Rachel DiCarlo, editorial assistant

IT MIGHT BE no accident that the national decline in church attendance has mirrored the rise of activism by church leadership. One religious group famous for its social agenda is the National Council of Churches. Although supposedly a nonpartisan organization, for the past 40 years the NCC's politics has usually sat on the far left of the political spectrum. Since Rev. Bob Edgar took over as the NCC's general secretary in 2000, the group hasn't jettisoned its liberal ways.

What is Edgar's record?

For starters, he's carried on the NCC's ongoing love affair with Cuba. One of his first acts in office was to pick up where his predecessor Joan Campbell Brown left off and immerse himself in the Elián González saga. His NCC secured a Washington lawyer for Elián's father and then chartered the plane that flew him to the United States. Edgar's press office in New York released statement after statement urging the Clinton administration to send Elián back to Cuba. At every turn Edgar's positions were identical to those of the Cuban government--right down to demanding that the boy be denied U.S. citizenship.

Edgar's affinity for Cuba didn't end with Elián. He has also advocated that the United States lift its trade embargo. And last year, after President Bush denounced Castro as "a tyrant who uses brutal methods to enforce a bankrupt vision," Edgar claimed that Bush's anti-Castro rhetoric could be chalked up to an attempt by the president to shore up support for his brother Jeb in Florida and secure his own reelection in 2004. "In many ways," Edgar said in an anti-embargo speech to the Washington Office of Latin America, "this president is blind and continues to encourage blindness in others."

The NCC has also begun to cater more to homosexual interests under Edgar's watch. "Although they are officially neutral on [homosexuality], Edgar shows a lot more public support for [homosexual] interests than Joan Campbell Brown did," says Alan Wisdom, vice president of the Institute for Religion and Democracy.

In late 2000 Edgar withdrew his signature from an ecumenical Christian Declaration on Marriage that sought to "recognize an unprecedented need and responsibility for churches to help couples begin, build, and sustain better marriages." He objected to the phrase in the Declaration defining marriage as "a holy union of one man and one woman." He later issued a "public apology"--his words--and explained that he supports "a blessing of [same-sex] partnership, marriage of people who love each other." Yet he has never thrown a tantrum over Fidel Castro's longtime policies of expelling and sending homosexuals to labor camps and quarantining AIDS patients.

Edgar also opposed the war in Iraq: "The president and others in the U.S. government rhetorically divide nations and peoples into camps of 'good and evil.' Demonizing adversaries or enemies denies their basic humanity and contradicts Christians' beliefs in the dignity and worth of each person as a child of God," reads one NCC resolution from last November.

In a postwar policy paper presented to the University of San Diego last month, Edgar wrote that "President Bush has given us his vision. It is a vision of America as the world's sheriff . . . Iraq did not have any connection to the al Qaeda attacks . . . the president and his highly ideological team played fast and loose with intelligence reports, alleging connections between Iraq and al Qaeda that were disingenuous at best." Recent evidence shows that Edgar was incorrect in this criticism.

And that wasn't his only mistake. As Joseph Loconte reported in The Weekly Standard three weeks ago, Edgar insisted that American troops would ignore the rules of warfare and wouldn't hesitate to kill women and children, saying, "The ordinary people in Iraq are going to be the targets of the bombing."

Also, in an antiwar ad in the New York Times last December, Edgar implied that God had taken a position on the war. "President Bush: Jesus changed your heart. Now let Him change your mind. Your war would violate the teachings of Jesus Christ. It is inconceivable that Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and the Prince of Peace, would support this proposed attack."

Maybe, maybe not. It is, however, inconceivable that God intends his church to be used as a front for left-wing politics.

Rachel DiCarlo is an editorial assistant at The Weekly Standard.