Minions of the Right

In the United Church of Christ, local churches are fully autonomous. They own their property, their endowments, their membership contributions, and any other assets they have accrued over the life and history of the congregation. Lyle Schaller has described the United Church of Christ less as a denomination than a “voluntary affiliation of local congregations.” A 2/3 vote by any congregation is all that is needed to leave, and to take with them millions of dollars in assets. For this reason, they have been aggressively targeted by the religious right and their minions.

Dorhauer clearly is exactly the kind of person he loathes: an extremist. The article makes references to a number of churches and pastors who have rejected the direction of the United Church of Christ, including my own, St. Paul's Evangelical Church (and our pastor Mark Friz). The assertion that my church left the UCC under coercion is absurd; I think many, myself included, were hesitant simply because we did not follow the workings of the denomination that closely (being autonomous, the church did not pass on the parts of the denomination that were problematic). Nevertheless, after examining the record of the UCC, I was proud to cast my vote in 1998 to disfellowship with the denomination despite my continued affection for much of what was the Evangelical and Reformed church of the past.

To reject the UCC does not mean one is part of the far right. As one who finds himself generally most comfortable within neo-orthodox circles, it would be hard to accuse me of being among the ranks of Falwell and Robertson. This is not a right versus left issue, it is the continuation of the age old battle between orthodoxy from heterodoxy.

The UCC is not just a liberal leaning mainline denomination. It is generally agreed upon to be the farthest left leaning mainline — going far beyond the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and either major Baptist denomination. Of the other mainlines, I've followed controversies most in the UMC and PC (USA) and I'd note that both continue to, at least hesitantly, fall on the Biblical side of major issues such as the uniqueness of Jesus in the process of salvation. The UCC, on the other hand, has slid far off the map to the fringes of orthodoxy, to the extent that even its own joke about the name standing for “Unitarians Considering Christ.”

They are certainly within their rights to go in that direction. But they should recognize that not every church wishes to follow in their path to a pluralist theology. Choosing a different one does not show some imagined infidelity to the denomination, but rather a rightful usage of the ability to choose our own destiny.