I recently had the opportunity to profile and interview this remarkable progressive Christian leader for the online magazine Religion Dispatches.  Dorhauer and the UCC live their Christianity in ways that tend to defy conventional wisdoms and established interests and therefore have often been at or near the forefront of struggles for social justice.  (That's why the religious and political right has waged its war of attrition against the UCC and other progressive denominations.)

The UCC is one of the most iconic of American churches, being the direct institutional descendant of the Mayflower Pilgrims, and the little white churches featured on calendar photos of the village greens of New England. And although the denomination has fallen on some hard times, it is also full of vitality and wields considerable institutional capacity and influence in American public life and culture.

Prior to his ascendance to national leadership, he worked on issues of social justice throughout his career.  Most recently as the UCC Conference leader in the Southwest (based in Phoenix) where he worked on immigration, private prisons, marriage equality and the environment. I also know that he served on the board of the Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice for many years, and that he is very proud of his church in Phoenix creating a clothes closet for homeless transgender youth.  These are among the many reasons why it is worth knowing a bit about John Dorhauer.  Although you may have heard about him here for the  first time, I am sure it won't be the last.

Here are a few excerpts from my article and our conversation.

If John Dorhauer is successful in implementing his vision as the new General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ he may be a transformational figure--not only in this historic denomination, but in the history of Protestantism itself.

Whatever history may ultimately record, there is no question that Dorhauer views transformation as necessary to sustain the "missional core" of the Church in our time.

Dorhauer has two main priorities:  one is figuring out new ways of "being church"  at a time when people are less interested in religious institutions.

The other main--and more controversial--theme of his tenure will be to address white privilege. Dorhauer, a middle-aged, straight white man with three children, brings to the job a decade of experience in this area, following his doctoral work on how white privilege poses obstacles to a just church and society.

Nevertheless, some of the 4,000 delegates to the biannual General Synod in Cleveland in June questioned whether the election of "another white male" was consistent with the denomination's commitment to diversity. But in a dramatic session prior to the vote, Dorhauer was prominently endorsed by two African-American pastors, including The Rev. Traci Blackmon of Florissant, Missouri, one of the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement. The other, The Rev. Damond Jackson of Tempe, Arizona said, "John Dorhauer is a person of privilege in the world we live in, but he has used his white, heterosexual, male power to lift those who live in the world of no-communication, the world of the unheard."

"Here I am, a gay, black male, born and raised in the South," Jackson continued, "and John sought me out. I love him."

Dorhauer's election was endorsed by 85% of the delegates.

The UCC's democratic expression of Christianity is a far cry from more conservative and authoritarian forms of church governance. The General Synod delegates knew Dorhauer well, and his election is an expression of where the church is already going. John Dorhauer has been given as profound a democratic mandate for leadership as exists in public life.

What do you say to those, like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who question the authenticity of the Christianity of the UCC in light of your views on marriage equality? And what do you say to Perkins' related idea that religious liberty is really only for those who have religiously orthodox views?

There really isn't much to say to Tony Perkins. His mind is made up and I'm not going to change it.

What I would say to others is that this phenomenon of casting aspersions on the authenticity of a person's Christianity because it doesn't fit into established orthodoxy is nothing new. We read in the early accounts of Scripture that Paul's teachings about circumcision and the law being a curse angered James and the Jerusalem Council to the point that they denounced him and his teachings. The first Jerusalem Council, recorded in Chapter 11 of the Acts of the Apostles, tells the story of a church divided over how far the limits of established orthodoxy could spread.

New ideas stretch old thinkers to the point of condemnation, excommunication--and sometimes worse. Same as it ever was....

As to the question of religious liberty belonging only to those who hold orthodox views? That statement is so blatantly false that I need make no stronger argument against it that it makes on its own. Religious liberty only for those who believe as we do? There is no liberty intended....

That Mr. Perkins and others are asking for a theocracy is nothing new--and once again our commitment to religious liberty will withstand his attacks on it.

Congregational faith was the byproduct of a movement that swept across the European continent designed to remove the constraints of faith from the clutches of a hierarchy that had attached itself to empire.

Built into the DNA of the congregational way was this impulse to entrust each passing generation with the responsibility to make the faith come alive in their time....

We have always asked each generation to reinterpret the practices of the faith in order to prevent either a stale faith that lost its ability to feed a hungry people; and, as important, to mitigate against the tendency to be co-opted by establishment authority as a tool for control.

Read the whole story, here.