Talk:National Council of Churches/Archive 1

Old discussion
It is not "vandalism" to state the obvious, that the NCC is a left-wing religious (or Religious Left) organization. The Christian Coalition is described as a conservative organization on its page, which it is, so this page should be equally honest and describe the NCC for what it is. Honesty is not "vandalism." Cryptico 12 June 2005


 * Christian Coalition website proclaims its conservatism. Thus the statement there is not a judgement. NCC does not claim that it is left wing, and many of its members would deny this. Earlier statement about attitudes of others was fair in indicating their judgement. Paul foord 02:00, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, and Bill Moyers claims to be an "objective" journalist, and the Fox News Channel claims to be "fair and balanced." If a tobacco company advertised its product as "health food," would the Wikipedia site be obligated to do so as well? That a left-wing organization like NCC denies it has a political agenda, while the Christian Coalition acknowledges it does have a political agenda, only shows the the CC is a more honest organization than the NCC is. The NAACP and NOW (which NCC supports) deny they're ideological, as well. I guess you believe what they say?

Here's a link for you: http://ncccusa.org/assembly/aftext.htm Since when did supporting affirmative action become a non-partisan, non-ideological stance? You mean, just like the CC's opposition to abortion is a non-ideological stance? Do you beleive the Bible, which the NCC has re-written using pro-feminist language, states support for affirmative action?


 * Cryptico 18 June 2005

Antiochian church
This part at best poorly worded and possibly wrong: "It was later determined that the Antiochian Church left because of disagreements with its sister communions over issues of human sexuality." I don't think you can call the other members to the NCC "sister" communions if they are not Orthodox. I would avoid the brother/sister analogy between member churches. It it very confusing. The sentence sounds like it means there is a disagreement between Antioch and other Orthodox churches.

Here is the exact statement: “Unfortunately, the NCC USA started to adopt an agenda and positioning that appeared to depart from the primary purpose of spreading and witnessing the gospel of Jesus Christ,” Father George Kevorkian, Assistant to Metropolitan Philip Saliba - the denomination's senior cleric – told the Christian Post in early August. “It seems to have taken a turn toward political positioning.” from http://www.christianpost.com/article/20050930/3876_NCC_Speaks_Out_About_Withdrawal_of_Orthodox_Church.htm and this should probably be used instead.

24.205.66.2 12:53, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you for finding this. Article corrected. Lewis Collard 16:31, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

The constant re-editing of this page to insert outrageous right-wing attacks against this organization and its character is disturbing. Wikipedia's credibility as a source of reliable information is being destroyed by such activity. An organization ought to be able to define and describe its own program without being subject to such electronic vandalism. These attacks do indicate that the National Council of Churches is an important entity doing important work, else why would the vandals make such elaborate efforts to smear its reputation? On the other hand, maybe their vandalism merely represents idle hands without enough significant work to do... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.219.253.17 (talk • contribs).
 * You could document statements, rather than merely calling them "outrageous right-wing attacks". I could call your approach of deleting a whole load of criticism (which is NOT limited to "right-wingers", theological conservatives, whatever, but you removed that too) could just as easily be called "left-wing whitewashing", and I'd be even more correct in doing so. I've repaired a bunch of your edits, as explained below (or will be shortly). Also, sign your comments with four tildes (~) so I don't have to. With love, Lewis Collard 03:19, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
 * And in addition, use edit summaries. I usually treat removal of huge chunks of text as vandalism. Lewis Collard 03:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Explanation for recent changes
I've changed the text in a bunch of places following changes from [User:65.219.253.17|65.219.253.17]]:
 * the section named "Public Witness" has been un-renamed to "political activities". This is an objective summary of what such activities are. "Public Witness" is a value judgment that is not appropriate.
 * A short summary of criticism of the RSV and NRSV has been restored, though in a different form. Let's not pretend that the RSV and NRSV are less controversial than they actually are.
 * Inexplicitly, the text "Some evangelicals, fundamentalists" was changed to eliminate the former group. This has been restored to the previous version. (Nice try at a cheap shot at the NCC's critics.)

The above was too long to include in an edit summary. Other changes have been given one. Lewis Collard 03:33, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

And in other news, I've made more changes:
 * Describing the political policies that the NCC supports as "left wing" is not to make a value judgment: this is a simple statement of fact. This has been restored.
 * Saying that the NCC supports "civil rights" does carry with it a strong value judgment. Newsflash: opponents of the NCC don't oppose "civil rights" either. This has been removed.
 * Calling the IRD "privately-funded" is irrelevant.

Lewis Collard 03:55, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Too much politicization
The NCC hsa become such a political body (esp with the hiring of a former Congressman as its President -- Republican or Democrat would do this) that it is impossible for the article to not go into politics, but I'm going to try and remove some of the liberal/conservative tags where they seem gratuitous. Also, the article really lacks some specificity such as just referring to the Antioch church and not specifying it as Orthodox, and not mentioning why the NCC makes decisions based on unanimity (a recent invention pushed by the Orthodox because of they percevied as a lack of voice).

However, I have a feeling that [User:65.219.253.17] is going to come and readd much of it. His IP information from Whois lists it from a block at a place called The Interchurch Center, which appears to be related to the NCC (and some other NCC member organizations). I think (but am not 100% sure) than 235.17 is related to the NCC in some way or at least close to them (such as involved in work with the NCC).

24.205.66.2 07:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

I made some changes tonight. Most were punctuation and grammar related (some as trivial as harmonizing Oxford commas). But some were because either the citation didn't fit the statement that it referenced (the statement often being a larger claim than the link) or the content went out of its way to politically label one side of the debate buy not label the other side (such as the statement about criticism of the NRSV coming mostly from conservatives, but supporters of the NRSV are not equally labeled liberals (which most of the them are).

Tomorrow I'll probably add more on the tenuous Orthodox relationship to the NCC and probably leave it at that for others to pick up and go with (preferably not a NCC bigot or apologist).

I don't like deleting a couple of the lines, but I couldn't find information on them (such as the policy papers that the article said the NCC published -- I have no doubt they exist, but I would like to find them instead of some vague line about them existing somewhere.

24.205.66.2 09:04, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Context and closeness
I can't find references to some of 12.181.243.2's previous edits, so I'm removing some of them. I think the Orthodox context on the NRSV is needed, because I am trying to update the article to add information about the Orthodox relationship to the NCC (founding and recent), and the fact that they do not accept the NRSV provides background for paragraphs I'm trying to add, but haven't had any time. Also, just throwing a "citation needed" tag on something isn't grounds for leaving it there. The reason I removed at least one of those statements (the one about the NRSV being the most widely used), is because I wasn't able to find a good citation for it, so I removed it. If it is going to be re-added, a citation needs to be found. Please write something in the comments section about further changes concerning these issues, because tonight I wasted a lot of time re-adding edits instead of continuing with new work. (And I looked for the link/reference numbers for the WFN, but didn't find anything. Alexa and Google, neither report very high traffic or link counts to wfn.org, with many other religion sites (news and non-news) outpacing it. Lacking a reference, I'm removing it. I also deleted some of the glowing language that is almost impossible to fact check (such as "venerable" or "most").

24.205.66.2 04:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Editor 12.181.243.2 (and your other IPs). Before you revert some the deletions I made, can you find a cite? I looked and couldn't find citations for some of your edits, so I removed them. Please communicate before re-adding the claims. Thanks.

24.205.66.2 05:35, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * 24.205.66.2, thanks for your work in cleaning up the article. Good job. :) Lewis Collard 15:43, 29 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I can't seem to get the other editor to provide any citation. I don't want to violate the three revert rule, but I don't know how else to go about this since all the pages I read seem to require that a dialog currently be going on. They tend to say that they are essentially cooperative processes and only work when both parties are willing. Nojj 04:22, 1 May 2007 (UTC) (formerly 204.205.66.2)
 * WP:3RR applies to three reverts by one editor in a 24-hour period. So you don't qualify. (I've just reverted the "most widely used text in seminaries and universities" claim again. Sigh.) Lewis Collard 03:22, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I finally just removed the IRD graph. I think there used to be a tie-in to the article, but there no longer appears to be enough of a connection to really justify a paragraph about them (or even mentioning them it seems). Also, I removed the short graph about the NCC requiring unanimous consent to pass resolutions. I've been searching for info on how decisions are made, haven't really found anything saying that they have to be unanimous. The WCC now requires unanimity because the Orthodox were having some issues with getting out voted by smaller Protestant denominations. Once I saw an article that mentioned something passing even with a no vote, I thought it was enough to pull the sentences. Nojj 05:53, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Once again, thanks for the housecleaning (in this as well as other edits). :) The (originally short!) paragraph about the IRD, however, is relevant because they are one of its most vocal critics. The reason it has a critique (more accurately, a left-wing hit piece) of the IRD footnoted is because our anonymous IP editor kept on adding it, in a manner inconsistent with the citation style of the rest of the article. Our anonymous editor did not respond to my last message left for him (I'm guessing his IP changed). So, I footnoted it after "controversial" so it wouldn't be added in again. Also, our friend added irrelevant (in this context) material about IRD's funding, and inaccurately describing its founding by conservative Roman Catholics), which bloated the paragraph further, and so I gave up.
 * In my opinion, the material on IRD should be re-added, in a shorter form; the reason the ex-paragraph got so long was because I tired of reverting it. What do you reckon? Lewis Collard 07:58, 3 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The reason I think the IRD paragraph is now out of place is because nowhere is the IRD metioned or used in criticism of the NCC. Criticism of The Nation magazine almost makes more sense even though it isn't a religious organization. I also just started deleting some of the unsourced claims made by the anon editor. It takes me a couple hours to try and verify some of the adjectives used or numbers. I don't think I have found a single one to be correct either, for example, I can't find the commission that s/he says will be celebrating its 50th aniversay. I only site I can find say something more like 77. The more I spend on not finding sources, the less I have time to add. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to add some actually new matierial. Nojj 04:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
 * You are really quite a tireless person, Nojj. Thank you very much for the time you are putting into this article. You're doing an excellent job. :) Lewis Collard 13:55, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

This whole article is starting to sound like an NCC press release that bullet points every program they have. No depth or anything. I spent more time tonight looking for citations, removing adj like "conservative", and wondering if our NCC employed friend is ever going to comment. Nojj 04:59, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I've given up on this article for that reason. :/ Lewis Collard! (User_talk:Collard|natter]]) 10:54, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Non-members
Should be some mention of the rather obvious fact that some of the largest and/or fastest growing Protestant denominations refuse to join... AnonMoos 06:43, 10 August 2007 (UTC)

David Rivera - Final Warning
It is stated in this book that it is :


 * founded in 1908 by Walter Rauschenbusch, a baptist (socialist) and Henry Ward (communist, as federal council of church
 * identified by congress as "communist organization aimed at the establishment of a state churh"
 * office and naval inteligence reported they gave "aid and confort to the communist movement and party"
 * in 1942 their platform called for a world governement
 * financially supported by Andrew Carnegie and John D Rockfeller Jr

It requires no more to say that it is part of the new-age movement.

Menant (talk) 16:19, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Confusion of Included Denominations
In this entry, there is distinct confusion when concerning included denominations. Although there is a section precisely labeled "Member Denominations," in no way does the article truly definer to the reader in what ways the "Member Denominations" differ from non-members. The inclusion of the link table "United States Christian Bodies" muddles the matter two-fold: not only is the table situated in-between two sections (giving the reader no definite context by which to pertain the information to); but one of the article sections it resides in just so happens to be "Member Denominations." This error can lead readers to interpret the table as signifying that ALL religious denominations in America belong to the NCC.

This is true. It happened to me. I stared at the article for five minutes while my mind writhed, trying to decipher the broken code.

There seems to be a healthy amount of editing for this page, so I am sure that an enthusiast would do a much better job of fixing this than I.

Patron Vectras (talk) 09:26, 15 March 2009 (UTC)