LAST MONTH, FOR THE first time in years, a member denomination withdrew from the National Council of Churches (NCC). The spunky, 400,000-member communion is the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, and its decision to quit the reflexively left-wing NCC was based on a unanimous vote of clergy and lay delegates. According to one church spokesman, a recent NCC fundraising letter helped spark the departure. It asked supporters to fight "right-wing attacks" on the controversial church agency. The letter named President Bush, Rush Limbaugh, James Dobson, and the Heritage Foundation as insidious forces that must be opposed. "It got...