Dean M. Kelley

Who was Dean M. Kelley?

Dean M. Kelley was an American legal scholar, religious freedom advocate, author, and executive with the National Council of Churches, where his work was mainly concerned with religious liberty issues. He also served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Kelley opposed a constitutional amendment allowing organized prayer in public schools, doubting that anyone, no matter how well-intentioned, was capable of writing prayers that would be acceptable to everyone and still be meaningful. His 1972 book, Why Conservative Churches are Growing, is said by the Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics to be seminal in the study of the relationship of religion and politics in the United States.

In Why Conservative Churches are Growing, Kelley pointed out what he saw as the essential difference between liberal and conservative churches: conservative churches concentrated on spiritual needs, liberal churches on political causes, which causes were better promoted by political organizations such as the Democratic Party and the Americans for Democratic Action. He also predicted the on-going decline of the liberal churches, based on his extensive research, and his conclusions earned him widespread opprobrium on the Left. The work contains a strong implied warning to those pastors on the right who would politicize their churches.