The last time we tuned in the Southern Methodist University soap opera involving the George W. Bush presidential library, we were seeing lots of people claim that, for the faculty, this was an issue of academic freedom and, for a vocal chorus of Methodist clergy, it was a fight over W’s sins against “Methodist values” in foreign policy and a hot cultural issue or two.
The key quote came in a letter published by some professors at the Perkins School of Theology, who said:
“Do we want SMU to benefit financially from a legacy of massive violence, destruction, and death brought about by the Bush presidency in dismissal of broad international opinion? … What moral justification supports SMU’s providing a haven for a legacy of environmental predation and denial of global warming, shameful exploitation of gay rights, and the most critical erosion of habeas corpus in memory?”
That sounded like culture wars language to me, some of it, at least.
In response to that earlier post, GetReligion received this comment:
As a mid-90s Perkins alum, I can say that several of our faculty then excelled at mining the decades of (John) Wesley’s writings to proof-text anything they cared to believe. His exclusivist views on salvation and other ideas that might be embarassing to our modern and all-open, all-affirming ears were overlooked or consigned to the classrooms of a few of those wingnut types who still believed such things.
The amusing thing is that there is suddenly a concern among Perkins faculty about SMU’s Methodist image. That image is strong enough to survive a booze-drenched Greek system, a push to use the university’s initials rather than its name (so as to not ruffle those who might be uncomfortable being associated with a church) and years of athletic department abuses that brought about the NCAA’s only “death penalty” sanction. But it can’t survive this, it seems. …
Posted by Brett at 5:04 pm on January 27, 2007
So is this fight about the Iraq war? Yes.
Is this about other political issues? Yes.
Is this conflict also about the doctrinal and moral issues that are rocking the United Methodist Church, especially in a city where you have a liberal school of theology surrounded by, well, Texas?
In a word, yes. The best answer is “All of the above.” So how do you capture that in simple language in a short daily news report? Impossible, right?
Well, take a look at this section of a Religion News Service story by reporter G. Jeffrey MacDonald that moved the other day. The wrinkle is that, this time around, it is the conservatives who are playing the “tolerance” card. Can’t SMU allow some diversity? That leads to this:
What began as an internal flap at SMU became a national debate for Methodists after a library site-selection committee in December named SMU the sole finalist. Critics fear a privately funded policy institute, or think tank, will tie the Methodist name to a partisan public relations enterprise. Opponents are calling on the Methodist Church to forbid use of SMU property for such a purpose.
The Bush brouhaha brings out familiar fault lines between theological liberals and conservatives across the 8 million-member denomination. Methodists have battled for years over issues such as gay clergy and abortion.
The same people who have argued for pluralism within the denomination on matters of doctrine are insisting on a particular brand of ethical purity in the public square, supporters of the Bush library say.
It’s easy to argue about that last statement. But the key is the “fault lines” material in the middle of that passage. That is part of the Bush library battle. That’s a fact and that part of the story needs to be covered, in order to grasp the emotions stirred up by the conflict in Dallas pews, pulpits and classroom podiums. Can I get an amen?
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February 8, 2007, at 9:45 pm
Amen!
February 8, 2007, at 10:09 pm
Methodism, Torture and the Presidential Library
Anyone who thinks that the name Methodism or Southern Methodist University should be associated with George W. Bush needs to read the book, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror by Dr. Steven Miles, professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota.
Professor Miles has based this volume on painstaking research and highly-credible sources, including eyewitness accounts, army criminal investigations, FBI debriefings of prisoners, autopsy reports, and prisoners’ medical records. These documents tell a story strikingly different from the Bush administration version presented to the American people, revealing involvement at every level of government, from the Presbyterian Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to prison health-care personnel. The book also shows how the highest officials of government are complicit in this pattern of torture, including Episcopal Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, United Methodist Vice President Dick Cheney and United Methodist President George W. Bush.
While much of the use of torture by the Central Intelligence Agency and Special Forces troops remains concealed, Dr. Miles documents how nineteen prisoners have been tortured to death by American military personnel. The book tells of an Afghan prisoner named Dilawar, an innocent 22-year-old, who drove his taxi to the wrong place at the wrong time. At the U.S. detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, in December 2002, Dilawar was smothered, shackled and then suspended by his arms. When he was beaten with a baton, he cried out “Allah, Allah,†which amused the soldiers and triggered more merciless blows. The official report reads that he was beaten over a five day period until his legs were, in the words of the coroner, “pulpified.” He was then chained to the ceiling of his cell, where he died. Although an autopsy stated that Dilawar’s death was a homicide, General Daniel McNeil told reporters that Dilawar had died of natural causes on the grounds that one of his coronary arteries was partly occluded. The words “coronary artery disease” were typed in a different font on the prisoner’s death certificate.
Up to 90 percent of the prisoners detained in the Bush “war on terror†have been found to be unjustifiably imprisoned and without intelligence value. In addition, much of the hideous work of torture is out-sourced by the Bush administration to countries like Uzbekistan, Syria and Egypt, where torture is a long-standing and common practice. In July 2004, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, who grew up in a devout Methodist home, protested the Uzbek intelligence service’s interrogation practices: “Tortured dupes are forced to sign up to confessions showing what the Uzbek government wants the U.S. and U.K. to believe… . This material is useless — we are selling our souls for dross.”
Torture is a crime against humanity and a violation of every human rights treaty in existence, including the Geneva Conventions which prohibit cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. Torture is as profound a moral issue in our day as was slavery in the 19th century. It represents a betrayal of our deepest human and religious values as a civilized society.
David Hackett Fischer describes in his Pulitzer Prize winning book, Washington’s Crossing, how thousands of American prisoners of war were “treated with extreme cruelty by British captors,†during the Revolutionary War. There are numerous accounts of injured soldiers who surrendered being murdered and Americans dying in prison ships in New York harbor of starvation and torture.
After crossing the Delaware River and winning his first battle at Trenton, New Jersey, on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington ordered his troops to give refuge to hundreds of surrendering foreign mercenaries. “Treat them with humanity,” Washington instructed his troops. “Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army.”
Contrast this with the September 15, 2006, Washington Post lead editorial titled “The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.†“President Bush rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly.â€
If the Bush Library and think tank are placed at SMU, The United Methodist Church should withdraw its association from the University and demand that the good name of Methodism be removed from the name of the school. If The United Methodist Church cannot take a stand against the use of torture and those who employ it, including President Bush, what does it stand for?
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 12 books including: Counseling Survivors of Traumatic Events (Abingdon, 2003) and Reflections on Grief and the Spiritual Journey (Abingdon, 2005).
Fred W. Kandeler M.Div. is a retired United Methodist pastor living in New Braunfels, Texas. He was the founding pastor of Christ UMC in Plano, Texas and a United Methodist District Superintendent. He is a graduate of the Perkins School of Theology, SMU.
February 8, 2007, at 10:10 pm
I do not see what “fault line” there is about contravening the just war tradition and initiating what is basically an immoral war.
Whatever theological disputes rack the Methodist Church, for Bush to try to establish a presidential library in what is a religious institution is rather tasteless and provocative.
February 8, 2007, at 10:41 pm
Any reason we’re saying “Methodist” and not “United Methodist?” Surely we’re not including Free Methodists in our talks, are we?
Also, I didn’t know that habeas corpus was a culture war issue.
February 8, 2007, at 11:14 pm
O.K. So United Methodists, ( I have a hard enough time keeping up with the Orthodox jurisdictions that I don’t pay attention to Protestant divisions).
The erosion of habeas corpus is part and parcel of the WOT. I don’t think that WOT is part of the “culture war”.
February 9, 2007, at 6:45 am
Folks, I divided the controversy into three areas:
War
Other political
Doctrinal.
Right? I agree that there are doctrinally conservative people who oppose the war. I didn’t think that I needed to stop and list culture war issues. The RNS piece makes the line pretty clear, too.
February 9, 2007, at 6:47 am
Oh, and I still say that the most important fault lines in these oldline church fights are actually creedal.
The war issue will fade with time, one way or another. New political issues will arise. But the controversies over creedal issues — like the Resurrection — will not go away.
February 9, 2007, at 8:32 am
No, I don’t think the war will “fade with time”.
This particular war, with its very brazen breaking of just war tradition, its misleading, indeed false, information, its contravening the Geneva Accords, its mistreating of the civilian population and the civil war and further unrest in the Middle East will not go away for a very, very long time.
Doctrinal controversies won’t go way either but to have someone link the two issues and associate themselves with one group over another, ( if such is the case, and this might not really be the case), is cynical and devious, worthy of Karl Rove, ( who is not a believer according to many).
February 9, 2007, at 9:00 am
Evagrius:
You must be striving to misunderstand. I am talking about fading over years and decades, as opposed to doctrinal disputes that go on and on. Also — not to minimize the mistakes in Iraq — but I was not aware that the Middle East and Iraq were in perfect shape before. But let’s not turn this into a thread on the war. I am trying to discuss the MULTIPLE divisions that are influencing the dispute over the Bush library.
Both sides of the creedal disputes linked to the SMU wars should be covered. Period.
February 9, 2007, at 9:32 am
The creedal wars at SMU are quite a different matter than the Bush presidential library. That’s my point. The injection of that issue, ( the library), into the creedal disputes has probably made things far worse than they should be.
I don’t really think the media is capable of really describing the creedal issues with any great depth. The most they can do is reduce the debates into palatable sound bites, caricaturing both sides, ( if there really are two sides).
February 9, 2007, at 9:36 am
There are multiple sides.
But to ignore the factor of doctrine in the divisions between SMU and local UMC churches and others is to ignore a major force that will influence how the story will play out.
So, what do you think of the W-tank going to a Baptist school? Talk about a we-are-legion doctrinal situation that would be.
February 9, 2007, at 10:26 am
The Bush library should be located in Crawford, Texas…far enough away from major metropolitan centers that only the true believers would go there as if on a pilgrimage to a sacred site.:)
I’m being sarcastic but why should the library be located or affiliated with an educational institution, especially one that has religious origins?
February 9, 2007, at 5:13 pm
I think that for liberal Methodists, the proposed Bush Library is roughly the equivalent of setting up a statue to an alien god in the Temple. That’s the religious fault line, little different than say when some liberal (position) shows up in a conservative body. In both cases it is a kind of false god.
To the degree that SMU is a liberal Methodist entity, the Bush library really will be an idolatrous affront.