National Council of Churches

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Logo of the NCC

The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (usually identified as National Council of Churches or NCC) is an ecumenical partnership of 37 Christian faith groups in the United States. Its member denominations, churches, conventions, and archdioceses include Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, African American, Evangelical, and historic peace churches. Together, they encompass 100,000 local congregations and 45 million adherents.

History

The present Council was organized in 1950 as a merger of the Federal Council of Churches, formed by the Protestant denominations in 1908, and several other ecumenical organizations including the International Council of Religious Education, formed in 1905, but with origins in the 1830s.

Governance

The NCC is overseen by a governing board with day-to-day operations led by a general secretary.

Governing Board

The NCC's Governing Board is composed of representatives of the member communions to provide ongoing leadership for the Council. The Board's Executive Committee is made up of a president, several vice presidents, and the chairs of the program commissions.

Approximately 300 delegates from the member denominations meet every other November (annually prior to 2010) in a joint General Assembly with the NCC's humanitarian and relief aid sister organization, Church World Service (CWS). CWS is governed by its own board made up of representatives from the NCC member communions. The General Assembly serves as a forum for discussing major issues and, where appropriate, to approve policy statements, resolutions and other official documents that speak to the common concerns of the member churches.

Much of the Council's work is done through its five program commissions: Communication; Education and Leadership Ministries; Faith and Order; Interfaith Relations; and Justice and Advocacy. Membership in these commissions extends beyond the NCC's member communions to involve participants from more than 50 U.S. faith groups, including Roman Catholics, Evangelicals, and Pentecostals.

President

The President of the NCC is normally elected to a two-year term, and presides over sessions of the Governing Board. The current President of the Council, who began her term in January 2010, is Rev. Peg Chemberlin, a Moravian minister who is executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches. The president-elect, set to succeed Chemberlin in January 2012, is Kathryn M. Lohre, assistant director of the Pluralism Project at Harvard University and a member of the Central Committee of the World Council of Churches.

Presidents

• Archbishop Vicken Aykazian (2007–2009)
• Rev. Michael Livingston (2006–2007)
• Bishop Thomas L. Hoyt Jr (2004–2005)
• Elenie K. Huszagh (2002–2003)
• Ambassador Andrew Young (2000–2001)
• Rt. Rev. Craig B. Anderson (1998–1999)
• Bishop Melvin G. Talbert (1996–1997)
• Rev. Dr. Gordon L. Sommers (1994–1995)
• Rev. Dr. Syngman Rhee (1992–1993)
• Very Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky (1990–1991)
• Rev. Patricia McClurg (1988–1989)
• Bishop Philip R. Cousin (1983–1987)
• Bishop James Armstrong (1982–1983)
• Rev. M. William Howard (1979–1981)
• William P. Thompson (1975–1978)
• Rev. W. Sterling Cary (1972–1975)
• Cynthia C. Wedel (1969–1972)
• Arthur S. Flemming (1966–1969)
• Bishop Reuben H. Mueller (1963–1966)
• J. Irwin Miller (1960–1963)
• Rev. Edwin T. Dahlberg of the American Baptist Churches U.S.A. (1957–1960)
• Rev. Eugene Carson Blake (1954–1957)
• Bishop William C. Martin (1952–1954)
• Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill (1950–1952)

General Secretary

The General Secretary is the Council's chief administrative officer. The Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, a Disciples of Christ minister and theologian became the Council's ninth General Secretary on January 1, 2008. He came to the NCC from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, where he had been the Allen and Dottie Miller Professor of Mission, Peace and Ecumenical Studies since 2000.

General Secretaries

• Rev. Bob Edgar (2000–2007)
• Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell (1991–1999)
• James A. Hamilton, Esq. (1989–1991)
• Rev. Arie R. Brouwer (1985–1989)
• Claire Randall (1974–1984)
• R.H. Edwin Espy (1963–1973)
• Rev. Roy G. Ross (1954–1963)
• Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert (1950–1954)

Activities

Publishing and research

The NCC holds the copyright on the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Some Orthodox bodies in the NCC have been hesitant to support either translation as a text to be used in worship services.

The NCC also operates Friendship Press, a publisher of books, curriculum and other resources for church constituents. The NCC's magazine, EcuLink, is a semi-annual review of the collaborative work of the NCC members. In cooperation with Abingdon Press, the NCC annual publishes the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches, a directory of and statistical report on the religious life of North America. In 1997, the Council's Committee on Religious Liberty published a five-volume study of The Law of Church and State in America by Dean M. Kelley.

The NCC sponsors the research program on which the Uniform Sunday School Lesson Series is based. The series began in 1872 under the auspices of the National Sunday School Convention. It is now produced by volunteer writers, editors and Bible scholars from various denominations who meet annually to determine curriculum topics and lesson design.

Theological and educational dialogue

The NCC Faith and Order Commission is an ongoing, scholarly, ecumenical dialogue among North American Christian theologians and church historians, including Evangelical, Pentecostal, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, and African-American scholars. In 2007, the Commission celebrated its fiftieth anniversary.

The NCC Interfaith Relations Commission conducts dialogues and provides resources for Christians to explore the challenges and opportunities of living among people of other faiths in an increasingly pluralistic and multi-ethnic nation. The Commission produces study guides, newsletters and conferences. It also consults with congregations, denominational bodies, and community organizations about their interfaith relations concerns.

The NCC Education and Leadership Ministries Commission is an umbrella organization for fifteen ecumenical program committees and two project teams made up of participants from dozens of denominations, working together to develop lesson materials, research, guidelines and demonstration projects that support local congregations in educational ministry.

Web and television production

The NCC Communication Commission created and administers Worldwide Faith News, a news distribution website in the field of religion. WFN grants reporters and editors full permission to reproduce, copy, or quote all documents submitted by participating faith groups.

The NCC is an insitutional member of the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission, a partnership established in 1980 with the stated goal of providing religious programming for ABC, NBC and CBS. The current IBC members include the NCC, the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the New York Board of Rabbis, the Union for Reform Judaism, and the Islamic Society of North America.

The NCC is also a founding member of the National Interfaith Cable Coalition (NICC), now operating as Odyssey Networks. This consortium of about 70 Christian, Jewish, and Muslim groups produces and distributes programming through a variety of media. NICC's earlier initiatives included the VISN satellite network, which later became the Odyssey cable channel, and finally the Hallmark Channel.

Social and political advocacy

The ecumenical churches have engaged on issues of public policy and moral values, including by adopting the "Social Creed of the Churches" in 1908, a document which was updated by the NCC General Assembly in 2007.

The NCC office in Washington, DC, advocates on the moral and ethical dimensions of public policy issues, as approved by the member communions. Its activities are carried out under the guidance of the Council's Justice and Advocacy Commission and several working groups composed of justice specialists on the staffs of NCC member communions. Where its member communions have not reached a policy consensus on an issue, the NCC does advocate a position.

The Council has supported minimum wage laws, environmentalist policies, and affirmative action, and played a significant role in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The Council's current justice work currently includes a portfolio of women's issues.

NCC partners with other faith-based groups, such as Bread for the World, Habitat for Humanity, and Children's Defense Fund, to press for broad policy initiatives that address poverty issues. The Council helped launch the Let Justice Roll grassroots anti-poverty campaign that has been successful in raising the minimum wage in more than 20 states since 2005.

The NCC Communication Commission is one of the founders of 'So We Might See', an interfaith coalition that promotes media access and representation by all faith traditions, ethnic and economic groups.Other coalition members are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Islamic Society of North America, Presbyterian News Service, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Communications, and the project's managing partner, United Church of Christ.

The NCC's communions sometimes face opposition to their ecumenical efforts to address justice issues. In July 2005, the Antiochian Orthodox Church suspended its participation in the NCC. Father George Kevorkian, an assistant to the denomination's senior cleric, said that the Church objected because "the NCC...seems to have taken a turn toward political positioning."

Some opponents have accused the NCC of holding a biased policy towards Cuba, and criticize relative silence by the NCC towards political and religious prisoners in countries with left-leaning and totalitarian leadership. "NCC was silent about the depredations of Ethiopia's Marxist government, which left 10,000 dead and shuttered 200 churches. Nor did it criticize the Soviet Union's 1978 invasion of Afghanistan. Not until after the Soviet Union's collapse did NCC speak out on the subject of Communist oppression..."

The NCC is a member of the Churches for Middle East Peace.

In spring 2007, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad met in Tehran with a visiting delegation of Christian leaders from a number of U.S. faith groups, including some from the National Council of Churches. The group challenged Ahmadinejad's statements about the Holocaust and his alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons. Abraham H. Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League, was among those who criticized the visit.

Membership

All member organizations subscribe to the NCC's statement of faith, which reads as follows:

"The National Council of Churches is a community of Christian communions, which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord. These communions covenant with one another to manifest ever more fully the unity of the Church. Relying upon the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the communions come together as the Council in common mission, serving in all creation to the glory of God."

The individual member organizations are:

• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Alliance of Baptists
• American Baptist Churches USA
• Apostolic Catholic Church
• Diocese of the Armenian Church of America
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Church of the Brethren
• Community of Christ
• The Coptic Orthodox Church in North America
• The Episcopal Church in the United States of America
• Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
• Friends United Meeting
• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America
• Hungarian Reformed Church in America
• International Council of Community Churches
• Korean Presbyterian Church in America
• Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church

• Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church
• Moravian Church in America Northern Province and Southern Province
• National Baptist Convention of America
• National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
• National Missionary Baptist Convention of America
• Orthodox Church in America
• Patriarchal Parishes of the Russian Orthodox Church in the USA
• Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
• Polish National Catholic Church of America
• Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
• Progressive National Baptist Convention, Inc.
• Reformed Church in America
• Serbian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A. and Canada
• Swedenborgian Church of North America
• Syrian Orthodox Church of Antioch
• Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA
• United Church of Christ
• The United Methodist Church

Facilities

The Council's headquarters are located in The Interchurch Center in New York City. The NCC also operates a public-policy office in Washington DC.

External links

• National Council of Churches USA