The Religious Left: More Left Than Religion

A new report by the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) casts some very revealing light on the National Council of Churches (NCC), the vanguard of “religious Left” movement in America. While Big Media ceaselessly frets about the political activity of the “religious Right,” it rarely takes on the “religious Left.” But the report by IRD ought to raise a few eyebrows. The NCC’s primary spokesman has been the Reverend Bob Edgar – a former Democrat member of Congress. It seems that as membership in liberal mainline denominations has declined over the years, Edgar has been reaching out to some of his former political allies for help in fundraising.

According to IRD’s report, the NCC now receives a majority of its funding not from churches or religious groups, but leftwing secular organizations with no interest in faith or religion at all. For example, the NCC received grants from the Sierra Club, the Ford Foundation, Ted Turner’s United Nation’s Fund, and another group connected to George Soros. The NCC also applied for a $100,000 grant from the radical Left lobbying group MoveOn.Org! As it turns out, only six of the NCC’s top 16 funders are church organizations. Could it be that the National Council of Churches and the “religious Left” generally are more “left” than “religious”? That would likely explain why Big Media never complains when the “religious Left” injects its values into the political arena.

Just read this piece of commentary on UCCtruths.com: 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.

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