Bright Ideas: Rev. Peg Chemberlin

St. Paul, Minn. — Bright Ideas host Stephen Smith and the Rev. Peg Chemberlin sat down to discuss civil discourse, ethics and her work on President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

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Stephen Smith: This is "Bright Ideas. Fresh Thoughts on Big Issues" from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Stephen Smith. Each month we invite a guest here to the forum at Minnesota Public Radio headquarters to talk about important issues and ideas, and to take questions from the studio audience. Our guest this time is the Rev. Peg Chemberlin. She heads the Minnesota Council of Churches and is the current president of the National Council of Churches of Christ. The NCC is made up of a wide spectrum of faith groups, including Protestant, Anglican, and Orthodox churches, as well as Living Peace and historically African American churches.

Rev. Chemberlin is going to talk with me about ways to find common ground in our politically fractured times, the role of faith and religion in American civic life, and how faith figures into her own life as a regional and national community leader. Welcome, Peg Chemberlin.

Rev. Peg Chemberlin: Thank you. Good to be here, Stephen. [applause]

Smith: Would you tell us how you came to be a minister? And tell us about your particular faith. You are a deacon in the Moravian Church of America North.

Chemberlin: I'm actually a Presbyter, not that anybody cares.

Smith: Is that like a higher level?

Chemberlin: Yeah.

Smith: Wow.

Chemberlin: It means I've been around for a while. That's really what it means. I came from a family that was a real service oriented family and a family that was very faith oriented, so it wasn't too unusual that I would think about doing this. I was about 16 and at church camp, and the president of the denomination stood up and said, "Anyone who thinks they're called to ministry, meet me in the back of the chapel at 01:00." I showed up, and he started wringing his hands.

Smith: How many others showed up, by the way?

Chemberlin: I was the only one, actually. He said, "Well, you'd be a good nurse in the mission fields probably, or maybe a teacher," because my denomination didn't ordain women at that time. So off I went, trying to figure out what I was supposed to do, and went through five different majors in college. I went to three different colleges, and finally had so many credits they had to let me go. I was an English major with an education certification, and started doing a little bit of teaching. But the church kept asking me to do teaching, youth work, and so forth in the church.

Smith: And this was the Moravian Church?

Chemberlin: This was the Moravian Church. So that was all going on. In the meantime, the church had decided that women could be ordained. Somewhere in the midst of that, I went to a New Year's Eve service. Now, Moravians have this tradition of drawing a watchword for the year by lot, just putting your hand in the basket, take out a Scripture piece, and that's yours to reflect on for the year. I pulled one out. It's from Luke 4. Jesus is reading a scroll from Isaiah, and it's "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor."

This was just about the time I was thinking maybe this ordination thing was part of me. I didn't tell anybody about that for a long time. Finally it came out because I kept focusing on "Anointed me to preach this is good. Anointed me to preach this is good."

Smith: So the word came to you out of a hat, not from on high.

Chemberlin: That's kind of how it happened. I'd been feeling like this had value and I should do it. In the meantime, I had started taking a few classes at seminary in Christian education because I was doing all this Christian education work in churches. Little by little, it all just came together, and bingo bango, I had an MDiv and they were making me a minister. It took a while before I really grabbed onto that whole line in Luke 4: "The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." I stayed away from that for a long time, but eventually that got my attention.

Smith: Now I've certainly heard of the Moravian Church, but I couldn't honestly tell you how it differs from the Presbyterians or the Baptists.

Chemberlin: It'd be hard to see how it differs from the Presbyterians, and not a lot of difference from the Baptists, except how we baptize. We practice infant baptism. But the Moravians are pretty mainline Protestant in their life right now. They started in the 1400s after Jan Hus was burned at the stake by the Catholic Church for his concern that the Eucharist should be given in both kinds to the members of the congregation and that the Scripture should be read in the language of the people. That got some play later on, and more and more churches came into it. But at the time, the Roman church didn't like that very much.

Smith: The motto, if you will, or the creed of the Moravians is interesting.

Chemberlin: It's an essential one to me, "In essentials, unity; in non essentials, liberty; and in all things, love." That's been in the Moravian Church for a long time. Other denominations, Presbyterians in particular, also embrace that from time to time. But every Moravian pastor will tell you this is a central part of who they are.

Smith: You are the president of the National Council of Churches of Christ. Tell us what the National Council is. It's been around a while and it's pretty influential.

Chemberlin: It's a communion of communions. When we talk about how it's constituted, it's constituted by the member communions. It's communions who have 100,000 congregations, but it's not those 100,000 congregations who constitute. It's the ELCA presiding bishop and the Episcopal presiding bishop and somebody from the Bishop's Council of the United Methodist Church and the historic black churches, Progressive National Baptist, National Baptist, AME, and so forth.

Smith: And the Peace Churches.

Chemberlin: And the Peace Churches. Church of the Brethren are members, and important members. Quakers are members, Society of Friends. And a number of Orthodox, too, Greek Orthodox, Orthodox Church of America, Armenian Orthodox Church. It's a wonderful array of traditions who have said, "Something in our tradition says that we are related to each other. There's something about our tradition that says we can't be all of who we're called to be without being with each other." That's the central aspect of the National Council of Churches, just like Minnesota Council of Churches. It's an identity of relatedness.

We would say in the Christian tradition that there's one body of Christ, and whether we like each other or not isn't the issue. We don't come together because of a particular issue or because we like each other, we come together because we understand ourselves to be related to each other in the second person of the Trinity.

Smith: But what's the purpose of coming together? What are you trying to achieve?

Chemberlin: I think, first of all, to understand who Christ is in our midst. That has been there, and it's part of the discussion all the time. I think we spend time at our board meetings talking about "What's happening in your denomination? How is God leading you and your denomination?" That doesn't happen at a lot of board meetings, but it does at the National Council of Churches. And then what is it we want to do together? That ranges from a whole set of things. Sometimes, it's simply trade association work, and sometimes it's public witness.

Smith: Trade association work? Like where to have the best convention?

Chemberlin: For instance, we have a project called Biblical Translation and Utilization. So rather than all of our denominations doing their own biblical translation, we're working together to do that. Now that's no small task, and it's one of the more important things that the National Council of Churches has done. So for any of our listeners who read the Revised Standard Version or the New Revised Standard Version, St. John's Bible uses the New Revised Standard Version. That's a National Council of Churches communion translation of the Bible. We're getting ready to do that again. It'll take us a decade to do that, but bringing the best scholars from all of those traditions together to work together towards a new translation.

Smith: But you always work a lot on policy and on trying to influence what's going on in American society.

Chemberlin: We do. There's a Justice and Advocacy Commission. Justice and Advocacy Commission just met in Washington last week, and there was a lot of discussion about where the focus should be. Generally, the focus right now has been on eco justice. We have a strong eco justice program. Washington office works on that a lot. Poverty is an issue that none of us can escape, and National Council of Churches has a new effort in that direction.

But we work on some smaller issues, too. One of the ones that we think is somewhat of a success anyway is that there had been a significant difference between the sentencing for crack cocaine and powder cocaine. That pretty much runs along racial lines. It was 100 to one. We worked hard to change some of this.

Smith: So in other words, people who are doing crack cocaine tend to be African American or people of color and tend to get thrown in jail more often than Caucasians who are doing powder cocaine.

Chemberlin: Right. The sentencing disparity was 100 to one. We worked on that, and we got it down to 19 to one, and that will continue to be part of the conversation in the future. Sometimes it's a small piece that we work on; other times, working with lots of other groups on issues like ending poverty.

Smith: Does it tend to be liberal and progressive? Is there a political cast to the National Council?

Chemberlin: I think some would say there is. We've been charged some decades ago by the "Reader's Digest" with that. But it's hard for me to say when I'm talking to the Metropolitan or the Greek Orthodox Church that this is a liberal fellow. Now, he may have some views which others would interpret as liberal, but this is a very traditional leader. I think that's true for a lot of our leaders.

No one's coming at this from a liberal theology, if you will. We're coming at it from a basic theology of our traditions and Scripture traditions, and what is God saying to us now. I tried to resist it for a while, but the Scriptures are full of calling us to take care of the poor, and to do that as a full fledged community, not simply in charity but also in justice.

Smith: As the president, what are your personal top priorities in this position of authority?

Chemberlin: I came in with a work plan, "This is how I like to work." Everybody else looked at me like, "What?" But I wanted to be forthright with folks about what I understood my job to be, and the first issue, of course, was governance, making sure that business happened the way it needed to and that oversight was given the way that it needed to. That's sometimes a bigger task and sometimes goes along very smoothly; of course, fund development. I think most board members should have some responsibility to add to the fund development.

Smith: Raising money?

Chemberlin: Raising money. But then I said programmatically, I wanted to do two things. Because I have this call to work on poverty, and because that's been a concern of the National Council of Churches for a long time, I said, "I want to see if we can take this to the next level or round the corner on our work on poverty."

I also said I wanted to work on the connection between the National Council of Churches and local and regional councils of churches and ecumenical groups. I'm the first president who's been elected from a state council of churches. They generally have been heads of communion from the denominations who are members.

Smith: And you'd been at the Minnesota Council for 15...?

Chemberlin: 15 years.

Smith: 15 years.

Chemberlin: So let's see what we can do to have a better relationship between the National Council, local and regional councils. Those were the two programmatic foci. And we needed to understand the the National Council Of Churches, as I've said before, is a community of communions. It's not a community of state councils of churches, for instance. So, national presiding Bishop of the ELCA relates to the Bishops of the senates of Minnesota and they're part of the Minnesota Council of Churches, but there hasn't been a direct link between the National Council Of Churches and the Minnesota Council Of Churches, for instance. That's what I planned on and all of that is that work, but then I was appointed to the Obama Advisory Council.

Smith: "The Obama Advisory Council on Faith Based Initiatives and Neighborhood Initiatives," or something like that?

Chemberlin: Oh, that's really close, Stephen. The White House Advisory Council on Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships is the title, which was a wonderful opportunity to bring some of the values of the National Council Of Churches that are member denominations into the discussions that the White House wanted to have. But it was also a wonderful opportunity to build some relationships, so that's always been a big piece for me. So, there's all these people in the room, I get a chance to meet them and understand their perspective.

Smith: Is poverty still your top issue? Because nothing could be more timely, given what's happened to the national economy, and given what's happening to state budgets, welfare budgets, public assistance budgets around the country.

Chemberlin: Absolutely. And I think we're going to have to do much more collaborative work to move forward in the days to come. I was appointed to the domestic poverty task force by the White House, which surprised me because that's what I would have chosen. I didn't think they knew me that well, but apparently they did, so I was delighted to be there. But there were pretty narrow parameters about what the advisory council was to do around those issues. We were not to come back to the White House with policy suggestions. For instance, we started out saying the formula that we use to identify the poverty level needs to be changed. It's built primarily on food costs and those are no longer the primary costs of families. Housing and health care are much more the cost these days.

So, we said to the White House, "You need to change this. Tell your Secretary of Health and Human Services to change this." They said, "It's not your job. No, that's not what we want from you. We want you to tell us how the federal government can work better with non profit, faith based, and secular non profits on the kinds of issues that we're looking at."

So, we came back and said to him, this is our number one recommendation, "Well, non profits are having a problem because more and more people are coming, and at the same time, that we're economically having fewer and fewer donations, lower levels of donations. So, we're seeing a problem we don't have the resources to cover what's happening with poor people and one of those reasons is the poverty level isn't at the right level." And they said, "OK, we hear you."

Smith: They cry uncle or you still working on that?

Chemberlin: Well, I think they were open to that because Secretary Sibilia [sp 16:16] had already said we're talking about how to deal with that, and I don't think it was necessarily because of what we said. So, obviously poverty issues in that work, poverty issues up in the National Council Of Churches, public policy work here at Minnesota too, all of those poverty issues. I came out of the Minnesota food share program. By the time this is broadcast, Minnesota food share month will be over, but we hope that the month of March was a wonderful example of Minnesotan generosity and we just try to raise about 20 percent of the food shelf need during the month of March.

Smith: You're listening to "Bright Ideas. Fresh thoughts on big issues." Each month we invite a guest to Minnesota News headquarters for a conversation about key topics before a live audience. I'm Stephen Smith and my guest this time is Peg Chemberlin, head of the Minnesota Council Of Churches and president of the National Council Of Churches. We're talking about how to find common ground in politically divided times and about the role of the clergy in providing social leadership in the 21st century. So, as you try to tackle issues that are as difficult as poverty in a time when our federal government our politics are as divided as they may have been in certainly our memory, how do you go about positioning yourself as a leader to bring people together who have such profound and fundamental disagreements? How do you find common ground?

Chemberlin: It's a very difficult time. I think the first thing is to understand who's out there and what the landscape looks like. A good deal of media attention today doesn't really tell us who's out there. The middle tends to be ignored and the ends tend to get the attention. I'm amazed, this wonderful opportunity to meet lots of different people, lots of different perspectives, and I'm amazed at the way in which sometimes the sides talk about each other. There is a lot we agree on, just the National Council Of Churches. All right, we want all the historic black churches and the historic peace churches, and the Orthodox Churches, and the main line Protestant Churches, let's see if we can find something we agree on. It's a huge array of things we agree on and a lot of those things we sit at the table with the USCCB, the United States Catholic...

Smith: Conference of Bishops?

Chemberlin: Thank you very much. We just say USCCB. So, by the time you've got the USCCB and the National Council of Churches at the table you've got almost 100 million constituents. Now they don't all agree with their leaders...

Smith: And 200 million opinions.

Chemberlin: That's exactly right. But a lot of agreement on issues particularly that have to do with economic justice kinds of issues. But folks aren't always identified with what their leaders are saying, or folks aren't always identified as being with their leaders in this regard. I think the question is, what do we do to engage the middle and tolerate the ends? If you will. I recently received an award from the Islamic resource group here in the Twin Cities area, "Building Bridges" award, and at the event, primarily a Muslim group, and I said, "Your fanatics and my fanatics both want to win and if either side wins we're in trouble. So, we got to find a way to work together, to hold a middle ground where there's a place for all of us. But we got to tolerate our fanatics in the midst of that because they're a part of us too."

So, I think it starts actually with an understanding of having a relatedness to one another, so out of that ecumenical world view which says we're all related to one another in Jesus Christ as Christians. In the second person of the Trinity there is a relatedness. In the first person of the Trinity, in the creation from the one creator there is a relatedness. So, we're brothers and sisters. The image of God is in all of us.

It doesn't matter if we don't like each other, we have to get along with each other. So, part of it is to simply preach that and repeat, and ask people, "Don't you really think that? Don't you really agree that there is a connectedness here that we have to find ways to deal with?"

That's the place to start and I think that's the ecumenical world view and that's the world view that I know with many of our friends and partners we've been able to express also in our interfaith relationships, both at the National Council Of Churches and at the Minnesota Council Of Churches.

Smith: How do you lead people to compromise, which is a fundamental principle of democracy and it's something that is difficult to find these days. How do you lead people to something like that with the vehicle or with the foundation of religion, where there are so many transcendental, fundamental principles? How do you compromise and use as your background that world, that place in our lives where there are fundamental principles?

Chemberlin: This is very difficult but I think we have to honor that in each other. When I sit down at the table to talk about immigration, I'm coming at it from a strong faith perspective. There's something in my faith, be it welcoming the stranger or Jesus was a refuge or whatever, that I'd bring into the table. Well, it's really hard to ask me to compromise, as you said, a transcendent value of that kind. But there's got to be some humility in it first of all. I don't completely understand that transcendent value. I don't completely understand God's will about this, so I need to be in some conversation with folks about it. If we start with the assumption that there's something about democracy that pleases God, then I've got to live in that democracy that holds faithfulness with the democracy, which means I'm going to have to compromise on the policy.

I don't have to compromise on my value, but I'm going to have to compromise on the policy. There was an interview with a former Prime Minister of Singapore this last week I just found completely fascinating. They were asking him about the Middle East and what was happening in the Middle East countries and he said something like this this isn't a quote, but he said, "Well, there are nations and there are tribes. Some of those countries are nations and some of them are tribes. And a nation is a place where no matter who's in leadership the nation will continue, and a tribe is place where you toss back and forth the leadership."

He was talking about the Middle East and named off Egypt as a nation, is not a tribal place, Libya is a tribal place. But I immediately began to think about our own country and asked to what degree are we moving towards a certain tribalism. The tribalism takes those transcendent values on the left and the right and almost without regard for the nation says "I'm going to fight to the death on these particular issues." It's hard to say that's a bad thing to do. It's hard to say your transcendent values don't have a place here, we're not saying that. But in a democracy, if we understand that to be some part of transcendent value, then we're going to have to find a way to live together with some humility at the table. So, I think there are folks in the middle who believe that and want that to happen.

We're going to have to be more articulate about that — about the value of democracy and the value of humility in our conversations with each other.

Smith: As both a religious leader and as, essentially, a political leader or social leader, where do you draw the line on what is appropriate work for you to be doing in civic life, and are there places where faith based groups, where churches, where religion should just butt out?

Chemberlin: I think the social agreement and the legal agreement is that churches shall not engage in politics. Now, we can give up our 501(c)(3), but even so, I think there is a question about once one sort of blesses one candidate, then there's a difficult time to talk about the values of that candidate or the policies of that candidate. I think my role is to not endorse candidates. I, occasionally, would give some personal money, as a citizen, to one party or the other, or one candidate or the other, but I don't ever stand up and endorse a candidate, and I don't think the faith community should do that. I think there have been some places on both the right and the left that have really crossed that boundary from time to time, and we need to be careful with it.

I think we've got to start with, what is, what do we say about the non establishment clause and the freedom of religion clause? There isn't a clause that says separation of church and state, but it does say the government will not establish a faith group.

And that was one of the other task groups in the Obama Advisory Council, was a reform task group, and they were doing exactly that. They were asking the question, how can this administration engage with, for the common good, the faith community, but not be part of any kind of establishment of one faith over the other?

Smith: And what do you say to those people, and there are some out there, who really, honestly believe that America, that the United States was founded as a Christian nation? And of course, "One Nation under God," "In God We Trust" on our money, that kind of thing. But people who say, you know, this really actually is a Christian nation, and we should just be honest about that.

Chemberlin: Well, I think that the question is OK, so what does that mean now? Does that mean that you want to?

Smith: Prayer in school, for example.

Chemberlin: Cross over the establishment, which prayer in school would do. Whenever the government does something that pays for or encourages one faith tradition over the others, then we've crossed over the non establishment clause. And that clause, I think we have to look at the transcendent value behind that clause in a democracy, which is the freedom of religion. The question is, who do you want calling the shots about what's in that prayer? The liberals don't want the conservatives, and the conservatives don't want the liberals calling the shots. So, it's not like we can start praying in school and everybody's going to be just fine with how we pray and who we pray to, and what we ask for, and what we repent of.

So, I guess the question for me is, is always, "OK, if you want more of that, are you willing to let that be me?" Because, you know, that's possible. And generally, the folks who are looking for more establishment issues don't want it to be the National Council of Churches who's calling those shots.

But it's an ongoing question, and I think we have to push each other about, what's your understanding of the relationship between the church and the democracy and which church, and which religious perspective, and how does that fit with freedom of religion. Because there's not going to be freedom of religion if we give up the non establishment clause.

Smith: As a person who is trying to find common ground, not only among the people in your organization, but is trying to lead others in the nation to common ground on certain issues, how have you, what have you personally learned or discovered about how to deal with people you really don't agree with? And maybe you don't even like?

Chemberlin: First of all, pray that you will be present to them even so. I mean, there is a spiritual discipline that says keep an eye on the Imago Dei, that image of God in that person. Or, if you're not a Christian and come from some other direction, what is it about your tradition that says what this person deserves from you no matter how much you disagree with them. I'm concerned that we're allowing each other to hate the other side. You know, there's an old,"Love the sinner and hate the sin," but there's something valuable to that. I think you're absolutely wrong on that issue, but nevertheless, you know, there's something of value in the person that you are, that I need to be humble in front of. I think we all need a new infusion of that in our lives together.

And I think the only way that's going to happen is groups who witnessed that. I love to tell the story about being in the Roosevelt Room in the White House, and on my right is a leader from the National Association of Evangelicals, and just beyond him is the USCCB person. And we're saying, we agree on this, you know, the three organizations agree on this. There's a lot that we agree on, the eco justice work, there's a lot of agreement in the faith community on this.

Now, we tend to be the middle, and not the dramatic ends of the spectrum. We tend not to get the limelight about that. I think we have to be more engaging about our story. But there's a real story missing about how many people are working together so well. It's out there, and we need to be able to testify to that with one another.

Smith: This is "Bright Ideas" from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Stephen Smith, and my guest this time is the Rev. Peg Chemberlin. She heads the Minnesota Council of Churches and is the current president of the National Council of Churches of Christ. We'll continue the conversation with Peg Chemberlin in just a moment after this break for the news. Not yet though. And, and what would you like to do?

Chemberlin: Let's talk about the cultural metaphor of consumerism and how that divides communities, and the need to reclaim something else.

Smith: All right. All right, everybody ready? Here we go. Welcome back to "Bright Ideas. Fresh thoughts on big issues." I'm Stephen Smith and each month I invite a guest down to the forum at Minnesota Public Radio News headquarters for a conversation about key issues before a live audience.

My guest this time is the Rev. Peg Chemberlin. She heads the Minnesota Council of Churches and is the current president of National Council of Churches of Christ. The NCC is made up of a wide spectrum of faith groups, including Protestant, Anglican and Orthodox churches, as well as living peace and historically African American churches.

Rev. Chemberlin, tell us about eco, eco, what was it? Eco..?

Chemberlin: Eco justice.

Smith: Eco justice. What is eco justice? I have a hunch what it is, but tell us what that is and why you're pursuing it as an important part of the NCC's work.

Chemberlin: There's a theological field that talks about the ethics of our response to creation. This is not a political kick, this theologically grounded and you don't have to go much further than the first chapter of Genesis to understand where we're headed with this. But there's so much going on around.

Smith: Well, explain that a little bit more. What does the first chapter of Genesis say that we need to be aware of? Chemberlin: The first chapter of Genesis tells us that the Earth was created by the Holy One, by God, and it is our gift to hold on to and to deal with well, and that we live in the context of that one creation. I think, for me, one of the more important icons of my life is that image of the Earth rising from the Moon. I don't remember, decades ago now, but for the first time I went, "Whoa."

Smith: The Earth as seen from the surface of the Moon.

Chemberlin: Right.

Smith: Right.

Chemberlin: I could see the oneness of it in a fairly stark fashion. And that puts upon us, first of all, the relationship that I talked about before. There's a connectedness that we can no longer ignore between us, but also a connectedness to that one Earth that we can no longer ignore. So, in some places we've been working here in Minnesota, we've been working with the National Council on healthy homes, healthy congregations. What do we need to do to get some of the toxins out of our life? But we're also working at Capitol Hill on that same issue about toxins and making sure that the FDA is doing what they need to do, and supported in the way that they need to be supported. So, that's one example, but there are any numbers of other examples that relate to that.

And again, the issues are always both human and creation oriented. The number of children that die every day around the world because they don't have access to clean water and all, there's a very human component to that. And we're called to steward that water in ways that we have just taken it for granted.

So, in a great conversation, particularly in the Orthodox churches, who always have a wonderful sense of the sacred that sometimes the rest of us miss, they've been wonderful in saying to the rest of us, the Earth is sacred. The Earth is sacred, and we need to be able to deal with it and handle it as if it were sacred.

Smith: Have you arrived at particular things that members of the congregations ought to be doing?

Chemberlin: Suggestions, everywhere from "Are you checking out what kind of baby bottles you're using, because there are some that are more toxic than others," to some suggestions on how to green your congregational building, how to move it into a lower carbon footprint kind of thing, how to help your members imagine how they can reduce their carbon footprint; so, everything from congregational conversation to public policy conversation.

Smith: And is part of the issue here that the human spirit has become sort of overcome by our consumer society, at least in the United States?

Chemberlin: I think there is a sense of entitlement in the United States that is detrimental to the democracy, it's detrimental to the Earth, and it's detrimental to each of us individually as well. That entitlement does have some relation to the consumer oriented society. If I've got enough money, I deserve anything I can get with that money, for instance. My carbon footprint can be as big as I want it to be if I have enough to make it that. But that consumer orientation has also been problematic to our institutions, including the church, and to democracy. I remember when Governor Ventura, when he would come on, he would call us "taxpayers." He rarely called us "citizens." And at one point I thought, why am I being defined as a taxpayer first and rarely as a citizen? Well, it was the consumer oriented society that, because I pay taxes, I'm entitled to this or that, rather than understanding myself as a citizen who's called to be a producer of democracy, as well.

Smith: And did you approach the Governor on that point?

Chemberlin: No, I did have that conversation with him, no I did not. But I've had that conversation with a number of bishops, because the issue is there in churches, too. I love to pull this one, I say increasingly congregants think of themselves as consumers of church, not producers of church. And all the pastors go, "Yeah, that's right, people aren't producing, they just want us to be servants, dada, dada."

And then I say, "And increasingly, congregations think of themselves as consumers of denominations, not producers of denominations." And then the executives and the bishops go, "Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's how it is."

And then I say, "And increasingly, denominations think of themselves as consumers of Councils of Churches, not producers," and then they kind of roll their eyes at me. [laughter]

Chemberlin: But I think this notion is so much part of our DNA that we can't imagine ourselves differently from that. We can't imagine ourselves beyond what our pocketbook can buy.

Smith: Ask not what your National Council can do for you, or your government, or fill in the blank.

Chemberlin: Exactly. I would say that about state council churches and national councils. Here is an opportunity, an infrastructure of relationships that can go in lots of different directions. But it's not there to be consumed by those who give money to it. It's an opportunity for a relationship and building something greater together. And that's true for democracy, too. We aren't here to ask what I can get from my government. How can I be my government? How can I be part of the producers of what it means to be the government?

I think this happens in our relationships at every level. Again, part of the middle's job I think is to come out of that cocoon and say, "Wait a minute. We're worth more than that. We're worth more than that to each other as a country."

Smith: As a person who's been praised for her leadership skills and who thinks about leadership, how do you get people to go to places that they don't want to go or that are unfamiliar?

Chemberlin: I've never been trained as a community organizer, but I keep telling myself I am one. The conversation with the individual and asking them what do they value, a community organizer would say it's the self interest of the person that brings him or her into the group. I think self interest needs to be understood very broadly. What's the value that he or she brings that will allow him or her to be connected up with others who share that value? I think that's been the success of the Minnesota Council of Churches. I spend a lot of time in conversations with bishops and executives, and presidents of denominations saying, "OK, what concerns you the most?"

But I also brought some values into that discussion and said, "And do you believe that we're united to one another and related to one another in Jesus Christ? Well, then you have to be at this meeting, because your brothers and sisters will be there."

It's not that they didn't have that value, but sometimes I had to ask is that value of enough importance or what would it take for that value to be enough importance for these things to happen? But I also know then they have to have time when they get together. Our board at Minnesota Council of Churches is made up of bishops and executives of our member denominations.

They have to have time with each other to talk about "How are you handling this issue, and where are we going with that issue?" They see together how much of the struggle that they're each in is shared by their colleagues around the state.

Smith: I want to shift just a little bit and talk about the state of faith in the United States. America is still a relatively religiously active country, relative especially to other advanced industrial nations, even Italy. We go to church more often than the Italians do. But the number of young Americans who are identifying themselves as not having a religion has grown to maybe a third of all young Americans, according to one survey, say they don't have a religion. What's going on there?

Chemberlin: First of all, what happens with the surveys is we've got to ask are we comparing that age group to an older age group, or that age group to what the older age group thought when they were that age group? Because that age group always has less interest in religion than about every other age group. But I have seen studies that suggest less than their predecessors at that age. Are we talking about Gen. X or Gen. Y here?

Smith: You tell me. How is Gen. X, by the way?

Chemberlin: I can't keep them straight now.

Smith: I'm talking about people who are in their twenties and thirties.

Chemberlin: I think those are Y's and X's. Let me say this. There was a young man, wonderfully trained, great work in his graduate work, and a great job in the city of St. Paul. He looked at me one day, and he said, "Your generation has completely unraveled every institution that we have, made all of them suspicious, and then you expect us to do something with it."

Smith: He's speaking to you as a Baby Boomer, I assume.

Chemberlin: That's right. That's what we did to the world. I think to some degree that that's true. Some of those institutions needed to be broken down. Some suspicion needed to be put forward. The 1950s had their own problems. But here was his concern, that we don't have the infrastructure that we need to be a community, and I don't know where to start.

I think that Gen. X/Gen. Y is a different breed, too. I think the 20 plus are saying, "We do have some hopefulness about being able to move things forward. We're going to be very engaged, and we think we can do it."

I think this is a very different thing than some of us who were this age in the '60s we thought, "We will speak truth to power." That's what we thought. The Gen. X group is saying, "We are the power, and if we'll just organize ourselves, we'll make it happen. So if you could, just get out of our way..."

Now is there some naivety in some things? I think there is, but I'm not going to say that's true for the whole group. I think that's something that we have to offer their group. I think the Boomers and the Gen. Y ers could be a really incredible partnership.

Smith: Is information technology, especially the fast messaging technologies out there, is that something that is changing the way churches relate to their congregations, especially to the young people in their congregations?

Chemberlin: This is a great example of the Gen. Y and the Baby Boomers, where my whole family is off at the cabin, and 17 of us there. Some of the Boomers come out onto the deck, and all of the Gen. Y ers have their computers out and they're typing away. "Come on, we're on vacation. What are you guys doing?" Well, each of them adopted one of us and set us up with a Facebook page. That's how I got my first Facebook page. It took me about 48 hours to realize that this was a really public thing, and probably the picture that was taken by the pool was not the picture that I wanted on my Facebook. But we were introduced to it by that generation. I think I would have gone on forever without Facebook, and Facebook is one of the places that I get some of my most significant information.

I'm always looking at what Bill George has recommended. He's always telling us some really good articles to read. I think information technology is changing everybody, and Baby Boomers are going to learn from the new generation coming up.

Smith: But how about you folks in a leadership position? Are you encouraging, for example, clergy to use these technologies, start tweeting?

Chemberlin: Absolutely. I don't know how to tweet yet. I need to learn how to tweet. But I do have 1,500 friends on Facebook. I'm very proud of it.

Smith: So you're not practicing what you're tweeting.

Chemberlin: I'm not. I need to learn that, but I haven't quite yet figured out the value of tweeting. So if there's some 20 something out there that could tell me about this, I'd appreciate knowing.

Smith: Find you on Facebook and give you a lesson.

Chemberlin: Find me on Facebook. Is this going to change, or has it already changed, the way that we look at faith and religious life? Absolutely, I think there's congregating that happens electronically. That doesn't have the same experience of person to person congregational life, but there's congregating going on electronically that we all need to pay attention to.

Smith: You're listening to "Bright Ideas. Fresh Thoughts on Big Issues." Each month we invite a guest to Minnesota Public Radio news headquarters for a conversation about key topics before a live audience. I'm Stephen Smith, and my guest this time is Peg Chemberlin, head of the Minnesota Council of Churches and president of the National Council of Churches. We're talking about how to find common ground in politically divided times and the role of the clergy in providing social leadership in the 21st century. Has the shift in the kinds of congregations that are out there in the Christian world over the past 30 or 40 years, especially the rise of the Evangelical churches, the so called suburbanization of religion, has that had an effect on your organization and on the way your organization works politically, if you will, in Washington?

Chemberlin: I think the Evangelical wing of the church really began to shift a few decades ago around their own theological understanding of engagement in the public square. That was such news that they got a good share of the media bite on that. We have the to remember that in the '50s, all of my member denominations, at least the mainline Protestants, were the voice beyond the Catholic church and were good friends with Dwight Eisenhower. Ike set the cornerstone for the Interchurch Center in Upper Manhattan where the NCC has their offices. So things shifted in the '60s, and then there was a shift again. In the '70s we moved into much more, Evangelical engagement.

I think what we're going to see now is that there are some real divisions in the Evangelical community. I think they were there before, but the divisions didn't have their own spokespeople, as it were.

Smith: What are those divisions? How would you characterize them?

Chemberlin: Part of the Evangelical tradition was the inerrancy of Scripture. They're wrestling with that in some different ways. I think there are some who take that in a more conservative... and some who see that a little bit more mildly, if you will. So they're going to fight with each other about some of that. But there are some who are so very politically connected, with the Right in particular, that it's really the economics of the Right that are driving some of those issues. But also there are libertarian tendencies on both Left and Right, so some of the more libertarian Right is picking up someone Evangelical voice.

And then you've got National Association of Evangelicals, who are going to disagree with me on all kinds of issues, but agree with me on all kinds of issues, or agree with the National Council of Churches on all kinds of issues. I think we're going to see some shifts in what's happening in Evangelical congregations. I think the emergent church movement is a new way of congregating.

Smith: Explain that, the emergent church.

Chemberlin: Well, I think the question is how are we going to congregate? How are we going to gather, and what happens to the traditions, and how is that more welcoming in ways that traditional churches haven't? We have some significant leadership in the Twin Cities who are working on some of that. I think that that's going to happen in the Evangelical church as much as it's happening in the mainline Protestant church as well. That's going to have some kind of play on how we congregate to have voice in the political arena, too.

Smith: My final question for you is about your role advising the Obama administration and its interest in faith based organizations, faith based work. Obviously this came to the floor with George W. Bush. He made a cornerstone, at least a rhetorical cornerstone, of his presidency, if not an actual one. How receptive is President Obama to faith based organizations? Does he take it that seriously?

Chemberlin: I think he does. I hear from his office at least once a week, and that's not just me. We're invited into conference call after conference call, and just about anybody can be invited into many of those to hear about particular programs and to hear about how the faith community is working on those programs. There are a few differences between the two leaders. One of the things the Obama administration has said, and he's been critiqued for this, is "We're not going to put grant opportunities out, request for proposals, just to faith communities. We want to know who can do this the best. If it's a faith community, great." And sometimes it's going to be the faith community. A lot of international development is done best by the faith community, better than the military often, who's taking more and more of the development dollars.

But that's not the primary question. The primary question is not getting dollars into the faith community, and there were lots of issues about that, but seeing the faith community as an important partner in developing the common good.

He's got strong leadership and 13 of the departments have faith based neighborhood partnership offices. They're very excited about being innovative about how to do some of this work together.

I think there's been he's listened to the report. We have seen some shift in the Department of Human Services. The second thing that my task force did was to say, "The way that we do benefits access is not working."

If mom with her three kids has to leave work and take the three kids downtown, take them out of school, get on the bus, go downtown to sign up for $20 worth of food stamps a month, this probably isn't going to happen.

But when she goes to the food shelf once a month, if she could sign up right there at the food shelf, there's a good chance we could get benefits into people's hands. We've been concerned about this as one of the poverty issues that we're concerned about here as well as a number of the foundations are as well.

Smith: And they took that idea?

Chemberlin: They did take that idea. In fact, there's now a taskforce from USDA and a taskforce from HHS that are working together to say, "OK. How can we do a better job making benefits accessible to folks?" We lose $320 million, I think, in benefits in Minnesota. Multiply that over lots of states, those are some dollars that could help a lot of people who need it and go into the economy locally as well, too.

So we think it's a win win for folks and it's happening at the local level, and it's happening at the top level amongst the Obama organization.

Smith: All right.

Woman from audience: How do you draw out the middle in the increasingly political debate about social issues? How do you draw and then [inaudible 55:58] .

Smith: I got it. How do you draw out the middle... no, wait. Let me ask the question, though. I've got to ask the question. So, in a particularly politically divided time and a specific debate, how do you go about drawing out the middle to get involved?

Chemberlin: Well, first of all, I think we have to say to each other there is a middle. Much of what is being done already in lots of ways on the ground...

Smith: Richard Nixon would call this the silent majority, I think.

Chemberlin: He might just call us that. Yeah. We're not as articulate as we need to be with each other. I think drawing out the middle has to happen in all of our institutions. When we talk to each other, we have to remind the media that there is a middle and there's important things going on in the middle. I think we're not good at telling our stories in larger public ways. If you're a Christian from Waconia, Minnesota, I hate to brag about things we've been able to accomplish. I'm kind of uncomfortable sitting here. We should be asking other people what they think here pretty soon, Stephen.

There's a certain... if humility is part of what we need in the public square, that's also a detriment to the middle being able to talk about itself and the good work that it's doing on various levels. I think we have to tell that story and keep asking ourselves, "Where are we, and what are we thinking, and how can we agree?" I think abortion is one of those issues in particular.

After my sermon on Sunday morning at the Ecumenical Advocacy Days, a woman from the...

Smith: In Washington D.C. just recently?

Chemberlin: Exactly, yeah. A woman from the Presbyterian Layman who is a very conservative anti leadership paper inside the Presbyterian Church, came up to me and I said, "Well, what did you think?" And she said, "Well, I agree with most of that."

And I said, "Well, what didn't you agree with?"

And she said, "Well, you could've said..."I talked about there's enough for everybody if we will decide there's enough and she said, "There's also enough for the unborn, too."

And I said, "Yeah. Well, do you think we disagree on that?"

And she said, "Well, I think we do."

So then we spent the next 15 minutes talking about abortion and what we found was that we're probably part of the middle on this. It's one of the things the Obama administration hopes to work on out of their they've got a White House office on women and children, and I think they're trying to find where's the middle.

Smith: On the abortion issue?

Chemberlin: On the abortion issue, which will be very interesting to see. But I think if we really pulled people in their heart of hearts, we'd find more people in the middle than not. But we don't talk much, the middle. We don't have an identity in the middle. It's more amorphous, if you will, being part of the middle.

Smith: Good. Well, let's deploy Frankie here, our idea seeking missile. OK. Tell us who you are and where you're from.

Kate Ellis: My name is Kate Ellis. Actually, I'm from Boston, Massachusetts here on a visit. But I wanted to go back a little bit to how you described your own journey to the work that you do. And something that you said actually a couple of times that was really intriguing to me, you said that you at first resisted being called to do work on poverty. Can you talk about what that resistance... can you describe that resistance, and then, as you evolved out of it, how that shaped the work that you do?

Chemberlin: I was pretty sure if I paid attention to that that I would have to be Dorothy Day, which means I would have to be in...

Smith: Dorothy Day the famous Catholic worker?

Chemberlin: Catholic worker in New York City living with all the drunken bums. That was kind of where my head went. Then I did an internship at suburban Washington D.C. congregation and ended up going dumpster diving every Sunday night for a soup kitchen. And we had so much fun dumpster diving. You'd find a great, big dumpster full of a tray of three tomatoes, and two of them would be fine, but one of them bad oh boy, that was great to find that. We'd just dump, and I'd come home really smelly, and we'd all go out to breakfast together, and it was great.

I began to see that there were other ways to do working with and for the poor that I might have some gifts for and certainly had a heart for. And then that led me, as I found out that I was going to be working with larger groups of folks, I began to ask, "How do you do this at the thousand foot level or the 20,000 foot level?"

Smith: OK. Your name, sir, and where you're from.

Rev. Bill Weir: Reverend Bill Weir. I'm from Plymouth, Minnesota. My question for Peg is about the hate, the incivility that is all too common now, even from members of Congress yelling out, "You lie!" Most recently, Kansas state representative suggested that, just as they control the population of feral hogs by shooting them from a helicopter, we ought to control the population of illegal immigrants. How do you respond as religious and secular people to that?

Chemberlin: I think in some ways, some of us boomers brought it on ourselves and some of us who do advocacy, we walk into a congressperson's office and we start yelling at them. I'm not saying that that's the same thing at all. It's not stimulated by hate, but what's our behavior toward each other all the time? I kind of think that there are some people who might've thought that issue about feral hogs before; they just didn't feel like they could say it out loud. So, what's happened in the community, the country community, the culture of the community that allows us to not only think those things, but to say those things to each other?

And I think we just have to keep saying to each other, "That's not who we are. That's now how we want to be with each other. Let's not be that way and keep acting that way." But continue to remind people that the majority of us don't act that way. We don't make those kinds of... we don't holler at each other in that way. We find ways to work together.

Smith: And is that a job for this middle that you've talked about that doesn't seem to be aggressive enough, because obviously, it's the polarizing figures who are doing most of the shouting? Is the middle simply being lazy or is it consuming this stuff almost as entertainment?

Chemberlin: Well, yes, and yes and something else. I don't think it's lazy. I think we're all doing so much that to take on yet another piece is a lot.

Smith: It seems overwhelming because our lives are so busy.

Chemberlin: Right. We're being producers of the PTA and we're being producers. Plus, we haven't thought of ourselves in that direction. We've got to tell each other the middle stories. We've got to be more aggressive about our humility, if we can be. That's going to be a trick.

Smith: Aggressive humility.

Chemberlin: That's right.

Smith: Next on Larry King Live.

Chemberlin: There you are. I think we've got to be more articulate about the theology and the values that are behind all of that. I think it's been a long time since a lot of church members have talked about, "Well, how does the church understand itself in the public square the mainline church, the middle church in the public square?" Because the only images that are left for us are the two I was going to say feral ends, but I guess that's not exactly right. And I think trying to have hope in the midst of that, it's not always easy. But also to remember who's getting the press is not necessarily the good middle, if you will; not necessarily the quiet middle; not necessarily the folks who really want to build democratic life together.

I'm saying two things at the same time, I understand that. There's a group in the middle who wants to build democracy and we're not working hard enough at building democracy, I understand that and probably both are true in some way, I don't know. But it's very hard to find that activity going on. It's not showing up on Glenn Beck's show and it's not showing up on Keith Oberman's Show.

Alan Yule: Hi. I'm Alan Yule from Richfield. I remember vividly a talk you gave one time, and you were talking about the National Council Of Churches and the breath of the views and congregations that were there, and in terms of what you said today the diversity in the country and I remember you heard an experience you had at a conference in the White House talking about life on Mars. In which the scientist were the ones that brought up the ecumenical word rather than the religious leaders and the phrase I remembered, if I remember it accurately was, they said the richness of life comes from its diversity rather than its sameness.

Chemberlin: This was General Secretary John Braun Campbell, probably two decades ago. It was right after they discovered that there was some possibility of life on Mars and the White House called all these scientists in and Carl Sagan was there. And I think only a few religious folks were there but one of the things she said was the word ecumenical was being spoken by the scientist. Ecumenical comes from the Greek I¿a¼°IºI¿I...I¼I¬I½I• (pr. oikoumene) which means "the whole earth." And they were saying there is this relatedness and diversity is absolutely essential to the health and well being of the planet and of us as humans. But that diversity is inside the oneness.

I think that's what I saw in the Earth that day, is that there's incredible diversity. That diversity is constitutive of life itself, but it's a diversity that is in a relatedness and a oneness and we're all going to have to makes sense of that pretty quickly.

Anita Pampush: I'm Anita Pampush from Saint Paul and I'd like to hear you say something about the common good, because it seems to me that almost everything we're talking about is based on the premise that there is a common good, that people of good will or people of faith understand that there is a good larger than themselves that they're somehow committed to, whether by faith, or even by philosophy. And yet, I've also been in groups of people who have just poo pooed that whole notion and said that's just a myth that some people are invoking in order to understand the world. But it does seem fundamental as a value to the kinds of things you're talking about and I'd just like to hear your comment on that.

Chemberlin: Oh, this will preach.

Smith: She's winding up!

Chemberlin: Yeah. I could go on and on. Let me start with this; if we need to wrestle with what's the Tea Party saying to us about ourselves and if we look at what the Tea Party is saying about itself, one of the things it will say is economic freedom is the central piece and they look at the Constitution of the United States and say, "That's what the Constitution guarantees us." But just before the phrase about that kind of freedom is the phrase about the general welfare. Now, how do we understand what the general welfare is? I think it's got something to do with the common good. General welfare and common good have something to do with each other. I think we've got two options. Either we say we're related to each other and we need to develop a common good together, or we're thrown into some kind of increased siloing, increased barricading, increased hoarding, and increased fear. That's where that goes if we're not working for the common good. So, we're going to have to make some decisions about that pretty quickly. And we're going to have to do that together and we're going to have to talk with each other about what's our understanding about our life together in our political world and our economic world, and what are we willing to do with each other in relationship to that.

Smith: We'll do two more questions and then I'll invite everybody to stick around afterwards and we'll explore the common good and other things as well out in the lobby. Yes sir? Your name and where you're from?

David: My name is David and I'm coming from Saint Paul. I'm originally from the New York area, so if my comments are a little more aggressive and confrontational I apologize in advance. Before securing the blessings of liberty and before establishing a common defense, the first thing they say in the preamble is to establish justice. I think there's a certain level which I might challenge your "embrace of middle" because I think there are times when the extremes are actually the ones that are on the right frequency. I'm sitting here in the state where Dred Scott was in refuge when the decision was made and his fate as a free African American man. And I seem to remember that the abolitionists were the extremists. The middle is a great place to be, it's also a very comfortable place to be and I think that's what you've been talking about a bit. But I think that there are times when one must recognize that there are things worth fighting for.

I listen to what you say and I embrace a great deal of it, but I'm a bit older than I look and I've seen enough of our own history in my own life time to recognize that there are times when the proper place to be is not necessarily in the middle.

Smith: That's a great question or a great observation. How do you respond to that?

Chemberlin: It is, and I agree. I'm going to have to wrestle with what that means in terms of my interest in the middle. Let me throw out this; I think that the tradition in the church gets to talk about the prophet, the prophetic one. But the prophetic one was always acting out of life inside the community. I think we do have to be prophetic with each other inside the community, and I think our best leaders have not been outside of the community but pushing and pulling at the community towards a new place based on the values that they really did believe were in the middle. But let's pull ourselves along, and that's been true for the Nation Council Of Churches. I was at an event a few months ago and congressman John Lewis was a speaker and afterwords I introduced myself. I didn't even get a chance to say my name, I said I was the president of the National Council Of Churches.

He threw his arms around me because the National Council Of Churches was on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the National Council Of Churches has to be asking, where do we need to be today? Is it around the immigration issue? Is it around the eco justice issue? Is it all of the above?

I think we do have to press ourselves, but it's from inside the community asking, pushing, demanding that the community be faithful to the values that it says it has. So, I may be saying both at the same time, but I think your point is well taken. I think we have to ask ourselves do we have a place in the community that's supposed to be pushing, pulling, cajoling? Some of my friends would think that I do that from time to time too.

Smith: Last question, did you have a question?

Laura LaBlanc: Laura LaBlanc, from Saint Paul. My question may be along the same lines and what I'm struggling with when I think of the polarization, I think that a huge part of our dilemma that's crippling us in the conversation is that part of the polarization, a good force of it is not ideological, it's greed. And how corporate interests have bought a part of the conversation that's made the rest of us feel like radicals when I don't think we are.

Chemberlin: That's a good point; interesting point. It presses me along with the last question to ask a little bit how I would distinguish between the two ends and the prophetic voice in the middle. I think the two ends have no regard for the middle, are tribal, and have no regard for the nation as a whole. I don't think that was ever true with the kind of prophets that we're talking about. They had a regard for the nation as a whole. Now, media is... it's always tough when I'm sitting in a media situation.

Smith: Go after me!

Chemberlin: This is NPR after all who have a commitment to the democracy that's not always there in other media outlets. And this is a whole another lecture that I do about truth being the... what's the phrase? In an information age truth is the first victim. We're not just in an information age, we're in a spin age. It looks like truth but who knows for sure? And all of the accountability relationships that were there for media even 10 years ago, remember Dan Rather? He said something wrong, he resigned. I wish there was more of that right now, more folks who took so seriously their role as journalist that they refused to tell a lie.

But to the degree that journalism, that media has become a consumer activity, that bottom line it is the turning point, not truth. So, are people viewing? Are people watching? That's what is happening in the media, not am I telling the truth?

Except for NPR of course, and I do mean that seriously. NPR takes very seriously telling the truth. That's very difficult to find these days.

So, if more and more journalism is being bought and paid for by those who like to be entertained or by those who have the money to make that happen, it's certainly going to erode our ability to find the truth together, certainly as the middle wears the truth if we can't see it in some of our public ways. Reverend Peg Chemberlin, thanks very much for being here.

Chemberlin: Thank you Stephen.

Smith: You've been listening to "Bright Ideas," a program for Minnesota public radio news that presents fresh thinking on big issues. Our guest this time was the Reverend Peg Chemberlin, head of the Minnesota Council of Churches and president of the National Council of Churches of Christ. You can hear this program again or see a video cast of the show at nprnews.org. Go to the "Bright Ideas" page. Join us next time in the forum at Minnesota Public News headquarters for Nicholas Larusso. He directs the Center for Innovation at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester and he'll be here in the forum on April 26th at 07:00 P.M. You can get your free tickets by going to nprnews.org and scrolling down to the events tag. Thanks for listening to "Bright Ideas." I'm Stephen Smith.

Transcription by CastingWords

ABOUT REV. PEG CHEMBERLIN

The Rev. Peg Chemberlin is the executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches and the President of the National Council of Churches.

The National Council of Churches has a constituency of 45 million members, from 35 different communions and more than 10,000 congregations. Among her leadership efforts at the NCCC, Chemberlin chaired the NCCC Ecumenical Networks Standing Committee, working with local and regional councils of churches all over the country. It has been said that she has one of the broadest set of relationships with church leaders across the country.

Chemberlin has been the executive director of the Minnesota Council of Churches for 14 years. She leads the Council's efforts to manifest the unity of the Body of Christ and to build the common good in the world. Under Chemberlin's leadership the council has galvanized the relationships of its constituent members and become a predominant actor for the faith community with other sectors.

In 2009, Chemberlin was appointed to the task force of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which focuses on economic recovery and fighting poverty.

Broadcast Dates

• Midday, 04/18/2011, 12:00 p.m.