wfn.org | Dorrien: ecumenism has historic opportunity for change

[Philip Jenks <pjenks@ncccusa.org>]

>Dorrien: century-old ecumenical movement
>has an historic opportunity for change

Denver, November 12, 2008 -- In opening sessions of a General Assembly obse rving the first 100 years of the ecumenical movement in the U.S., a nationa lly known theologian told delegates that the movement has "an historic oppo rtunity to change."

Dr. Gary Dorrien, Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Social Ethics at Union Theo logical Seminary and Professor of Religion at Columbia University in New Yo rk, traced the history of the social gospel movement and said the recent el ection of President-Elect Barack Obama opens the door to new possibilities.

Delegates of the member communions of the National Council of Churches and  Church World Service are meeting at the Renaissance Hotel November 11-13.

Dorrien suggested the ongoing worldwide economic crisis creates a new scena rio for churches whose original response to modern economic globalization w as the social gospel.

"This year we have witnessed a presidential candidacy that carries the burd en of America's entire history of racial prejudice and exclusion," he said.  "Regardless of which candidate you supported in the election, it is undeni able that Barack Obama's election represents an historic breakthrough in th e American experience, symbolizing the hope of an American society that aff irms and celebrates its multiracial diversity. That hope reverberated in th e enormous cheering crowds of mostly white people that convinced him to run  for the presidency sooner than he had expected."

But Obama himself has not claimed that racism in America has ended, Dorrien  said. "He talks about racial justice as little as possible; he plays down  the racial prejudice that his campaign encountered; and he required his cam paign workers to follow his example. Yet he does not regard himself as a sy mbol of 'post-racial politics,' for on the few occasions that Obama has exp licitly addressed the issue, he has stated that it's premature to imagine s uch a thing in American society."

Most whites are impatient with black grievances and the Obama campaign play ed them down, Dorrien said. "But bear in mind that these very guidelines re flect the persistence of the problem. Obama's favorite image of how we shou ld think about racial justice is a split screen. One side of the screen hol ds in view the just, multi-racial society that must be created; the other s ide shows the existing America that is far from a just society."

Obama's election gives the U.S. "an historic opportunity to change the seco nd half of this screen. Last week the world changed, and we woke up in a be tter country," Dorrien said.

Even so, he suggested the festering economic crisis will impede President O bama's agenda for progress, and the churches will have to reexamine their a ttitudes toward capitalism that they began to develop in the 19th century a nd through the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"A month ago I went around the country saying that because our banks don't  know what their assets are worth, and it's impossible to sort out the toxic  debt, we might as well half-socialize the banks to unfreeze credit lines.  Then Gordon Brown did it in England, France and Germany followed suit, Paul  Krugman said we should do it too, he won the Nobel Prize, suddenly Henry P aulsen agreed, and on October 13 the Bush administration invested $250 bill ion in senior preferred bank stock in nine major banks, take it or take it,  there was no choice. We're bailing like it's 1933 ... The next several yea rs will be devoted to cleaning up the financial mess and coping with a bad  recession."
Dorrien also suggested that the bygone social gospel movement rose to heigh ts that will challenge modern church leaders.

"For all its faults and limitations," he said, "the social gospel movement  produced a greater progressive religious legacy than any generation before  or after it. Christian realism inspired no hymns and built no lasting insti tutions. It was not even a movement, but rather, a reaction to the social g ospel centered on one person, Reinhold Niebuhr. The social gospel, by contr ast, was a 60-year movement and enduring perspective that paved the way for  modern ecumenism, social Christianity, the Civil Rights movement, and the  deep involvement of the ecumenical movement in the Civil Rights movement.   It had a tradition in the black churches led by Reverdy Ransom, Ida B. Well s-Barnett, Benjamin E. Mays, Mordecai Johnson, and Martin Luther King Jr. I t had anti-imperialist, socialist, feminist and theologically conservative  advocates in addition to its liberal reformers. It created the ecumenical a nd social justice ministries that remain the heart of American Christianity . And it expounded a vision of economic democracy that is as relevant and n ecessary today as it was a century ago."

Read the full text of Dorrien's address at http://www.ncccusa.org/ga2008/do rrien.html

NCC News contact: Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228, pjenks@ncccusa.org