The financially troubled National Council of Churches (NCC) has sold its biblical roots for money from secular foundations bent on using it to forward a liberal agenda, according to a report by The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD).
John Lomperis and Alan Wisdom, the report's authors, said for decades the NCC was supported by member denominations -- but not anymore.
"What was founded as a body comprised of churches seeking to come together in Christian unity," Wisdom said, "has become a political-action committee that’s not a creature of the churches anymore."
The NCC was founded in 1950 and claims more than 50 "faith groups" are members, including the Episcopal Church USA, The United Methodist Church, The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church USA.
The report "Strange Yokefellows: The National Council of Churches and Its Growing Non-Church Constituency" details how NCC support from those denominations declined in the last decade.
"What’s happened now," Wisdom said, "is that those churches -- and particularly the liberal elites in those churches -- have become so weakened that they can no longer bear the financial load of the NCC."
Then Bob Edgar came on board in 2000 as the NCC's general secretary.
"In 2003, he proclaimed that his salvage work had been successful and that the NCC was on a firm financial footing," Wisdom said. "Gradually, we were able to get our hands on some documents that were distributed at NCC meetings that showed how the council was being saved."
The Washington Post reported that Edgar shook the hands of the report's authors at the announcement.
"I was brought in to do three things: raise money, raise money and raise money," he said. "Thank you for highlighting that secular as well as religious organizations now recognize the importance of the National Council of Churches."
The trail led to millions of dollars in grants from left-leaning organizations such as the Sierra Club, the Tides Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund -- organizations bent on promoting abortion, same-sex marriage and other liberal issues.
Dr. Janice Crouse, senior fellow at Concerned Women for America's Beverly LaHaye Institute, offered a strong warning.
"When you cloak all of those cultural concerns and left-wing agenda items with the cloak of religion and with the mainstream churches, then you are giving them a stamp of approval that they should not have," she said. "Most of the religious left is arguing for positions that are not based in the scripture."
Crouse said while the NCC purports to speak for mainstream American denominations, it obviously does not.
"Because their funding comes from far-left foundations and these foundations are only interested in the political positions of the groups that they sponsor," she said. "So it's very clear that, rather than representing Christian causes, they are now representing cultural causes and are far more interested in the kinds of things that happen in the culture and in the secular world than they are within the church."
"Follow the money" may be an old cliché, she said, but it holds true.
"When you start following the money," Crouse said, "you discover that the foundations that are supporting the National Council of Churches are more interested in a secular agenda than they are in Christian faith."
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