American Protestant leaders, yielding a historic principle, apparently intend to cash in heavily on Great Society programs. At a meeting of the National Council of Churches’ 268-member General Board in Chicago last month, they joined Orthodox leaders to sanction wide use of public funds by church-related service agencies.
A policy statement adopted by the board encourages an estimated 3,000 American Protestant and Orthodox social and health agencies to reach for a big share of the more than $50 billion of public money now reportedly being spent annually on social welfare at federal, state, and local levels. The statement specifically names “church-related service agencies offering social, psychiatric, health, rehabilitation, housing, and neighborhood development services” as appropriate channels of government spending. As these agencies draw on tax dollars, their church sponsors will be free to divert the millions of dollars now earmarked for social work into new sectarian—and even political—programs.
A companion document rationalizing the National Council’s own use of tax dollars never came to a vote. It was one of several proposed reports and statements that had to be laid aside on the last day of the board meeting when it was discovered that a quorum of 89 was lacking.
Two days before, on Washington’s Birthday (which went unrecognized by the board), the policy statement “Church-State Issues for Social and Health Services” was adopted by a vote of 96 to 6, with 2 abstentions. From the American Protestant perspective, the major surrender of principle came on a closely contested floor amendment after key board members were bombarded with telegrams from denominational social-action leaders. As originally proposed by an NCC committee, the statement said, “Church-related service agencies offering social, psychiatric, health, rehabilitation, housing and neighborhood development services may in temporary, emergency, or exceptional circumstances accept public funds.…”
Social-action leaders argued that limiting acceptance of public funds to these special situations would run counter to current welfare practices by churches. After a hot debate they won deletion of the phrase, though they did not offer to estimate to what extent churches are now involved in state subsidies. Those favoring the deletion mustered the necessary votes in return for another amendment that calls for discontinuance of the use of public funds if “freedom of the churches” is jeopardized. It was added to a list of five other “safeguards” drawn up by the drafting committees.
The policy statement differs in principle from a pronouncement adopted six years ago in which the council opposed use of public funds for parochial schools. The 1961 pronouncement said “the practical effect would be that the American people would lose their actual control of the use of the taxes paid by all the people for purposes common to the whole society.”
In contrast, NCC President Arthur S. Flemming, former U.S. Health, Education, and Welfare Secretary, told newsmen last month that he favors a “meaningful partnership” between government and religious institutions. The new posture could likely unleash another flood of criticism against the NCC.
The church-state question is as old as Christianity, and money has probably been the dominant aspect. Jesus himself cited a coin in response to a question about religious versus political loyalties. The shifting position of the American religious leadership toward government subsidy comes at a time when the churches’ financial future is less than bright. Few denominations are making up for shrinking dollar values. The NCC had to dip into reserves last year, despite its $4,000,000 investments (its biggest stock holding is AT&T).
As if to reflect dollar anxiety afresh, the February NCC meeting was dominated by economic concerns. Board members were told that in three instances NCC programs had received minor financial assistance from foundations suspected of having links with the Central Intelligence Agency. Meeting in the oak-paneled Florentine Room of the Pick-Congress Hotel, the board asked the government for a “full funding” of the federal anti-poverty program for 1967–68 at no less than $2.1 billion. The board also recorded its support in principle of legislation “which will require all lenders to inform all borrowers in clear” terms of the dollar cost and the annual interest rate on each loan. Just before the opening of the meeting, the New York Times reported a flurry of protest from liberals over what an NCC spokesman called an attempt to “streamline” the council’s Commission on the Church and Economic Life.
Temporal concerns within the NCC are being underscored as social-action radicals seek to gain an upper hand. These radicals want to commandeer the NCC into throwing its whole weight against what they regard as evil social structures. They regard their mission as the crucial need of the day, and they propose to shelve the idea of reforming society through individual action. Their problem is that they are obliged to finance their programs with money from constituencies that largely oppose their approach.
The man in the middle of the muddle is efficient, even-tempered R. H. Edwin Espy, general secretary of the NCC. Upon the 58-year-old Espy, a native of Portland, Oregon, falls the responsibility of balancing the pressures. He brings to the job the combined assets of a Yale doctorate and years of top administrative experience with the YMCA and Student Volunteer Movement. He was named to the top NCC administrative post in 1963.
Espy, a short stocky American Baptist layman, lives with his wife in a Manhattan apartment. The couple, who have no children, attend Riverside Church.
Because he is an administrator rather than a legislator, Espy stays out of General Board debates, confining his comments to non-substantive matters. At the February meeting, however, he stood up to President Flemming in warning the board to confine its recommendations on the Viet Nam war within a mandate established by last December’s General Assembly in Miami Beach. Flemming tried to stretch the mandate, and the two engaged in a friendly but serious debate at the head table. Espy has a crisp delivery despite the trace of a lisp.
Espy gets much more severe pressures from the bureaucratic radicals who have little respect for the consensus of the NCC’s vast constituency. Some are on the NCC payroll, constantly thinking up new programs and position papers. There was evidence last month that they go so far as to write speeches for board-meeting guests to promote bureaucrat-inspired programs. Other radicals are denominational employees who have won themselves seats on the board and have ample time to attend its meetings. They often seize the added leverage provided by the absence of busier or less interested lay members and clergymen who give priority to pastoral responsibilities.
Espy said publicly last month that the charge could be refuted that the National Council “is tightly run by a small clique of bureaucrats.” He observed that “one could also elicit the opposite charge that the churches through the NCC spend too much time in talk.”
The NCC General Board meets three times a year, never with more than half its membership on hand. It is the council’s governing board between the triennial General Assemblies, which operate with three times as many voting delegates, chosen by NCC constitutent denominations (for a report on the last assembly, see Dec. 23 issue, p. 31).
U. S. Aid For Segregation?
Federal aid to church schools harms both racial integration of education and Protestant-Catholic ecumenism, W. Stanley Rycroft told last month’s annual conference of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Rycroft, longtime ecumenical researcher for the United Presbyterian Church, said “the most serious aspect has been an exodus from public schools … in an attempt on the part of the parents to flee integration.”
In the past year Roman Catholics have increasingly recognized that their schools often become white harbors. A report to Americans United showed that 90 per cent of public funds for elementary and secondary schools goes to Roman Catholics, although Protestant-related institutions hold the lead at the college level.
KEN GAYDOS
