Assaulting the Citadel

Abstract

This chapter tells the story of how J. Howard Pew and a band of conservative activists attempted to infiltrate the National Council of Churches with the aim of undermining religious support for the welfare state. As with many odd pairings, financial considerations helped bring the parties together. The courtship began when the NCC’s architects hatched the idea of a National Lay Committee—a body of prominent laymen and women that would help the Council keep its finger on the pulse of lay opinion while also boosting the Council’s budget. From Pew’s perspective, the Lay Committee offered a potential backdoor into the citadel of the Social Gospel. The NCC needed money, and he was willing and able to supply it. In return, he asked only that the Council cease issuing pronouncements in favor of government aid to the less fortunate and instead transform itself into a champion of the free-enterprise system. The plan sounded simple enough on paper, yet it ultimately failed to accomplish its principal objective of prompting the NCC to abandon its commitment to a robust social welfare state. And, perhaps surprisingly, it was a group of prominent business leaders, not the alleged communists in the ranks of the clergy, who led the opposition to Pew’s short-lived Lay Committee.