From Mainline to Sideline: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches

Despite charges that the National Council of Churches funneled money to Marxist-Leninist governments and insurgencies, there has been no sustained examination of the NCC’s politics, social policy, and spending habits. In From Mainline to Sideline, journalist K.L. Billingsley documents a pattern of political partisanship by the NCC. He describes the lack of structural coherence, the gap between the church elites and the people in the pews, and the doctrinaire ideology that has resulted in a flawed moral witness by the NCC on issues as diverse as nuclear weapons, civil rights, South Africa, and Latin America.