Methodists Reject Bush Library. No They Don't.
Pegasus News broke the big story Thursday: Bush Library at SMU Rejected by United Methodist Church. The only problem was that it was untrue. On a purely procedural matter, the General Conference of the United Methodist Church voted 844-20 to refer to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference a petition to block SMU’s decision to lease land for the George W. Bush Presidential Library and Center.
Ryan J. Rusak of The Dallas Morning News Trail Blazers blog quickly caught the error. Pegasus News corrected its story. Oops.
"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 of things approved overwhelmingly in committees that recommended referrals."
Friday, two days after the fact and a day after Pegasus News retracted its error, Tom McGregor of Dallas Blog has the story: Methodists Strongly Reject SMU Bush Library.
"At the quadrennial General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Fort Worth on Wednesday, members rejected locating the George W. Bush Presidential Library at Southern Methodist University (SMU) by an astounding vote of 844 to 20."Double oops. Dallas Blog: as usual, a day late and a dollar short.
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The United Methodist Church, Torture and President Bush
On April 11, three days after Southern Methodist University President R. Gerald Turner sent a letter to all the delegates to the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of the United Methodist Church (UMC) extolling the supposed financial advantages and other virtues of the Bush library and partisan think-tank, George W. Bush announced to the media that he has been deeply involved from the beginning in the details of the use of torture that he authorized.
ABC News reported: “President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.” According to White House sources, the discussions about torture techniques were so detailed that some of the “interrogation sessions were almost choreographed” (1-2).
A month earlier, on March 8, Bush vetoed legislation banning waterboarding and other methods of torture used by government employees. The legislation would have limited CIA agents to 19 less-aggressive tactics outlined in the U.S. Army field manual. The president stated that the government “needs to use tougher methods than the U.S. military to wrest information from terrorism suspects” (3). It has been highly documented that at least 19 prisoners have been tortured to death by the U.S. military (4).
Waterboarding has a long and sickening history. It was used as a means of torture and coerced baptism during the Protestant Reformation and Spanish Inquisition to convert Jews, Mennonites, witches, and other suspected heretics. It consists of immobilizing an individual on his or her back with the head inclined downward and pouring water over the face to force the inhalation of water into the lungs. As the victim gags and chokes, the terror of imminent death is pervasive.
Torture is a crime against humanity and a violation of every human rights treaty in existence. It represents a betrayal of the deepest values of the UMC that founded and built SMU. In the supposedly “less enlightened” 18th century, John Wesley explicitly preached against the torture of prisoners of war:
War itself is justifiable only on principles of self-preservation: Therefore it gives us no right over prisoners, but to hinder their hurting us by confining them. Much less can it give a right to torture, or kill, or even to enslave an enemy when the war is over (5).
Bush, who claims to be a “proud Methodist,” shows no sign of contrition or regret or repentance for his unchristian behavior. To the contrary, he continues to try to justify himself and protect those in our government who have used and continue to use torture. Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Nazi Germany rightly called the cowardliness of Christians to make evil-doers accountable for their wicked deeds “cheap grace.” Building a monument to this torturer-in-chief on a UMC campus to “celebrate this great president, celebrate his accomplishments” (6) is a defilement of our church that will permanently damage our credibility to share the good news of Jesus Christ.
(1) http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/Story?id=4635175&page=1
(2) http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041908Y.shtml
(3) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030800304.html
(4) Oath Betrayed: Military Medicine and the War on Terror by Steven H. Miles
(5) http://new.gbgm-umc.org/umhistory/wesley/slavery
(6) Statement by Don Evans, the Chair and a chief fundraiser for the George W. Bush foundation on Feb. 22, 2008, New York Times
Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D., is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City. He is a graduate of The Perkins School of Theology, SMU. He has co-authored 14 books including: Counseling Survivors of Traumatic Events (Abingdon, 2003) and Reflections on Grief and the Spiritual Journey (Abingdon, 2005).
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