wfn.org | JIM HAMILTON RETIRES FOLLOWING 37 YEARS OF LEADERSHIP AT NCC

[CAROL_FOUKE.parti@ecunet.org]

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A.
Contact: Carol J. Fouke, 212-870-2252
Internet: carol_fouke.parti@ecunet.org

7NCC1/22/96               FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 WASHINGTON, D.C., Jan. 22 ---- James A.
Hamilton has retired following 37 years of service
to the National Council of the Churches of Christ in
the U.S.A. (NCC), including as General Secretary
from July 1989 through March 1991.  He led the
Council's national public policy witness in
Washington, D.C., also serving as deputy to three
NCC general secretaries.

 "What we have been about and are about in
relating faith to politics is very important," he
told other public policy advocates at a December
seminar in his honor in Washington, D.C.  The NCC
Washington Office keeps the Council's program units,
33 member communions and network of state, regional
and local ecumenical organizations informed on
public policy issues and represents the ecumenical
community's positions to Congress.

 Mr. Hamilton provided particular public policy
expertise in the areas of civil rights, anti-poverty
initiatives, church-state relations and
international human rights.

 A United Methodist layperson, Mr. Hamilton is a
graduate of Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa
(B.A.) and of the George Washington University Law
School (J.D.).  He was in law practice in
Washington, D.C, and then directed the Department of
Legal Affairs, Board of Church and Society, United
Methodist Church, before joining the NCC staff in
1958 as the Associate Director of the Washington
Office.  He became Director in 1966.

 He was named an NCC Assistant General Secretary
in 1968 and became Claire Randall's deputy as
Associate General Secretary in 1976, continuing in
that post following the Rev. Dr. Arie Brouwer's
installation as General Secretary in 1985.

 When Dr. Brouwer resigned, Mr. Hamilton became
NCC General Secretary, serving in that post from
July 1989 through March 1991 until the Rev. Dr. Joan
Brown Campbell took office.  Mr. Hamilton continued
as Associate and then Deputy General Secretary until
his retirement.

 He and his wife, Mary Claire Gunderson, live in
Rockville, Md. and are members of Faith United
Methodist Church there.  They are the parents of
four adult children, the oldest of whom, Elizabeth
Anne, 38, died Nov. 3, 1995, of cardiac arrest.

 United Methodist Bishop Melvin Talbert, the
NCC's President for 1996-97, was among Council
leaders to pay tribute to Mr. Hamilton during the
Council's annual General Board meeting, held in
Oakland, Calif., in November.

 "One of our founders, John Wesley, talks about
what it means when we express our faith in God and
in Jesus Christ," Bishop Talbert said.  "He said
that in expressing our faith in God it is an act of
holiness but he went on to say there is no holiness
without social holiness.  In other words, if you are
serious about your belief in God, you act it out in
relationship to human beings, and to society, and to
all creation."

 Turning to Mr. Hamilton, Bishop Talbert said,
"By your actions and your deeds and your work ...
you have blended well that theological perspective
on behalf of our church and on behalf of this
Council."

 In another tribute, the Very Rev. Leonid
Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church in America, the
NCC's President in 1990-91 (serving in the office of
President Elect in 1988-89), spoke of his 17-year
working relationship with Mr. Hamilton.

 "I know Jim to be a man of deep Christian
faith, which is manifested in the texture of his
personal life and in the texture of his professional
life," Father Kishkovsky said.  "He is a man of
simplicity, of humility, of compassion, of
intelligence and of responsibility.  He is a man
clear in thought, careful in speech, wise in action.
He is a man of common sense and a man of hopeful
vision."

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