United Church of Christ The Rev. J. Bennett Guess 216-736-2177, 216-773-9222 newsroom@ucc.org
For immediate release April 19, 2006
United Church of Christ communications director criticizes 'Meet the Pr ess' for excluding mainline church voices
NBC's Meet the Press is wrong to ignore leaders of the nation's 45 mill ion mainline Protestant, Orthodox and African American Christians, says the communications director of the 1.3-million-member United Church of Chri st.
The Rev. Robert Chase says the annual "Faith in America" installment on Meet the Press, which aired on Easter Sunday, April 16, "totally shut o ut any representation from the nation's mainline churches."
For at least the second year in a row, NBC's invited panel of religious leaders included no representative from the National Council of Churche s or any of its 35 member communions, such as the UCC, Episcopal Church, Uni ted Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Evangelical Lutheran Ch urch in America, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Reformed Church in America, Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, among others.
"This issue transcends liberal and conservative, Left and Right," says Chase, who also chairs the National Council of Churches' communications commission. "It's about the continued absence of representation afforde d to mainline, mainstream voices. The fact that NBC could have an hour-long conversation about religion in America and think it was permissible to avoid any representation from more than 100,000 mainline Protestant, Orthodox or African American churches is something worth questioning."
Sunday's program on faith and politics, hosted by Tim Russert, included Father Richard J. Neuhaus and Sister Joan Chittister, both Roman Cathol ics; the Rev. Joel Osteen, Pentecostal pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston; Jewish Rabbi Michael Lerner; Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr, who is Musl im; and Jon Meacham, Newsweek's religion editor.
Last year's lineup, Chase points out, also failed to include mainline church representation. In 2005, Christian panelists included a Protesta nt evangelical, a Roman Catholic priest and the president of the Southern Baptist Convention.
While the programs participants were balanced along political lines, Ch ase says, the "persistent absence" of mainline church representation troubl es him.
"At the beginning of the show, Tim Russert asked, 'Were people more religious at the founding of our country and were we more divided on mo ral issues back then?'" Chase says. "Ironically, there was no one present t o represent those historic, mainline Protestant traditions that have been so prominently at the center of American life since its earliest days."
The United Church of Christ is increasingly calling media outlets to ta sk for failure to air the religious perspectives of mainline religious gro ups. The UCC has created an online advocacy site <accessibleairwaves.org> to encourage mainline Christians concerned about their increasing invisibi lity in the media, despite their prominence in America's town squares.
According to Media Matters, prominent leaders of the Religious Right (J erry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Gary Bauer and Rich ard Land) have amassed as many as 40 appearances on the major Sunday mornin g talk shows during the past eight years. Meanwhile, the media watchdog g roup says the principal leaders of the historic mainline Christian denominat ions have not appeared once.
The United Church of Christ, the largest Protestant church in New Engla nd, was formed in 1957 with the union of the Congregational Christian Churc hes in America and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Eleven signers of t he Declaration of Independence were from UCC-predecessor traditions, and m ore than 10 percent of present-day UCC congregations were formed prior to 1 776, with the earliest still-operating church founded in 1616.
In 1773, Old South UCC in Boston helped inspire the Boston Tea Party an d, in 1777, Old Zion Reformed UCC in Allentown, Pa., hid the Liberty Bell from occupying British forces. Today, the UCC's membership includes six U.S. senators.
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