The American Bankers Association has written to the NCUA urgingthe agency to prevent a potential field of membership expansion atthe Thrivent Federal Credit Union in Appleton, Wis.

The 44,900-member Thrivent FCU was formed out of the consumer lending and deposit taking portionsof a commercial bank, Thrivent Financial Bank, which the insurerstill owns and uses to handle its investments business.

Since its chartering, Thrivent FCU has had as its field of membership defined anyonewho is already a member of its sponsoring insurance organization aswell anyone who works for a number of different national branchesof the Lutheran Church. This was roughly 3 million people at thetime the credit union was chartered.

But now a potential expansion of the common bond at itssponsoring organization has the ABA writing the NCUA to cryfoul.

Between March 1 and April 30 members of Thrivent Financial forLutherans will vote on whether to expand their membership bond frombeing open to only Lutherans to membership open to Christiansgenerally.

“In historical terms this would not be the first extension ofour common bond,” Thrivent CEO Brad Hewitt said in a video aboutthe vote on the organization's website. He related how one ofthe predecessors to the organization had expanded the common bondfrom one somewhat narrowly defined as a certain kind of Lutheran toone open to all Lutherans.

“And so I look at this as our natural next step,” Hewittsaid.

But that next step could also mean sharply increasing thenumbers of people eligible to join Thrivent FCU, and that drew aletter from the ABA to the NCUA.

“ABA is concerned that extending Thrivent Financial forLutherans' common bond to all Christians would be a considerableand problematic expansion of the credit union's membership,” wroteKeith Leggett, ABA vice president and senior economist.

“While Christians may share reasonably similar beliefs, thedifferent and sometimes conflicting doctrinal variations amongdifferent denominations suggest that all Christians do not share ameaningful affinity or interaction,” Leggett said.

Leggett also argued that expanding Thrivent FCUs field ofmembership to all Christians would be the equivalent of making agea sole requirement for credit union membership, an idea, he wrote,that a court has already prevented.

Thrivent has not commented on the letter and NCUA has only saidthat it has not received any application from Thrivent FCU tochange its FOM.

But Leggett called the common bond vote a “backdoor” approach toa significant field of membership expansion and contended the NCUAhas the authority to restrict or limit the credit union's field ofmembership no matter what the sponsoring organization does.