WASHINGTON (ABP) — Progressive and moderate religious leaders have formed a new group to challenge what they view as the Religious Right's dominance of public debates about political and social issues.
A group of rabbis and ministers formally launched the Clergy Leadership Network with a Nov. 21 press conference in Washington. The group is constituted as a Section 527 organization under the federal tax code. Such groups — particularly those with Democratic-leaning agendas — have proliferated in recent years as a result of new campaign-finance laws.
As a 527, the Clergy Leadership Network will have more latitude than most political action committees or religious groups. While it cannot directly endorse political candidates, it can receive unlimited donations from individuals, organizations and corporations, and can spend substantial portions of its income on things like political advocacy and “issues ads” in media outlets.
“That category allows us to move beyond non-partisanship,” Albert Pennybacker, president of the group's board, told reporters. Pennybacker, a Disciples of Christ minister from Lexington, Ky., is a former public-policy official with the National Council of Churches.
The group will have to report its donors and expenditures to the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Elections Commission. The group has no formal ties to any political party, although it has leased office space on Capitol Hill across the street from the Democratic National Committee's headquarters.
Pennybacker said he and the other ministers and rabbis who are the group's founding members believe that now is a crucial time for religious moderates and liberals to speak out on public policy issues. “We are deeply concerned about the well-being of our country,” he said.
The organization's mission statement also says its members “are committed to sweeping changes — changes in our nation's political leadership and changes in failing public policies.”
Pennybacker said the network's three main areas of advocacy and concern will be economic justice, child welfare and the “unilateral foreign policy that we've been pursuing” in the United States. Additionally, the group will advocate for separation of church and state.
Founding member James Dunn, who also spoke at the conference, said one of his goals for the group would be to provide a religious view to the media that differs from the voices of extremists on the left and right, which he described as a kind of “Manichean dualism.”
Dunn, the retired executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee on Public Affairs, also decried the Bush administration's agenda on public funding for religious charities and schools. “Our religious freedom is denied when we are compelled to pay taxes for religious institutions,” he said.
Besides Dunn, the organization's committee of founders includes at least six other Baptists: Jimmy Allen, the Southern Baptist Convention's last moderate president and former pastor of the First Baptist Church of San Antonio; Charles Adams, pastor of Detroit's Hartford Memorial Baptist Church; Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition; Joan Brown Campbell, former general secretary of the National Council of Churches; Bob Maddox, pastor of Briggs Memorial Baptist Church in Bethesda, Md., and editor of the Capital Baptist, the District of Columbia Baptist Convention's newspaper; and Otis Moss, pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland.
Several religious groups in Washington — such as the Interfaith Alliance — already support progressive causes. Others, such as the Baptist Joint Committee, advocate for religious freedom and church-state separation. But Pennybacker said the Clergy Leadership Network's unique tax status, as well as the fact that it is composed of individual clergy members rather than denominational groups, sets it apart.
Pennybacker said the network is aiming for a budget of between $300,000 and $400,000 in the first year. He declined to say if any individuals or groups had provided large start-up gifts to the group, but Pennybacker later said he had spoken to some potential large donors. “If we're going to be successful, then we're going to have to have more funding,” he said.
Pennybacker also said the network would avoid being “drawn into” debates on divisive issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
But Marjorie Signer, director of communications for the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, questioned that policy. “How can they truly address what the Bush administration has so successfully used to rally the extreme right?” she asked. “Can they be effective, or are they undermining themselves?” asked Signer, who attended the press conference.
Interfaith Alliance President Welton Gaddy, a Baptist pastor, criticized the council's aim to get more involved in partisan politics. “I am always troubled when religious organizations — whether from the right, the left, or the center — jump directly into the partisan political fray,” Gaddy said in a statement released shortly after the press conference. “With such involvement inevitably comes the serious risk of compromising the integrity of religion and the vitality of the democratic process.”
Gaddy also said the use of 527 organizations for religious purposes is troubling, because many campaign-law experts view the groups as “not-so-subtle means of bypassing recent campaign finance regulations.” Gaddy's organization has strongly opposed recent attempts by conservative legislators and religious groups to change federal tax laws so that churches and other religious groups may endorse political parties and candidates while retaining their tax-exempt status.
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