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Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life

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When presidential hopeful Barack Obama gave a landmark speech on race in America in response to searing slices of sermons preached by his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Jr., it underscored just how powerfully judgments of right and wrong can ring out in public from the pulpit, notes Emory Professor Steven Tipton. It also showed how arguably they can ring true or false to the diverse experience of a people pledged to form a more perfect political union.

"Pulpit, pew, and public square frame parts we play in the moral drama and cultural conversation we share as faithful citizens, even as we agree that church and state should be `separate' institutions, each governed by their own free members," said Tipton, a co-author of Habits of the Heart who teaches sociology and religion at Emory and its Candler School of Theology, and serves as a senior fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University(CSLR).

Tipton brings a fine-grained focus to the vivid interplay of religious faith and public life in Public Pulpits: Methodists and Mainline Churches in the Moral Argument of Public Life, just published by the University of Chicago Press.

While much has been made of political influence exerted from the religious right, Public Pulpits explores the contested efforts of mainline Protestant churches to remake the religious center among Americans today and enlarge their civic conscience. Drawing from a decade's fieldwork on Capitol Hill and at denominational conferences across the country, Tipton probes the firsthand social experience and moral insight of national church leaders and activists, and their parachurch allies and adversaries.

He begins by charting the course of moral arguments between the Bush Administration and the mainline churches-- Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and United Church of Christ--over two major issues: going to war in Iraq and doing good for the needy at home through faith-based initiatives. Opposition to war in Iraq was widespread among mainline church leaders, who argued that a pre-emptive attack would betray just-war and just-peace principles rooted in Christian tradition. They made public pleas to Bush to respond to reason and revelation alike, saying, "Jesus changed your heart. Now let him change your mind." On the contrary, President Bush invoked his own conviction that "everybody wants to be free, and God wants them to be free."

In proposing faith-based initiatives to fund charitable providers of social services, Bush lifted up a Good-Samaritan vision of compassionate citizens volunteering to heal and help their needy neighbors help themselves. But faithful charity cannot silence the biblical call for social justice, countered many mainline churches, or excuse government from facing its responsibilities to assure adequate health care, affordable housing, and living wages for all Americans.

Tipton reaches deep into the heart of denominational strife in United Methodism, analyzing the progressive "prophetic witness" of the General Board of Church and Society at odds with the Evangelical crusade for "scriptural renewal" led by the Good News Movement. He traces how the Institute for Religion and Democracy combined a fluent religious lobby with a potent political-action committee to catalyze an alliance of Evangelical renewal groups and Neo-Conservative political forces to combat the mainline churches. "These culture wars actually began in cold-war infighting over Vietnam among radical labor factions, the AFL-CIO, and both major political parties before being born again in the Reagan White House," said Tipton.

Public Pulpits also sets out struggles across the mainline churches in Washington to balance "witnessing and winning" by unifying moral advocacy and education with political mobilization and community organizing. Tipton maps the churches' collaboration in the vigorous rise and painful fall of Interfaith Impact for Justice and Peace, and their frustrating campaign for universal healthcare reform; their cooperation and clashing with the National Council of Churches in its efforts to come to the aid of the Clinton White House and counter-punch the religious right in the 1990s; and their drive to remake the religious center in a shifting ecology of key issues, presidential polices, and values-voter politics since 2000.

In a denominational society such as ours, Public Pulpits asks, how can the mainline Protestant churches practice their moral advocacy and teaching more fully in accord with their self-understanding as a truly conciliar and catholic public church? "Can they help us engage one another in public argument over how we should govern ourselves, even as we embrace one another in mutual care and shared responsibility for the commonweal? That is a prospect worthy of thought as well as prayer."

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The Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University is home to world-class scholars and forums on the religious foundations of law, politics, and society. It offers first-rank expertise on how the teachings and practices of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have shaped and can continue to transform the fundamental ideas and institutions of our public and private lives. The scholarship of CSLR faculty provides the latest perspectives, while its conferences and public forums foster reasoned and robust public debate.