wfn.org | Is mainline Protestantism influence on public life waning?

[NewsDesk@UMCOM.UMC.ORG]

March 22, 2001 News media contact: Joretta Purdue ·(202) 546-8722·Washington
10-71B{139}

A UMNS News Feature
By Joretta Purdue*

WASHINGTON - What is happening with denominations like the United Methodist
Church as they try to follow their faith in influencing policies and
cultures that affect the well-being of people everywhere?

In the United States, mainline Protestants have never been a majority and
now number some 22 million out of a population of 228 million, but their
influence has been great, according to the Rev. James P. Wind. A Lutheran
clergyman, Wind is president of the Alban Institute, an ecumenical
educational and research organization that focuses on congregations.

The historian of American religion expressed awe at "all the struggle, all
the work" of the mainline denominations. A few of the issues he named from
recent decades included working for civil rights and against racism, pushing
for corporate responsibility, campaigning for peace and against nuclear
weapons, and rallying around environmental concerns.

Wind was among the speakers at a March 15-17 conference in Washington
titled, "The Public Role of Mainline Protestantism: Is 'the quiet voice'
loud enough?" As he presented highlights of a study of the role of mainline
Protestantism in public life, he praised the mainline denominations for
their "distinctive commitment to the whole, to the greater good." 

The study focused on the six largest mainstream Protestant denominations:
United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), Episcopal,
Presbyterian, American Baptist and United Church of Christ.

"Mainline congregations are much more likely than other kinds of
congregations to sponsor programs for the wider community, such as soup
kitchens, homeless shelters or day care centers," said Robert Wuthnow, a
sociology professor at Princeton University and director of the three-year
research project funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

These congregations are much more likely to make their facilities available
to other groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, job-training programs or classes
for immigrants, he said. He also noted that they are more networked with
other faith-based coalitions, non-religious community groups and other
nonprofit organizations. 

Few members are aware of their denomination's Washington office, Wuthnow
observed, yet all six of the churches in the study have such offices, such
as the United Methodist Board of Church and Society. Wuthnow credited the
mainline groups with a number of successes, debt reduction for the poorest
countries being one of the most recent examples. 

"Largely unnoticed, mainline efforts have also been quite successful at
bringing questions of justice into the vocabulary of the larger
environmental movement, and in challenging threats to First Amendment
freedoms," Wuthnow said. 

But while government grew about 500 percent between 1960 and the early
1990s, the amount of resources the denominations were devoting to their
Washington offices has been decreasing. Considering the six churches
together, Wuthnow said they now spend about a fifth of a penny on these
offices and staffs for every dollar they spend elsewhere.

Among the challenges facing these offices, he remarked, is the growing
globalization of important social issues, the tendency to direct
denominational programs to the traditional two-parent family in spite of a
rhetoric of diversity and inclusiveness, and the continued struggle against
racial discrimination and injustice. Efforts to combat racism were the least
effective, according to the study, Wuthnow said. He suggested that a key
factor in this failure "seems to be an attitude of 'doing for' rather than
'doing with.'"

Wind said that earlier efforts of these denominations were largely behind
the scenes - private conversations with leaders - but the turmoil of the
1960s changed that. Political activism is not and was not the preferred
style of church members, he explained, but it was preferred by the religious
leaders of the '60s.

"This is the era of local," Wind asserted. Local congregations want to be
doers, not the group spoken for or done for by someone else, he explained.
"People want to be agents."

Nancy T. Ammerman, a professor of sociology of religion at Hartford
Seminary, studied the connection between mainline Protestant congregations
and public life. She found a mostly quiet kind of public service that
generates "social capital" in the community.

"Some work for the public good is done by individual congregations," she
observed, "and much of it is done because congregations encourage their
individual members to be good citizens. But a very significant portion of
the public engagement of the mainline takes the form of cooperative
activity" with other groups - religious, secular or government.

"When the congregations establish links to others in the community, they not
only provide necessary resources to those community groups, they also expand
and redefine the very nature of their own membership and citizenship," she
explained.

Laura T. Olson, an assistant professor of political science at Clemson
(S.C.) University and a recent visiting research fellow in Princeton's
Center for the Study of Religion, found that mainline clergy are more likely
to be involved with addressing social ills at the local level and less
visible at the national level than they were a generation ago.

Looking particularly at the political lives of a sampling of clergy members
and how they related to their denomination's Washington office, Olson found
that 68 percent felt the average minister knew very little about the
Washington offices. United Methodists were the exception, she noted, with
four out of five pastors expressing a belief that their colleagues had some
awareness of the Washington office's work, but many opined that this
knowledge is often skewed or incomplete.

Olson's sample of clergy did not seek the closing of the Washington offices,
but most see the offices as having focus and expertise in dealing with their
denomination's positions on national and international issues, while
individual clergy focused largely on local concerns. Clergy already
interested in legislative or international issues were more likely to
network with their denomination's Washington offices, she said.

"When clergy work at the local level and Washington officials work at the
national and international levels, a basic division of labor results that
allows the mainline to accomplish even more of the societal work that it
values," she said.

Michael Moody, an assistant professor of sociology at United
Methodist-related Boston University, examined the environmental advocacy of
mainline Protestant organizations to illustrate the advocacy role mainline
denominations have played in determining public policy in recent years.

He reported that the concept of "eco-justice" was introduced by the early
mainline environmental activists and came to be defined broadly "to include
a call for solidarity with all creatures, sustainable lifestyles and
development, a norm of 'sufficiency' in consumption, participatory
decision-making processes, etc."

Although not adopted very widely outside the religious community, Moody
said, the concept did influence the environmental movement to recognize
issues of environmental justice at the same time it allowed the religious
community to feel that it was providing "a prophetic voice" by combining the
Christian mandates for stewardship of God's creation and helping the poor.

On environmental issues, mainline groups have worked in coalitions with
other denominations, faith groups and secular environmental organizations.
One such partnership was successful in defeating the changes proposed for
the Endangered Species Act in 1995 and 1996. Educational campaigns built
around Earth Day continue to be a major mainline effort.

The Rev. Shaun Casey, professor of Christian ethics at United
Methodist-related Wesley Seminary in Washington and a Church of Christ
minister, reminded conference-goers that there is "no single voice of
mainline Protestantism" but the denominations share their deep commitment to
the poor. He said he believes that theologically the greatest concern with
the Bush proposal is the "stigmatization of the poor."

Casey expressed concern for the divisive competition that could arise
between faith-based groups that vie with each other for government dollars
to fund social service programs.

Focusing particularly on the present and future were John J. DiIulio Jr.,
director of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives, together with two congressmen and others.

DiIulio said he is particularly pleased about the "robust discussion" that
the president's proposals have generated. Debate on how best to help
disadvantaged Americans and how to deploy government resources for this will
reap dividends for all of society, he said. 

DiIulio emphasized that the president has said, "Government cannot be
replaced by charities." If all congregational resources were doubled and
spent on nothing but social services, they would not equal the federal
expenditure on Medicaid, he asserted.

He praised the churches for their role. Then he called attention to secular
organizations that perform great service also. "The social good they do
reaches millions and millions of American citizens every day," he declared.

"Government should not block or burden these organizations," he said of the
faith-based groups. DiIulio added that government needs to welcome all these
groups "without denying their religious or spiritual identities."

U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards (D-Texas) expressed opposition to legislation that
would provide tax dollars to "pervasively sectarian entities" - a funding
prohibition that is currently in place but is a controversial aspect of the
proposed legislation. Edwards said he hopes Protestants will continue to
support the separation of church and state.

U.S. Rep. Amo Houghton (R-N.Y.) said he favors seeing how charitable choice
works on a small trial basis. "There's such a tremendous need out there." He
welcomes faith-based groups in helping to meet that need, he said, and "if
it doesn't work, just stop it."
 #  #  #
*Purdue is the news director of the Washington office of United Methodist
News Service.

*************************************
United Methodist News Service
Photos and stories also available at:
http://umns.umc.org