The General Assembly of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCCUSA, hereafter NCC) recently received a new “Social Creed for the 21st Century.” Meeting November 6–8 in Woodbridge, NJ, the NCC assembly gave a positive and unanimous welcome to this document that aims to set an overall direction for the churches’ social witness in the new century. The NCC promotes the new 2008 creed as a successor to “a prophetic ‘Social Creed’” adopted in 1908 by the Federal Council of Churches, a forerunner of today’s NCC.
The new creed proclaims “a message of hope for a fearful time.” That hopeful message, according to the NCC, is “a vision of a society that shares more and consumes less, seeks compassion over suspicion and equality over domination, and finds security in joined hands rather than massed arms.” What follows is a list of 20 broad social and political goals, ranging from “sustainable communities marked by affordable housing, access to good jobs, and public safety” to “cooperation and dialogue for peace and environmental justice among the world’s religions.”
These 20 goals read like a laundry list of primarily progressive causes. There is a call for “an end to the death penalty.” There is a demand for “binding covenants to reduce global warming.” Blessings are pronounced upon “alternative energy sources and public transportation.” Censure is directed at “greed in economic life.” The United Nations must be “strengthened,” according to the new NCC social creed.
On the other hand, the creed makes no mention of any causes usually identified with more conservative Christian viewpoints. There are no echoes of the Hebrew prophet Samuel’s warning against an all-consuming government that levies burdensome taxes (1 Samuel 8:11–18). There is no concern expressed about regimes like North Korea and Iran that repress their own peoples and threaten annihilation of their neighbors. There is no sense of the need for a strong military to deter such threats.
The 2008 creed says nothing about the importance of upholding marriage as a fundamental social institution. (Virtually all NCC member communions define marriage exclusively as the union of one man and one woman.) While the creed advocates sparing the lives of convicted murderers, it does not speak up for the lives of unborn children being aborted, human embryos destroyed through experimentation, or the old and the infirm vulnerable to euthanasia. In seeking more liberal “immigration policies that protect family unity [and] safeguard worker’s rights,” the creed makes no request for enforcement of laws controlling who crosses U.S. borders.
This strong ideological tilt in the NCC document contrasts sharply with the careful efforts at balance evident in public policy guidelines produced by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Association of Evangelicals.
Statist Solutions to Social Problems
The 2008 NCC creed avoids prescribing detailed legislative solutions to the problems it addresses. “We have to recognize that Christians will likely disagree with specific policy” prescriptions, one drafter of the creed says in the NCC–produced video “Towards a Social Awakening.” Nevertheless, the creed’s principles are often described in ways that clearly look to the state for solutions to public ills.
For example, churches are urged to work not just for education and health care, but for “public education for all, and universal, affordable and accessible healthcare.” Private education and private healthcare—even when offered by the churches themselves—are apparently not satisfactory to the NCC. It instead seems to place its trust in “universal” systems that could be operated only by the government.
Another goal enunciated in the creed is “[a]n effective program of social security during sickness, disability and old age.” No consideration is given to any alternatives to social security, such as converting the system into individual savings accounts owned by the beneficiaries. Thus the creeed fails to be neutral in terms of what policy responses the churches should favor.
Utopian Domestic Policy
Some of the domestic goals in the creed seem utopian and require government-centered solutions to the problems they address. For example, the creed insists on “[e]mployment for all, at a family-sustaining living wage, with equal pay for comparable work.” Moreover, all workers are to enjoy “time and benefits to enable full family life.” Everyone would agree that this situation would be ideal.
But in a fallen world, where economics involves making choices about how to use scarce resources and time, there are all sorts of complications to which the NCC seems oblivious: Isn’t a certain amount of unemployment the inevitable result of a dynamic economy, as individuals jump from one job to another and corporations shift their resources from one endeavor to another? For a single person stepping onto the first rung of a career ladder, doesn’t it sometimes make sense to accept less than a “family-sustaining wage”—especially if the alternative is no job at all? Don’t all of us have to make trade-offs between family life and career ambitions? Isn’t it unrealistic to expect that everyone can “have it all”?
The NCC’s utopian goals raise all sorts of practical questions: Who guarantees “employment for all”? Who determines what is a “living wage” and forces all employers to pay it? Who decides how much time and benefits are required for “full family life”? The NCC would likely turn to the government to answer all these questions, and to impose its answers through legislative mandates.
The 2008 social creed seems unfriendly to private property and free enterprise. Its disparagement of “greed in economic life” comes out of a leftist lexicon that rejects the profit motive—by which producers earn their income by supplying the goods and services that best meet their customers’ needs at the lowest cost—as inherently unjust.
The creed’s desire for “real limits on the power of private interests in politics” casts suspicion upon those “private interests” (which, in their totality, include all citizens). An earlier draft of the creed, as well as the NCC’s record of advocacy, indicates that this phrase was meant to promote measures, such as campaign finance reform, that ration and regulate the speech in which private citizens and organized interest groups can engage.
Likewise, the demand for “[t]ax and budget policies that reduce disparities between rich and poor” rests upon an underlying quasi-socialist worldview. Forced redistribution of wealth (as opposed to giving the poor opportunities to grow their own wealth) can only be justified on one of two assumptions: Either all wealth belongs ultimately to the government (rather than individuals), and government may distribute or redistribute the wealth as it sees fit; or rich people must have accumulated their wealth unjustly, and therefore the government is entitled to punish them with high taxes.
In endorsing “[e]quitable global trade and aid that protects local economies, cultures and livelihoods,” the NCC appears to be siding with the “fair trade” movement. That movement, with NCC support, has repeatedly rejected free trade agreements that might expand opportunities for individuals to change their local economies, cultures, and livelihoods.
Utopian Foreign Policy
The creed’s foreign policy is as utopian as its domestic policy. It would commit the churches to “a culture of peace and freedom that embraces non-violence.” Peacemaking would be pursued “through multilateral diplomacy rather than unilateral force.” Nations would undertake “[n]uclear disarmament and redirection of military spending to more peaceful and productive uses.” A key means toward these ends is “strengthening of the United Nations and the rule of international law,” according to the NCC.
All of these phrases have a distinctively pacifist ring—despite the fact that the vast majority of the council’s church constituency is not pacifist, but stands within the just war tradition of mainstream Christianity. Nowhere is there an acknowledgment that force, or the threat or force, may sometimes be necessary to preserve or restore peace and justice.
The creed shows no awareness of the complexities that might complicate its utopian goals: that effective diplomacy often relies on at least an implicit threat of force; that unilateral disarmament can be an invitation to war rather than a step toward peace; that humankind will never be able to eliminate the danger of nuclear weapons as long as scientists retain the knowledge of how to make them; that the United Nations, having proven incapable of stopping even horrendous genocides inside countries of little strategic importance (e.g., Rwanda, Sudan), can hardly be expected to impose solutions for major international crises; that international law is not self-executing but depends upon sovereign governments with the means of coercion to enforce it.
The NCC creed’s affirmation of “[f]ull civil, political and economic rights for women and men of all races” is vague enough to be non-controversial. The question of what constitutes “full … rights” remains unanswered, however. Do they include, for example, the treatment of gay, lesbian, and bisexual relationships as morally equivalent to the marriage of man and woman? A few NCC communions, such as the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ, are committed to that agenda of “inclusion.” Many others would oppose it. The creed leaves the question open.
Mixed Messages Concerning Theology
The creed also presents mixed messages regarding the importance of theology. The fact that the NCC’s predecessor had a social creed, and now the council has a new 700-word social creed, is telling when juxtaposed with the absence of a theological creed. The only agreed doctrine among the member communions is a single line from the preamble to the NCC constitution. There, the council is described as 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.”
One would think that a body pursuing Christian unity might be able to affirm more common theology than that single line. And one would expect the NCC’s member communions to find much greater agreement on basic Christian teachings (e.g., the sort of affirmations contained in the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds) than on political questions such as tax rates and U.S. trade policy. But, sadly, the priorities are reversed in the NCC. It offers with great confidence a social creed demanding “binding covenants to reduce global warming,” while it seems unable to make (or uninterested in making) a common statement of belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A 2006 NCC background paper, entitled “Toward a New Social Awakening: The Role for a 21st Century ‘Social Creed for the Churches,’” asserts that the new creed “is more explicitly theological than the 1908 statement.” That assertion is true, but less meaningful than it might seem at first glance. The 1908 creed contained only one reference to God, a final phrase referring to “all who follow Christ.”
By contrast, the 2008 creed uses theological beliefs as a framework for its social goals. It is Trinitarian in its structure: between its introductory and concluding paragraphs, one paragraph each is devoted to describing a social witness influenced by, in order, “our Creator,” “Jesus,” and “the Holy Spirit.” (Note the avoidance of the classic creedal names “the Father” and “the Son.” Many NCC liberals reject those names as sexist.) Each of these paragraphs, in turn, is followed by a list of the social witness goals associated with each member of the Trinity:
- The creed connects “our Creator” with the worth of each human being; the six social witness goals here relate to human and worker rights.
- Jesus is associated with the interconnectedness of human beings, so the seven related goals deal with hunger, poverty, education, health care, social security, taxes, national budgets, immigration, housing, and public works.
- The Holy Spirit is identified with creation, leading to seven goals concerning the environment and peacemaking.
This Trinitarian structure, undoubtedly motivated by a desire to be more theological, unfortunately provides superficial, rather than robust, doctrinal content. The identifications of specific issues with members of the Godhead particularly appear artificial and forced. For example, why should “[p]rotection from dangerous working conditions” be identified with the Father rather than the Son or the Holy Spirit?
There is a bit more substantive theology in the first paragraph of the 2008 creed. In looking at a world desperately in need of radical transformation to achieve human harmony and justice, the drafters turn to Isaiah 65 and John 10:10 as scriptural theme verses. The creed derives its call for “compassion over suspicion and equality over domination” from Isaiah’s vision of a “peaceable kingdom” and Jesus’ promise of abundant life for all
But while the council finds inspiration for its own social goals in the teachings of Scripture and the example of Christ, it ignores doctrine not directly related to those goals. For example, it does not discuss the work of Christ (e.g., his incarnation, death, resurrection, ascension, and return) apart from the NCC’s own work
There are two unfortunate effects of this focus. First, the NCC arguably places only subsidiary importance on the big biblical picture of God’s work in Jesus Christ; the council’s social goals are its primary concern in this document. Second, the achievement of the goals appears to rest more on the members of the NCC than God. “We Churches of the United States” seem to be doing most of the work, with the Godhead cheering from the sidelines.
NCC leaders seemed concerned that some member communions would take an emphasis on doctrine negatively. According to the aforementioned drafter interviewed for the video, the creed is “not meant to say, ‘If you don’t believe, you’re out.’ It’s meant to say, ‘This is common ground we’ve reached together.'” The background paper further comments, “This is not a doctrinal creed; it is a shared affirmation that points to the heritage of redemptive energy and theological ethics in every faith tradition.”
So while the 2008 creed undoubtedly is more theological than its century-old predecessor, the theology of the new creed is fairly minimal and bent toward a liberal social action perspective. That same combination—theological laxity and political one-sidedness—led the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America to leave the NCC in July 2005. The new social creed does not address the doctrinal or social policy differences between the member communions of the council.
Reception of the Creed
Despite its clearly liberal bent, the creed was seen as not inclusive enough by Episcopal Church delegate Shelly Fayette. Fayette argued that a reference to “each woman, man, and child” in the creed should be changed to be the more generic “people” or “all humanity.” Chris Iosso, coordinator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy and one of the main drafters of the new NCC creed, responded that the language was intentional and fully inclusive. Fayette responded, “People are born intersexed and [we] need to respect those communities and those persons, not to force an identity on people.” (“Intersexed” persons are those born with a mixture of male and female characteristics.) This radical suggestion, however, went nowhere; it was not discussed further, and the creed was received as is without any dissenting votes.
In fact, the creed was received favorably. The Rev. J. Philip Wogamon of the United Methodist Church called it “a splendid piece of work” and praised it for tackling the issues of racism and the peace movement, both of which he said were overlooked in the 1908 creed. New NCC General Secretary Michael Kinnamon commended the new creed for “celebrat[ing] our history, look[ing] to the future, … and help[ing] us understand what our part can be.”
But at a time when the NCC has become more controversial and one church body has left the organization, does the creed give enough “common ground” to the remaining 35 member communions? Will the members of every communion agree with the creed’s government-centered solutions to complex social issues? Will they all agree that the death penalty should be ended? Will they agree to the NCC’s near-pacifist stance on matters of defense? Or will these politically and socially liberal solutions cause more church bodies to leave the council?
Whatever may occur, the social creed clearly presents liberal social action as a center of unity for the different branches of the body of Christ. It next will be released for discussion and study by NCC member communions and other Christian groups.
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