The commercial runs thirty seconds. Two muscle bound bouncers stand at a velvet rope outside a church, deciding who gets in. A same sex couple is turned away. So are several people of color. A well dressed white family walks through without a second look. Then the screen reads: "Jesus didn't turn people away. Neither do we."
The United Church of Christ debuted the spot on December 1, 2004, the centerpiece of a $1.7 million campaign called God Is Still Speaking. CBS and NBC both declined to air it. The denomination had not approached ABC's main network at all, expecting the same answer, though the ad did run on ABC Family and on a long list of cable networks, from TNT and FOX to BET and the History Channel.
The rejection became the story. The day after the spot debuted, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary president R. Albert Mohler Jr. appeared opposite UCC communications director Robert Chase on ABC's Good Morning America. Mohler called the ad "masterful propaganda" and a "diabolical misrepresentation of Christianity." Chase defended it as clearly allegorical, aimed at anyone who has felt shut out of a church. Reaction inside UCC congregations themselves was not uniform either. Some called it a bold answer to censorship. Others found the bouncer imagery jarring, more combative than welcoming.
What is not in dispute is the scale of attention a single television spot drew, for a mainline denomination whose own leadership had cited a steep membership decline as the reason a campaign like this was needed at all.