Corruption of the Religious Right
Many years ago, as a recently graduated seminary student, I encountered the corruption of the religious right plunk in the middle of NYC. The late fifties were the days when civil rights had become a part of the mission of caring Christians. The Commission on Race and Religion of the National Council of Churches had included some of our closest friends of that time. It was natural, then, when in seeking a summer job with the National Council of Churches located at 475 Riverside Drive, that I should be diverted, when one was not available there, to the Protestant Council of the City of NY, which was located in the same building and which, I wrongly assumed, would be a local version of same, just as the NYCLU is of the national ACLU.
How wrong I was. I soon discovered that the city version was a completely corrupt operation working simply to raise money to pay its staff and director, Dan Potter, salaries and to carry out the programs of out-of-town fundamentalist (right wing) directors who had been put together by one of the Billy Graham crusades. In fact the Council was working:
1) to sabotage civil rights -- see the Columbia political science dissertation of that period by Henry Pratt who was one of our neighbors in Grant Houses.
2) to prevent the ending of the Sabbath closing law that discriminated against practicing Jews. This law was finally scotched by Mayor John Lindsay who simply ordered that it not be enforced.
3) to cover for fraudulent groups claiming to be religious, which used inclusion in its directory, which I was assigned to update, as cover for a variety of money scams.
All of the above was quite obvious and, as I was to discover, well known to our major Protestant denominations supposedly represented by this organization. I tried my best to expose what was going on and went to the then director of the Federation of NYC Protestant Welfare Agencies -- who not only confirmed what I was reporting, but admitted that such was well known. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians were refusing to contribute monies to this outfit, while nevertheless sending in the details on their churches to be included in its directory and not blowing its cover. In fairness, one of the borough offices, Brooklyn, was honest and outraged by the above and tried to do what it could about it -- but with not much effect.
I left the place in disgust. Dan Potter, a notorious Albany slumlord who was murdered by one of his tenants several years ago, asked me, as I told him I was resigning, whether my immediate boss had tried to hit on me? A bit of a pain that guy was, but I could reassure Potter that I had not been hit upon -- our desks were located about 15 feet from Potter's office. Potter used to take Mondays off to play golf with the trustees somewhere in Westchester.
And so I left institutional Protestantism with a sense that it was dying -- which had been pretty obvious, as I studied with the last of the great Protestant theologians -- Reinhold Niebuhr and such here -- and fine equivalents at Oxford where I spent my middle seminary year as an exchange student.
The bottom line here: my seminary days put me in touch with the best of our 3 major faiths of those days -- Protestant, Catholic, Jewish. Many friends remain from same. But one could see that our religious institutions were falling on hard times and would be fading away much as had the Olympians of ancient Greece and many a previous world religion that had reigned for a time merely to wither away to a wisp of values embedded in the cultures that they had helped form, e.g. the vengeful "eye for an eye" lex talionis of the cruel ancient Babylonian gods:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~tonya/spring/cap/pro4.htm
Let me add that the present NYC Council of Churches is an entirely different beastie, headed by a fine retired clergyman, John Hiemstra, with whom I discussed all of the above over a pleasant lunch at 475 and to whom a copy of this will go. It has an office in 475 and had a staff of 3 when I visited last year. It does good things now. I assume that it would never claim to represent 1,000 NYC churches or anything on the basis of a few hundred post cards sent out to churches with a few returned with mixed responses. A good number of those 'churches' had phone numbers that answered in local bars when I called to confirm them back then while revising that directory -- outreach ministries perhaps
Ed Kent
How wrong I was. I soon discovered that the city version was a completely corrupt operation working simply to raise money to pay its staff and director, Dan Potter, salaries and to carry out the programs of out-of-town fundamentalist (right wing) directors who had been put together by one of the Billy Graham crusades. In fact the Council was working:
1) to sabotage civil rights -- see the Columbia political science dissertation of that period by Henry Pratt who was one of our neighbors in Grant Houses.
2) to prevent the ending of the Sabbath closing law that discriminated against practicing Jews. This law was finally scotched by Mayor John Lindsay who simply ordered that it not be enforced.
3) to cover for fraudulent groups claiming to be religious, which used inclusion in its directory, which I was assigned to update, as cover for a variety of money scams.
All of the above was quite obvious and, as I was to discover, well known to our major Protestant denominations supposedly represented by this organization. I tried my best to expose what was going on and went to the then director of the Federation of NYC Protestant Welfare Agencies -- who not only confirmed what I was reporting, but admitted that such was well known. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians were refusing to contribute monies to this outfit, while nevertheless sending in the details on their churches to be included in its directory and not blowing its cover. In fairness, one of the borough offices, Brooklyn, was honest and outraged by the above and tried to do what it could about it -- but with not much effect.
I left the place in disgust. Dan Potter, a notorious Albany slumlord who was murdered by one of his tenants several years ago, asked me, as I told him I was resigning, whether my immediate boss had tried to hit on me? A bit of a pain that guy was, but I could reassure Potter that I had not been hit upon -- our desks were located about 15 feet from Potter's office. Potter used to take Mondays off to play golf with the trustees somewhere in Westchester.
And so I left institutional Protestantism with a sense that it was dying -- which had been pretty obvious, as I studied with the last of the great Protestant theologians -- Reinhold Niebuhr and such here -- and fine equivalents at Oxford where I spent my middle seminary year as an exchange student.
The bottom line here: my seminary days put me in touch with the best of our 3 major faiths of those days -- Protestant, Catholic, Jewish. Many friends remain from same. But one could see that our religious institutions were falling on hard times and would be fading away much as had the Olympians of ancient Greece and many a previous world religion that had reigned for a time merely to wither away to a wisp of values embedded in the cultures that they had helped form, e.g. the vengeful "eye for an eye" lex talionis of the cruel ancient Babylonian gods:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~tonya/spring/cap/pro4.htm
Let me add that the present NYC Council of Churches is an entirely different beastie, headed by a fine retired clergyman, John Hiemstra, with whom I discussed all of the above over a pleasant lunch at 475 and to whom a copy of this will go. It has an office in 475 and had a staff of 3 when I visited last year. It does good things now. I assume that it would never claim to represent 1,000 NYC churches or anything on the basis of a few hundred post cards sent out to churches with a few returned with mixed responses. A good number of those 'churches' had phone numbers that answered in local bars when I called to confirm them back then while revising that directory -- outreach ministries perhaps
Ed Kent
posted by Ed Kent at 9:00 AM
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