Testimony on Per Capita Funding of Ecumenical Grants

The following testimony concerning the per capita funding of ecumenical grants (Item 03-08) was presented to the General Assembly Procedures Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008), in San Jose, CA, on June 23, 2008.

I’m Alan Wisdom, an elder at Georgetown Presbyterian Church in DC and Vice President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. I’m also the author of these two sheets, which are in your mailboxes, discussing per capita grants to ecumenical groups.

I urge you to adopt Item 03-08 that would transfer ecumenical grants from the per capita budget to the mission budget. But delay implementation until the 2011 budget, so that your friends on Committee 8 [Mission Budgets] don’t have to suddenly find $1 million in their 2009 mission budget.

I believe in per capita. If you want to play the game, you’ve got to pay your fair share for the field on which it’s played. My church pays it per capita. But it bothers my conscience that I am forced, through per capita, to underwrite program activities that I would not choose to support.

I’m speaking here of the World and National Councils of Churches. Over the years I have attended several NCC General Assemblies and the most recent WCC Assembly [in 2006 in Brazil]. I co-wrote a book about the NCC.

Let me simply say that a lot of what goes on at those ecumenical meetings is politics, and I don’t agree with the politics. The councils are functionally pacifist in their geopolitics and quasi-socialist in their economics. They condemn the free trade that has allowed hundreds of millions of formerly poor people to enter the global middle class. They have repeatedly failed to speak up for Christians being persecuted under communist and Islamist regimes.

Perhaps some of you agree with the NCC and WCC positions. But I ask you to have some consideration for my conscience and the consciences of many others. Don’t keep forcing us, through per capita, to pay for political advocacy that we find deeply misguided. Move the ecumenical grants to the mission budget, where they can be funded voluntarily. I urge you to adopt Item 03-08, with implementation delayed until the 2011 budgets.