From the July/August, 2001 issue of *Touchstone*

Report

We Don’t Get No Respect

Think Tank Considers Why the Mainline Is Ignored

by Mark Tooley

In a recent speech, columnist George Will described Washington, D.C., as “an enclave surrounded on four sides by reality.” One could say the same thing of many of the offices of the mainline churches.

In March, the Washington-based Aspen Institute hosted a two-day symposium on the public policy witness of mainline Protestant churches. But hardly anyone at the conference fully recognized an obvious problem for mainline church lobby offices in the nation’s capital: Their left-leaning staffs do not speak for most mainline church members.

Instead, speakers such as Robert Wuthnow of Princeton University . . .

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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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