wfn.org | NCC Head Blasts U.S. News & World Report for 'Smear' of

["Carol Fouke" <cfouke@ncccusa.org>]

NCC's Edgar Blasts U.S. News & World Report
For 'Smear' of Protestant Churches' Activism
 
NEW YORK, October 14, 2004 -- Calling it a case of "journalistic
malpractice," National Council of Churches General Secretary Bob Edgar today
challenged the content and conclusions of a U.S. News & World Report
columnist who had suggested the Council's criticisms of the government of
Israel were "anti-Semitic." 

Edgar, in a letter to the magazine's editor-in-chief Mortimer Zuckerman,
pointed out that columnist John Leo, in the October 18 U.S. News edition now
on newsstands, had wrongly attacked as biased criticism by four American
Protestant churches and two ecumenical bodies (National Council of Churches
USA and World Council of Churches) of human rights actions by both Israeli
and U.S. governments. 

Leo had obtained his information from a conservative political group, the
Institute on Religion & Democracy (IRD), but apparently had failed to check
with church leaders the accuracy of the IRD's findings, which Edgar called
"grievously off the mark."

"No one at the National Council of Churches was asked, in advance of
publication or since, to confirm, clarify or refute any of the statements or
statistics quoted as fact," Edgar said, adding that the column "employs the
smear tactics of McCarthy-era propaganda, and contributes to the abuse of
religious belief as a tool of partisan politics."

The column had claimed that 37 per cent of the churches' human rights
resolutions (and 80 percent of the NCC's) were aimed at Israel.  Yet, Edgar
noted, in the entire 54-year history of the National Council of Churches,
only two policy statements have referred to Israel and Palestine. And out of
650 resolutions adopted during that time, fewer than 40 have dealt with the
Middle East, many of those concerned such matters as Christians in Egypt,
hostages in Iran and Lebanon, and war in Kuwait and Iraq.  Only five NCC
statements about Israel were issued during the period of the IRD's survey,
and several of those also criticized Palestinian leaders.   

"This readily available public record, which the writer chose to ignore,
hardly represents an anti-Israel bias," Edgar said, noting that the current
NCC policy statement, adopted in 1980, explicitly calls on U.S. Christians
"to work with Jews and Muslims toward cooperative relationships based on
friendship and trust."

Leo, whose columns are nationally syndicated, also echoed the IRD's criticism
of the Protestant churches' emphasis on U.S. government policies, saying that
the faith groups failed to criticize other governments on similar policies.  

In response, Edgar wrote Zuckerman:  "The right and responsibility of our
nation's churches to speak out on issues of national policy is as old as the
Constitution," adding that such activity is "as vital to our public life as
the freedom of the press which you enjoy. . . As we are an association of
American churches, most of our statements on public policy logically deal
with the work of our own government."  

The reach of the U.S. government is so broad and powerful, the NCC leader
noted, that "it touches issues of moral and spiritual concern as diverse as
the environment, civil liberties, war and peace, poverty, foreign policy and
national budget priorities."

The National Council of Churches, with 36 Christian faith groups, is the
largest and broadest ecumenical association of Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox
and African-American Christians in the United States, encompassing more than
100,000 local congregations in all 50 states.  

The Council's Interfaith Relations Commission fosters extensive interfaith
dialogue and joint action with Jewish, Muslim and other world faith groups. 
A number of other NCC programs also have interfaith components.  

-end-

NCC Media Contact: Carol Fouke, 212-870-2252; cfouke@ncccusa.org 

National Council of Churches
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110 Maryland Ave. N.E., Washington, DC 20002
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