Posted on 01/18/2007 12:27:36 PM PST by LA Woman3
A group of Methodist ministers has begun a national petition drive asking Southern Methodist University to remove itself from negotiations to get the George W. Bush presidential library.
"As United Methodists, we believe that the linking of his presidency with a university bearing the Methodist name is utterly inappropriate," reads the petition, which is posted online at ProtectSMU.org.
"Because SMU is owned by the United Methodist Church, the imposition of a George W. Bush library, museum and think tank at SMU will irreparably connect the denomination with this presidency,” said Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, a petition organizer in Brooklyn, N.Y. and 1978 graduate of SMU’s Perkins School of Theology. “Members of the UMC, therefore, should be able to express their opinion on this matter before a final decision is reached.”
Campus officials said that the petition organizers have a right to express their opinions, but they don’t believe the sentiment is widespread.
“It’s not the least bit surprising there would be views from some segment of the movement, as large as it is, that would not want to see the library, museum and institute come to SMU,” said Brad Cheves, a university vice president. “However, we continue to believe that a vast majority of the Methodist and the university community support SMU’s efforts.”
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
The "Brick and Mortar" of Presidential Libraries is generally privately funded. Some of the expenses of setting up the repository and maintaining it are federally funded, AFAIK.
Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. is a United Methodist minister and research psychologist living in New York City.
National Council of Churches
Weaver and Seibert note that in 2002, a foundation controlled by Richard Mellon Scaife “gave $225,000 to the IRD (Institute on Religion and Democracy) for its “Reforming America’s Churches Project”— among whose stated goals is the elimination of the Methodists’ General Board of Church and Society, the church’s voice for justice and peace
retired Methodist Ministers Andrew J. Weaver
publisher Andrew J. Weaver
There are some PCA churches in your neck of the woods.
The problem is that it's the faculties of the Methodist affiliated schools that led the way to the left, and they remain, even though it's hard to believe, generally farther left than the Methodist Church itself. In general of course, there are lots of "Wesleyan" Universities, including a Texas Wesleyan in Ft. Worth, around the country, and of course there are variations. SMU may not be quite a bad as some, being located in conservative Texas, although that doesn't necessarily follow either.
Of course the Reagan and Eisenhower Libraries are not on college campuses. Reagan's is in Simi Valley CA, and Ike's is in Abilene Kansas. (I've been by there many times, it's across KS 15 from the Greyhound Hall of Fame). Both are archived through the University of Texas. Maybe President Bush should emulate these previous Republican Presidents?
Those "Completely American" Marxists often had quite close ties to, or were part of, the "Comintern" (Communist International", the "evangelical" extension of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union.
Well, the Methodists do seem to be the most liberal church. I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
Only some Lutherns, including the largest the ELCA "Evangelical Lutheran Church in America". But not including the Missour Synod Lutherans and some others. Plus Lutherans are not as Hierarchcal as Methodists, Roman Catholics, or Presbyterians, so the individual churchs vary a lot more in their positions and degree of involvement in such things.
We have to drive by several churches to get to our Wesleyan church.
I didn't know about a separate Wesleyan Church separate from the "United Methodists", So I looked it up, and now I do. Thanks.
Much of the faculty at the college is has also been meeting, according to local news reports, trying to stop the lib being built. Most are libs of course that have a problem with Bush.
All of you should go to the petition and see some of the comments written by so-called "Christians". It is appalling and sickening. I had no idea that my fellow Methodists have such deep-seated hatred for our President.
The Comintern (Communist International -[actually the 3rd]) was set up in by Lenin in 1919. It was to be a co-ordinating body for the communist parties. Membership required, originally, agreement on 21 points set by Lenin. Moscow's demands for agreement on all its points caused immediate splits, among the "International" (like the French), and in time, under Stalin, led to its dissolution. It originally included primarily four groups of U.S. Marxists; the Socialist Labor Party, the Socialist Party of America, the trade unions IWW and the Workers International Trade Union. You can read their histories and relationship (or not) to the Comintern here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comintern
You can read from their histories that they were far from a monolithic group. The original Comintern was dissolved in 1943, with its greatest influence over the largest US groups excercised by that time. It was succeeded in 1947 with the Cominform, which itself was dissolved in 1956 in the process of De-Stalinization. During Stalin's leadership various factions split over the issue of following his lead or not. The founders of International A.N.S.W.E.R. were diehard Bolsheviks who left the CPUSA when it left the Comintern over Stalin and they did not want to.
The collective history of the various US communist factions indicates that control and/or influence of the US groups by the Comintern declined over time and had little direct control by the late 1950s. That is not to say that the KGB did not continue to exploit their fraternal party relationships to obtain US national as well as US political intelligence, on democratic as well as communist parties.
Ms. Grady the head of NOW wrote a book a few years ago maybe 3. I saw her on C-span. I was a book defending abortion. And guess who introduced her ====A Methodist Minister in full regalia.
Democrats have taken over at the highest levels of the mainstream Protestant churches. In some cases, elderly people who go to these churches have no idea what's going on. The pastors are not in the pulpit openly advocating abortion, but in the case of the Presbyterian Church USA, the money can eventually go towards pastor's abortions. Or it may go toward some other liberal cause because some of that money goes to the National council of Churches, a liberal org.
Women’s Division Calls for Broader View on Middle-East Conflicts
Richard Nixon mandated that his library be built and maintained with no public funds whatsoever. However, by law, the papers of all presidents from Nixon onward are held by the National Archives. The Nixon Library currently holds many of Nixon's pre-presidential papers and all of his post-presidential ones, but in order to get the presidential papers, it had to agree to join the National Archives system. The presidential papers will probably begin arriving at the library sometime this year.
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