Dead on Impact
The Demise of an Interfaith Lobby
by Mark Tooley
For 25 years it was the organized public policy voice of liberal religion in the nation’s capital. Interfaith Impact, based in the United Methodist Building on Capitol Hill, had a substantial staff and included 40 religious constituencies, including all the major mainline Protestant churches, several Catholic orders, Unitarians, Jewish groups, the American Muslim Council, the National Council of Churches (NCC), and the ecumenical Church Women United. Its highest profile activity was the annual Capitol Hill Briefing, when religious activists from all over the country would flock to Washington to hear major liberal political spokesmen, such as Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton.
Interfaith Impact was the leader in organizing religious people behind liberal causes: a larger welfare state, abortion rights, opposition to US military initiatives, gay rights, opposition to organized school prayer, etc.
But in 1995, Interfaith Impact went belly-up. Its mainline Protestant supporters, themselves financially constrained, pulled the plug, firing the staff and engulfing themselves in two years of litigation with the organization’s executive director, James Bell. A United Church of Christ minister, Bell claimed his and the other major mainline denominations had subverted Interfaith Impact for the purpose of shutting it down. The courts, unwilling to interfere in interchurch squabbles, dismissed his lawsuit in 1997.
A Somber Mood
Today, the Interfaith Impact Foundation still exists as a shell organization with no full-time staff. Until 1999, its annual briefings in Washington, D.C. continued, organized by the NCC, the mainline lobby offices, and the Graymoor Ecumenical Institute, which provided Father V. Paul Ojibway of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement as a part-time staffer.
But last year’s briefing may have been the last. None is scheduled for this year. According to some, the mainline church offices in Washington, D.C. are virtually incommunicado. Personality clashes, a lack of leadership, financial constraints, and the absence of unifying causes in the post-cold war world have created a frosty atmosphere in the ecumenical world. That freeze was accentuated by a heavy-handed and unwelcome attempt by the NCC to fill the vacuum in the wake of Interfaith Impact’s demise.
Rebuffed by its member denominations, and now forced by steep deficits to curtail its own Washington presence, the NCC has abdicated its leadership role among the Washington church lobby offices.
Physically, Interfaith Impact’s headquarters building has never looked better. The United Methodist Building has been recently renovated, its white marble floors and walls sparkling in the bright Washington sun. But the mood inside among its religio-political tenants is somber. And perhaps nothing more embodies the decline of liberal religious politicking in the nation’s capital than the decline and fall of Interfaith Impact.
The Last Syncretism
Mark Tooley directs the United Methodist committee of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (www.ird-renew.org) in Washington, D.C.
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