The National Council of Churches recently ordered a poll on what people think of it, and we must admire the council leaders for their candor in releasing as much of the resulting information as they did. Considering that inclusivism and relevance have been major goals of the council, the picture drawn by the poll is not very encouraging.
Particularly disappointing to the National Council is the indication that 40 per cent of American adults have never even heard of it. Of those who know of the council, about 55 per cent are said in general to approve of it. Twenty-two per cent disapprove, and 23 per cent have no opinion.
The great divide comes at the point of the council’s practice of taking sides on selected social questions. About 59 per cent of all those polled said they disapprove of the involvement of the churches in social and political issues such as the urban crisis, Viet Nam, and civil rights. Some 37 per cent approved. The remainder were indifferent or undecided.
Interestingly enough, it was found that the people who approve of the churches’ social involvement are generally those who don’t seem to care to involve themselves in the churches. People who attend church every Sunday, it was shown, are much more likely to object to corporate involvement in social issues than those who go irregularly.
We hope that American church leaders will take serious note. In a few weeks the National Council will be holding its triennial assembly, and it is a good time to go back to some definitions. The council needs to re-evaluate its goals and its responsibility to its constituency.
Council spokesmen make much of the need to be “relevant,” of the summons to “prophetic leadership.” Realistically translated, this has meant little more than partisanship on how some widely publicized social problems are to be solved. The poll raises the question whether this really constitutes relevance. Consider that after nearly two decades of National Council pronouncements, 40 per cent of the adults in one of the most literate countries in the world still are not even aware of the council’s existence. Honesty requires the acknowledgment that relevance has not been achieved. The lesson seems to be that the equating of Christian compassion with the adoption of social pronouncements has been a tragic mistake, a waste of resources, and a major source of division.
The poll strongly suggests that the twin goals of relevance and inclusivism might be incompatible. Falling revenue (see News, page 44) underscores the gravity of the situation. The National Council of Churches should face up to the fact that it is not inclusive in any realistic sense—indeed, that it is a minority element in American Christendom. It seems apparent that the leaders of the constituent denominations of the council are somewhat indifferent toward it, to say nothing of the laymen. And how does the NCC propose to raise $500,000 for blacks when it cannot even meet its own budget?
The main point to be recognized is that American Christians need to get together on something more basic than a collective posture on a handful of social issues. The ecumenist-activist coalition should rethink the parable of the Good Samaritan. There is no record that any of the principals endorsed reparations or adopted resolutions or testified before the Roman legislature. We fulfill the spirit of the parable when Christians, conciliar or otherwise, take it upon themselves as individuals to be neighbors in the biblical sense. This is the goal for which the council and its member churches should strive.
