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
