(ENI) Edgar is returning to Washington, D.C. to head up Common Cause, a grassroots advocacy group for good governance, with 36 state organizations and nearly 300 000 members. He knows the city well from his time as a member of the U.S. Congress from 1975-1987.
Among his accomplishments during eight years at the NCC: more focus on fewer initiatives; some allegiances with Christian evangelical groups on issues such as the environment and poverty; and, a sturdier financial footing for a body that some, even Edgar, feared might shut down, given years of financial problems.
In a recent interview with Ecumenical News International, Edgar, 64, acknowledged that in his first year in office, ‘I wasn’t sure it was salvageable.’
His achievement is begrudgingly noted by some opposed to the liberal political position they see held by the United Methodist minister and former lawmaker, who is also a former seminary president.
‘Bob Edgar has probably done a good job as NCC general secretary,’ James Tonkowich, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, said about Edgar’s tenure. Edgar announced in October 2006 he would not seek a third term as NCC general secretary.
Tonkowich and others like him, however, long critical of the perceived liberal position taken on many issues by the NCC and some of its 35-member denominations, say the council is too deeply rooted in an era of ‘big institutional ecumenism’ to be as influential as it once was. The critics point to declining denominational numbers as signs the NCC-member churches are not as robust a force as U.S. churches labelled more conservative on political and social issues.
US church historian Martin Marty told ENI that Edgar gave the NCC ‘good years’, though he noted that while the council’s financial situation may now be stabilised, it remains tight.
‘Not an easy job,” Marty said of possible challenges facing Edgar’s successor, expected to be named later in 2007. Clare Chapman, the NCC’s deputy-general secretary for finance and administration, has been named to act in Edgar’s place until a successor is appointed.
For his part, Edgar spoke to ENI of both his accomplishments and shortcomings. On the financial side, he said his main charge as NCC leader had been achieved. He had stemmed spending and ended mismanagement that had taken place throughout the 1990s.
While the IRD, among others, has questioned what they say was Edgar’s push to have the NCC increasingly dependent on foundational support, the outgoing general secretary makes no apologies for having secured more diversified funding. He also says criticism of the NCC by the IRD, which he said ended up with his becoming targeted by the conservative organization, actually resulted in the council raising more money.
Edgar acknowledges that given his moderate-to-liberal Protestant ‘social gospel’ background, he may not have always been as sensitive as he might have been to the diversity of the NCC governing board’s concerns about the nature of the church and church order.
On this issue, the Rev. Leonid Kishkovsky of the Orthodox Church in America, a former NCC president, said, ‘When Christians speak, they have to use the language they know, and there are different languages in the Christian world.’ He noted, ‘Sometimes Bob Edgar’s language upset the Orthodox.’ But he added that Edgar was willing to listen and ‘would absorb a very different point of view and language’.
Edgar has no regrets about his activism, whether it be NCC efforts in 2000 on behalf of the family of young Cuban boy, Elián González, to return to Cuba, or his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
‘Some church folks perhaps got more of that than they wanted,’ Edgar said, ‘but the council is better off for it’.
