c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) The Rev. Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of Churches, said Monday (Oct. 2) that he will not seek a third four-year term as the top administrator of the ecumenical organization.
Edgar’s current term ends Dec. 31, 2007, and a third term would have been unprecedented in the NCC’s history.
“I care deeply about the council and have invested my best self in the work,” Edgar said in a statement. “The council has been returned to financial stability and has reclaimed its place as a prophetic ecumenical voice heeding Christ’s call to serve the least among us.”
Edgar, 63, informed the New York-based council’s governing board and staff of his decision, giving the organization a chance for “a seamless transition process,” the council said.
Edgar said he has wrestled with his decision for nine months but decided that “two terms seemed enough, both to me and the executive committee.”
The former Democratic congressman and seminary president inherited a $6 million deficit when he arrived at the NCC in 2000 and, after cutting budgets and increasing revenues, has left the agency with nearly $8 million in reserve funds.
“I’m really known as a salvager, and I’ve left the council better than I found it,” Edgar said Tuesday in a phone interview from St. Louis. “The health of the council is healthy enough that foundations … that said they would never give the council money because we were going out of business have turned around and given us resources.”
Edgar has also raised the NCC’s public profile on a host of progressive issues, especially opposition to the war in Iraq and the Bush administration’s policies on torture and domestic spying in the war on terror. He said he has tried to focus the NCC’s mission on “attainable goals” on fighting poverty, boosting the minimum wage and protecting the environment.
“When I was hired, it took me 30 days _ well, maybe 30 minutes _ to realize the problem was not money but (a lack of) vision,” Edgar said.
The Rev. Michael Livingston, the president of the council, said, “We will have much to thank Bob Edgar for when his time of service becomes part of the council’s honored history.”
A search committee will be named this fall for the position that oversees the joint ministry of 35 Protestant, Anglican, Orthodox, historically African-American and peace churches.
Edgar, an ordained United Methodist minister, served in the House from 1976 to 1987, representing a predominantly Republican district in the Philadelphia suburbs. He is the former president of Claremont School of Theology in Southern California and the recent author of “Middle Church: Reclaiming the Moral Values of the Faithful Majority From the Religious Right.”
Edgar said he is “too ornery and too young” to retire and will mull his options over the next 15 months.
“The opportunities are there, and i’ll explore a number of them,” he said. “Obviously I hope to find some place where I can continue to have a bully pulpit where I can focus on the issues I care about _ issues of justice and peace and poverty and the environment.”
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