wfn.org | Dean Kelley treatise on religious liberty now on line

["Philip Jenks" <pjenks@ncccusa.org>]

A once abandoned treatise on religious liberty
is posted on line in five historic volumes

     The NCC's expert Dean M. Kelley

      died before editing was complete

New York, April 27, 2009 -- When the Rev. Dean M. Kelley died on May 11,  1997, the loss was devastating for proponents of religious liberty.

Kelley, who served as Executive for Religious Liberty of the National  Council of Churches from 1960 to 1990, was a nationally recognized  expert in the field who had defended the rights of such diverse groups  as the Unification Church, Taos Pueblo Indians, Church of Scientology,  Old Order Amish, Christian Scientists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims  and mainline Protestants.

"When Dean Kelley died, an enormous amount of knowledge and experience  died with him," said Wesley M. "Pat" Pattillo, the NCC's Senior Program  Director for Justice and Advocacy and Communication. "Now, this  remarkable  publishing venture will make much of that knowledge  accessible again for all religious groups working their way through  First Amendment issues and church-state controversies."

Among the intellectual treasures lost when Kelley died was a five-volume  treatment on religious liberty in the U.S. that Kelley had been working  on for 20 years when he fell ill with cancer. He completed the writing  before he died, but the publisher abandoned the project when the task of  updating developments in state law for the book became overwhelming.

Now, the First Amendment Center has made Kelley's  five-volume The Law  of Church and State in America available on line.  

"The opportunity for online publication rescued a masterpiece from  oblivion," wrote the members of the manuscript committee, who brought  Kelley's work to its present form. Lenore Hervey, Kelley's only child  and the copyright holder, agreed to provide the work freely for online  use. The First Amendment Center agreed to make the work available on its  site. The book's chapters are posted as PDFs.

"Kelley's work at the Council was extraordinary and historic," said the  Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, NCC General Secretary. "Thanks to the  First  Amendment Center, this once-lost work is now available to a new  generation of people who value their freedom to practice their religion  as they are led by their faith and intellect."

"As the long-time director of civil and religious liberty at the  National Council of Churches of Christ, the Rev. Dean Kelley was one of  the most effective advocates for religious freedom of his era," said  Charles Haynes of the First Amendment Center. "This monumental work on  the law of church and state reflects both his deep knowledge of the  issues and his extraordinary ability to provide a lively, informed  account of case law central to understanding the relationship between  religion and government in America."

Kelley's book covers a range of topics. In the author's own words:

"This work is organized under five broad themes: (1) the autonomy  interests of religious bodies; (2) the outreach activities of religious  bodies; (3) the inculcation of the faith by religious bodies; (4) the  practice of the faith by the faithful in the 'world' (issues of  'conscience'); and (5) state efforts to shelter, sponsor or protect  religion - not always justifiable - and attempts to define what entities  or activities are entitled to that treatment.

"The work of the courts within these areas is analyzed and evaluated  according to my understanding of what the Founders' radical  'institutional invention' - of the disengagement of religion from  governmental authority - requires and how it has worked out in  application (or sometimes misapplication). Extensive excerpts from  important court opinions - federal and state - allow the readers to  judge for themselves the persuasiveness of judicial reasoning."

The manuscript committee, chaired by Sharon Worthing Vaino, a member of  the editorial council of the Journal of Church and State, included  Hervey and Haynes as well as Richard Foltin, American Jewish Committee;  Rev. N. J. (Skip) L'Heureux Jr., Queens Federation of Churches; Wesley  (Pat) M. Pattillo, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the  USA; and Rev. Charles M. Whelan, Fordham University School of Law.

>Dean M. Kelley, 1926-1997

New York, April 27, 2009 -- The Rev. Dean M. Kelley, whose five-volume  The Law of Church and State in America has been put online by the First  Amendment Center, was one of the National Council of Churches' premier  staff persons in First Amendment issues of church-state separation and  religious liberty.

He was the NCC's Executive for Religious Liberty from 1960-1990, and  thereafter in retirement the NCC Counselor on Religious Liberty until  his death in 1997 following a 15-month battle with cancer.

Born June 1, 1926, in Cheyenne, Wyo., Kelley was a United Methodist  pastor who defended the religious freedom of groups no matter how  mainline or controversial. He vehemently opposed "deprogramming," a  practice in which converts to unpopular religious views were often  kidnapped and coerced to change their minds.

Kelley held the conviction that the threat to the religious freedom of  anyone was a threat to all. This led him to go to bat for the First  Amendment rights of groups as diverse as the Unification Church, Taos  Pueblo Indians, Church of Scientology, Old Order Amish, Christian  Scientists, Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims and mainline Protestants.

He wrote and filed scores of amicus curiae briefs with the U.S. Supreme  Court and other courts, offered testimony to Congressional bodies, wrote  dozens of articles and several books, gave hundreds of interviews and  spoke widely on church-state issues across North America and Europe. He  also wrote hymns and poetry.

News media turned often to Kelley for expert views on controversial  religious subjects, especially when the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, founder of  the Unification Church, was prosecuted by the Federal Government. Moon  was unpopular among American Christians but Kelley defended Moon's right  to act out his faith in ways he saw fit. Kelley was widely admired by  journalists, one of whom described his longish hair and wire-rimmed  glasses as "Pickwickian."

Kelley's 1977 book, Why Churches Should Not Pay Taxes, was for years the  "textbook" on the issue, said the Rev. Oliver Thomas, who was the NCC's  Council for Religious Liberty when Kelley died in 1997. "Dean, more than  any one person in the United States, is responsible for religious  organizations retaining their tax-exempt status," Thomas said at the  time.

In retirement, Kelley was deeply concerned about the U.S. persecution of  unpopular religious movements such as David Koresh's Branch Davidians,  an Adventist sect near Waco, Tex. He wrote two articles and gave  face-to-face interviews criticizing the U.S. government's role in the  deaths of more than 90 members of the sect when their compound was  surrounded by FBI agents.

"The only time I saw dean cry was when he was reporting to us about  those interviews," said the Rev. N.J. "Skip" L'Heureux, Jr., Executive  Director of the Queens, N.Y., Federation of Churches. "He concluded that  a strong sense of faith bound those people together, and grieved the  Federal Government's cavalier, vicious treatment of them."

Kelley also opposed efforts to amend the First Amendment to permit  prayer in public schools and was a key force in the passage of the Equal  Access Act, which protects the rights of students in public schools to  form religious clubs.

He was instrumental in shaping church-state safeguards in the Elementary  and Secondary Education Act of 1965. He was co-director with Father  Charles Whelan, of a three-year Project on Church, State and Taxation  funded by the Lilly Endowment, and edited the November 1979 issue of the  Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science on "The  Uneasy Boundary: Church and State."

"Dean Kelley was a towering figure in American religion," said the Rev.  James Dunn, head of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs when  Kelley died in 1997. "He was passionately committed to real religious  freedom for everyone. As a good Methodist he knew that religion of the  heart was all that counted with God and he fought and thought with all  his might to guarantee that every individual had freedom of conscience."

The National Council of Churches consists of 35 member communions from a  wide range of Christian traditions including Anglican, evangelical,  Orthodox, mainline Protestant, historic African American churches and  peace churches. The member communions encompass 45 million Americans in  100,000 congregations.

NCC News contact:  Philip E. Jenks, 212-870-2228 (office), 646-853-4212  (cell) , pjenks@ncccusa.org