If you’re hoping to find a “right-wing” in the United Church of Christ the place to find it would be with the Biblical Witness Fellowship. As I’ve written before, Biblical Witness is a small movement in the UCC that is concerned with what they see as “the UCC’s theological surrender to the moral and spiritual confusion of contemporary culture.” They reject modern biblical scholarship and suggest that churches within their movement seek ministers trained in more conservative seminaries outside of the UCC tradition. This week they issued a statement condemning the UCC’s “God Is Still Speaking Campaign.”
Biblical Witness is a member of The Association for Church Renewal, which is part of the Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD). IRD receives funding from Richard Mellon Scaife and other ultra-conservative groups. The group has a long history of promoting intolerance toward gays and lesbians and backs a radically conservative social agenda (the kind you would expect from a Scaife backed group).
The only other “internal” criticism of the UCC commercial that I know of comes from the web site UCCtruths. This web site is dedicated to opposing the UCC less on ideological grounds (though they often promote IRD statements) and more because of a personal dislike of the denomination and UCC leaders. They bill themselves this way:
While it should be obvious at first glance, it needs to be said clearly that this site is in no way affiliated with the United Church of Christ... and we are proud of that.
Only 51 individuals are announced supporters of their site (out of 1.3 million members of the UCC). The UCC could issue a statement praising God for a nice fall day and UCCtruth webmaster James Hutchins would post a statement arguing that the temperature is not warm enough. Some of the time their discussions get down to a pretty infantile level loaded with personal attacks against UCC members. Take this recent exchange from their discussion group (which I took some personal interest in):
See Chuckie's rant about the ad: http://chuckcurrie.blogs.com/
Is it me, or does that picture of Chuck on the left-hand side of his website look Hitler-esque?
-James (Hutchins)
James, Let's not go there (ie. comparisons to AH). I've always liked this group because we have strived to beat the odds of Godwin's Law*.
Chuck's choice of this pic for his blog is perfect for a UCC spokesman: A Leftist/"Liberal" elitist looking down his nose at anyone who dares to disagree with him.
- rsmithiiius
Aaah, let's go there. I found the picture more remeniscent of Alfred E Neuman, although the quality of reason and rational thinking was far below Alfred's abilities.
- Grumpy Misfit
I’m never sure if I should be offended by these kind of remarks or just laugh them off. But I do think they are fairly representative of the level of dialogue on the site. Now someone associated with the site is so committed to disparaging the UCC that they are actually paying for advertising to attract readers. If you happen to stumble onto their site it is worth knowing the people behind the message. Some of their supporters might be members of UCC churches, but the only statement that might be true on their site is that UCCtruths.com is not part of the UCC. They're quite proud of that.
It is often true that UCC churches disagree with each other on a range of issues. Our polity allows for great diversity of thought. In fact, the denomination describes itself this way on the new God Is Still Speaking web site:
Intelligent dialogue and a strong independent streak sometimes cause the United Church of Christ (UCC) and its 1.4 million members to be called a “heady and exasperating mix.” The UCC tends to be a mostly progressive denomination that unabashedly engages heart and mind. And yet, the UCC somehow manages to balance congregational autonomy with a strong commitment to unity among its 6,000 congregations—despite wide differences among many local congregations on a variety of issues.
While preserving relevant portions of heritage and history dating back to the 16th century, the UCC and its forebears have proven themselves capable of moving forward, tying faith to social justice and shaping cutting edge theology and service in an ever-changing world.
The UCC affirms the responsibility of the church in each generation and community to make faith its own in reality of worship, in honesty of thought and expression, and in purity of heart before God. It looks to the Word of God in the Scriptures, and to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to prosper its creative and redemptive work in the world. One of the UCC’s distinguishing characteristics is its penchant to believe that ... God is still speaking, ... even when it puts us out there alone. History has shown that, most often, we’re only alone for a while. Besides, we receive so many gifts from our ecumenical partners, being “early” seems to be one of ours.
We don’t always agree on every issue, but the UCC does a pretty good job of respecting differences and encouraging openness. Despite differences we may have there is a love for the church that transcends those differences. That is a way of being faithful we can be proud of.
