCC were easily susceptible to take-over by radical activists. And having tied themselves to American culture and modern secularism, they were ever anxious to stay abreast of the latest social and political fad, primarily from the perspective of New York-based elites.
Over the decades, even liberal Protestants tired at least of the expense of maintaining headquarters in New York. The Lutherans, Presbyterians, and United Church of Christ eventually quit the “God Box” for new digs in the Midwest, even as they continued their decline and liberal trajectory.
The NCC, which once prided itself as the chief voice of American Protestantism, never recovered from the 1980s media revelations, led by Sixty Minutes, about its infatuation with Marxist liberation movements around the world. In the 1990s the NCC began to struggle for financial survival. It was temporarily rescued by millions of dollars raised for the Burned Churches Fund that strove to rebuild black churches devastated by arson. Later, its general secretary, former Democratic Congressman Bob Edgar, raised millions of dollars from liberal secular philanthropies to compensate for declining church support. But eventually the philanthropies mostly lost interest, realizing the NCC no longer had political cachet. The NCC’s large relief arm, Church World Service, which receives millions in federal dollars for refugee resettlement, effectively divorced the NCC, knowing it could survive even if its NCC parent could not. Two thirds of the NCC’s member denominations contribute zero or only token support.
In the Methodist Building, the NCC will operate under the shadow of the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, which is even more leftist than the NCC. Thanks to its eastern Orthodox and black church members, the NCC does not advocate homosexual or abortion related issues. Built by Methodist Prohibitionists in the 1920s, the Methodist Building has been the headquarters of Religious Left lobbying in Washington, D.C. for many decades.
Again looking for a rainbow, the NCC’s president explained of their move: “This consolidation will free us from the infrastructure of a bygone era, enabling us to witness more boldly to our visible unity in Christ, and work for justice and peace in today’s rapidly changing ecclesial, ecumenical and inter-religious world.”
More likely, the NCC’s move from New York to Capitol Hill will divorce it even further from most of its church constituents and presage its eventual, quiet death. The arc of the NCC’s story showcases the rise and fall of liberal Protestantism in America. It’s a sad tale but also instructive for the more robust churches of today.
Photo: Creative Commons
About the Author
Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C. and author of Methodism and Politics in the Twentieth Century. You can follow him on Twitter @markdtooley.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (24) | Leave a comment
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Appleby| 3.1.13 @ 6:22AM
Meanwhile, seeing that they have destroyed all the other churches, the liberals are everywhere on TeeVee hoping tht the Catholic church will elect a new Pope who will not be Catholic and will drag our church down the same wide road where their overflowing handbaskets are aleady transporting their own membership. I have never left a denomination (save the Mormons) over theology -- every time it has been due to politics being preached from the pulpit. Canada is largely Muslim nowadays; however, there is a quiet rise in Foursquare congregations whose leadership believes the Church's place is in the trenches with the neighbourhood poor and needy -- not marching and chanting and screaming and bullying the government, but feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, imprisoned and isolated, and preaching the Good News. It's a radical concept. I hope it catches on.
Quartermaster| 3.1.13 @ 7:52AM
The of the Church was given in Matthew 28 and she was never called to "take the world" or even "take this city," but to make disciples of every Nation. The NCC denominations lost sight of that as they were taken over by nonchristians. Even Evangelicals lost sight of that in the 80s and 90s. Many are returning to that mission, realizing that human society can not be redeemed as long as fallen man runs things.
The Foursquare Church, like the other Pentecostal denominations never lost sight of that mission. What you are seeing among the Foursquare has been the normal state of affairs as long as I've been alive. You're just now paying attention.
The Mormon church is not a denomination, but a nonchristian organization.
Denver Todd| 3.2.13 @ 12:19AM
Appleby, whether providing food/clothing/housing/medical care is provided by the state as the leftists see religious focus, or provided by churches in the trenches, both are error. The latter is the newest trend in American Protestantism, running people ragged serving the city while still sacrificing doctrine. True preaching of the word leading to repentance and sanctification, correct administration of the sacraments, and church discipline are the marks of a true church.
aware| 3.1.13 @ 6:33AM
Organized "religion", political domination, and commercial exploitation.....this is the Wine of Babylon.
Jer 51:7
7 Babylon has been a gold cup in the Lord's hands,
a cup that made the whole earth drunk.
The nations drank Babylon's wine,
and it drove them all mad.
Al Adab| 3.1.13 @ 8:31AM
Moving from New York to D C is sort of jumping from the frying pan into the fire. They would be better served in somewhere like Dallas where they might find actual normal citizens.
Zeppo| 3.1.13 @ 11:47AM
They are putting their light, such as it is, under a bushel.
C. Vernon Crisler | 3.1.13 @ 9:58AM
It's always heart-warming to me when a synagogue of Satan has to close its doors and its ministers have to get real jobs.
Petronius| 3.1.13 @ 10:52AM
There was a saying back in my college days. We didn't invent sin. We're just trying to perfect it. It's redundant but so what. Churches have been hijacked by iconoclasts and perverts who's goal is really the eradication of any Virtue. And woe unto him and her who maintains any.
There's a joke going round that on the day Obama dies, he will ascend to heaven, tear the pearly gates off the hinges, march up to the celestial throne and say to the Almighty Father, "Get outa my seat cracker!" Most people worship what they see in a mirror. But it is better defined by whoever said, "show me those things you cannot do without. They are Your Gods."
Marc Jeric| 3.3.13 @ 2:44PM
Your Mullah Obama, our marxist Muslim President from Kenya, is trying his best to become the 12th Imam - after destruction of Israel and his second Nobel Prize.
Derek Leaberry| 3.1.13 @ 11:09AM
If you're irreligious and left-wing and your choice on Sunday is to go to church or to have a nice breakfast of bacon, eggs, grits and hash browns, the choice is simple. Of course, eating a hearty breakfast is out of the question for our gentle liberals. The libs breakfast of choice would be more like scones, bran, granola and designed fruits.
As for the Methodist Building in DC, it is home of the wackiest lefty groups in the country. The communist oriented Women Strike for Peace was once housed there until it became apparent that the "wrong" side won the Cold War. The Committee to Free Lori Berenson, founded to free that Marxist-terrorist "lady", was once housed there as well.
Al Adab| 3.1.13 @ 12:14PM
The cornerstone laid by a president. Imagine the church/state outcry today. Oh well, maybe Obieone will lay the cornerstone of the ground zero mosque. Certainly no conflict there.
JP| 3.1.13 @ 3:31PM
The National Council of Churches retreat from NYC to the Beltway is akin to the those of the Eastern Faith retreating behind the battlements of Constantinople during the 1490s.
Elle| 3.1.13 @ 6:02PM
The church abandoned Christ and Christians a long time ago. The natural home for a Godless church is Washington DC.
Bob K| 3.1.13 @ 10:14PM
Mr. Tooley does not mention it here but Ike, although a Presbyterian since 1954, had a fundamentalist religious background. He and his family had roots in a branch of the Church of the Brethren and The Jehovah's Witnesses during his early years.
Mr. Tooley wrote about it here in 2011.
http://spectator.org/archives/.....s-religion
It was in these churches where his character was formed. Many churches like these still thrive while the mainstream churches like those mentioned here are losing membership and their members are losing faith.
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cicero| 3.2.13 @ 9:35AM
What don't these "churchmen/women" understand about, "My kingdom is not of this earth." The lure of all that government money funding what they should have been doing pushed them into superfluety. They gave up their hospitals - government will do it. They gave up their schools - government will do it. They gave up caring for the old and the poor - government will do it. They leaped into the fire of liberalism, only to find that it was consuming, but not satisfying. Now, as they search for meaning, they find that they don't want to go home again, as that requires denial of their previous choices. They will fade away, and those who they were told to bring to the altar will be left to search on their own. Hopefully, they will find their way to something other than golden calves.
Michele San Pietro| 3.3.13 @ 11:32AM
It's an interesting article, but I personally wouldn't mix religion with politics.
Nixonfan| 3.4.13 @ 12:19PM
Which was the point of the article.
Marc Jeric| 3.3.13 @ 2:41PM
NCC is simply an organ of the Communist Party USA.
Rhoetus| 3.3.13 @ 7:51PM
I was an Acolyte at the First Methodist Church of Van Nuys, Calif. in the mid-1960's. I left the Methodist Church as a teen-ager when I discovered what the NCC was and how the "Progressive" Left had perverted American Society.
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Nixonfan| 3.4.13 @ 12:18PM
The mainstream protestant religions no longer believe their own creeds, which is why religious christians now worship elsewhere.
tovlogos| 3.8.13 @ 11:12AM
In Matthew 16:3, we are told: "Do you know to discern the appearance of the sky, but cannot discern the signs of the times?"
It is easy to see why prophecy will be fulfilled as written. People will be in the political fight as they are ushered into the Tribulation Period. And even then the world will not catch on until people are wearing thew mark of the beast. Some will catch on as they remember those pesky Christians tirelessly passing the Word of God.