One post at Talk to Action raises two interesting questions.
The first is: Is the Library/Propaganda Institute a done deal or not? John Gorenfeld seems to think so. He reports that the Rev Sung Myung Moon was recently feted at “the Bush presidential library in College Station, TX.” Um, that’s SMU, where, as we reported 3 days ago, the General Council of the United Methodist Church decisively rejected the siting of the library.
So the Bushes are going right ahead as if the siting is a done deal despite the UMC GC’s action? Apparently. And so is UMC Bishop Scott Jones, according to a press release from leader of the opposition Rev Andrew Weaver.
“The General Conference of the United Methodist Church did receive a petition asking it to block SMU’s decision to lease land for the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Center. Its decision was only to refer it to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference. In no way did it reject the decision already made by the South Central Jurisdiction’s Mission Council. The action was merely procedural because the General Conference said the decision belonged at the Jurisdictional level. The overwhelming nature of the vote was due to the fact that it, along with 11 other petitions, was on a consent calendar….” (1). Scott J. Jones, Bishop, Kansas Area of the United Methodist Church. (Press Statement, May 3, 2008)
United Methodist Bishop Scott J. Jones of Kansas has been an outspoken advocate for locating the Bush library and partisan institute at Southern Methodist University (SMU) (2-3). He has also told the press that the right of the South Central Jurisdiction (SCJ) delegates to vote on the use of their church property at SMU will not be honored, although it is clearly stated in church law that a vote is mandated (4-5).
This appears to continue to be Jones’ position even after an 844-20 vote on a petition calling for the rejection of the Bush project was referred to the SCJ by the highest authority in the UMC – its General Conference.
Bishop Jones, taking a leaf apparently from the Bush Arrogance Book, has decided that he doesn’t need to obey the UMC GC’s decision and that in his position as an SMU Trustee, backing the Bushes is more important than following the laws of his church.
Bishop Jones told the Dallas Morning News in 2007 that the thousands of fellow United Methodists and SMU alumni who signed a petition (www.protectSMU.org) objecting to Bush partisan think tank “would have no influence” on him as an SMU trustee. Moreover, he declared that SMU “trustees — not the United Methodist Church — have the final say on decisions that SMU makes about the library” (6). Bishop Jones made this statement despite the fact that the UMC founded and owns SMU, and the trustees are appointed under the authority of the church.
One would call the Bishop’s attitude “astounding” if one hadn’t become inured over the past 7 years to all kinds people jettisoning all kinds of laws for the Bushes that they’d never in a million years disregard for anybody else. It has become almost routine for everyone around these would-be aristocrats to act as if the laws, traditions, and values of our nation don’t apply to the Georges.
If Bishop Jones is allowed to thumb his nose at his own church, its by-laws, and its legally-constituted bodies in order to ram the Bush Propaganda Institute down the throats of a religious group wholly opposed to an alliance with and on behalf of the man who began an illegal war, trashed the Constitution to spy on his own citizens, and vigorously supports torturing prisoners, if Bishop Jones is allowed to do all that without any consequences whatever, then before so much as a brick has been laid for this unconscionable library, the Methodist Church will have given up any and all chance for respect.
Clearly Bishop Jones is doing the Bidding of the Bushes. Having tried to stop the vote from taking place, now that Bush has lost it he has ordered his tame bishop to ignore the vote. The Bishop should be removed immediately. He has put the wishes of a powerful constituent over the wishes of his own legal church body. That is simply NOT acceptable anywhere else.
Worse, perhaps, is that George HW Bush – Poppy – decided to celebrate the UMC GC’s decision to reject the library by having a “do” for the Rev Moon on property they labeled as “the presidential library” for gullible members of the press. Gorenfeld is a smart guy, but even he didn’t seem to realize he was being had: the Library doesn’t yet exist. So where was this “event”?
And what’s with inviting Moon to be the first guest so honored? I quote Gorenfeld:
Moon is on record as opposing constitutional government; according to his church, he told the folks at the Bush library that he envisioned a world [emphasis mine]
where some of the weaknesses of democracy, and in particular the wasted efforts of extreme partisanship, can be relieved by the involvement of elder statesmen as senior advisors.
***
According to a reliable source within the Moon organization who provided me with password-guarded HTML files, the Reverend elaborated on his fantasies last year in a sermon so shocking, it was not released to the public (unlike thousands of others available online.)
All the irrelevant books in the world should be burned away. I cannot tolerate books that belong under the leftist ideology. Do you understand?
And that is, of course, the very tippity-tip of the Moonie iceberg.
So let’s recap:
The president’s Poppy invited well-known religious fruitcake/fanatic Rev Moon to the very first event publicized as taking place at the new George W Bush Library, which doesn’t yet exist and which has been rejected by the legal church body controlling the site whom the local Bishop (a Bush Buddy and a member of SMU’s Board of Trustees) claims has no jurisdiction over either the site or his decision to support it, defying the legal decision of the UMC as a whole.
Is this a Bush Production or what?
Arranology 