United Methodist Church Votes To Refer Petition Rejecting Bush Library At SMU
United Methodist Church Votes To Refer Petition Rejecting Bush Library At SMU
President Bush’s presidential library, which is set to be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, has received significant criticism because of an attached institute — independent of the university — that will sponsor programs designed to “promote the vision of the president” and “celebrate” Bush’s presidency. The library will even “rely chiefly” on a design firm, rather than historians, to showcase Bush’s tenure.
While SMU faculty have previously criticized and spoken out against the library, the United Methodist Church (UMC) may be following suit. At yesterday’s 2008 Quadrennial General Conference, the UMC’s governing body voted overwhelmingly — 844 to 20 — to refer a petition “for the library’s rejection to the South Central jurisdiction of the church which owns the university property.” The petition reads:
SMU Bush Presidential Library Rejection (80089-MH-NonDis)
I hereby petition the UMC General Conference to prevent leasing, selling, or otherwise participating in or supporting the presidential library for George W. Bush at Southern Methodist University.
Rationale
We should support separation of church and state and if the Bush library goes on the SMU campus or property it will appear to the country and the world as an endorsement of that president by the United Methodist Church. Texas is a big state; surely there are other venues…
Opposition to the library centers around the the partisan nature of the attached institute. Former Bush adviser Karl Rove has even signed on to advise the project because he is said to be a “critical resource” of administration history. One minister and SMU grad specifically objected to the Bush administration’s use of torture:
“Many are offended by the contempt shown by the administration in areas like torture,” says Rev. Andrew J. Weaver, Ph.D. a minister and psychologist in Brooklyn, New York. “Torture is not a value of the Methodist church.” Rev. Weaver is a graduate of SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, and told Dallas South that torture in today’s terms would be the moral equivalent of slavery.
The local UMC jurisdiction will vote on the petition this July in Dallas. Weaver noted the positive outcome of the UMC governing body’s referral, “They’re going to be forced to allow a vote here…There will be a real vote.”
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GOOD FOR THEM.
I hope they tell Chimpy to stick his liebury up his asset.
May 2nd, 2008 at 10:59 amThat is one creative artist to make a likeness of Bush’s face with a collage of skin of dead Iraqi kids and soldiers.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:03 amNIMBY- not in my back yard.
and don’t put the Bush LIEbrary in my front yard, either.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:08 amRev. Weaver is a graduate of SMU’s Perkins School of Theology, and told Dallas South that torture in today’s terms would be the moral equivalent of slavery.
In “today’s terms?” Does he think slavery ended in this country?
Why not just say it say it like it is - torture is the moral equivalent of torture. There is nothing else to which it can be compared or equivalized.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 amGood. SMU’s gonna look pretty funny with a Bush libraray, but no Methodist Church on the property. I am in the Methodist community in Dallas and like most of us we’re fighting this library all the way.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:10 amThis should go right in the heart of the 9th ward of New Orleans and without security.
Then we’d see the vision of the people get promoted, and Bush’s legacy
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 amAmen.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 amThis is a good research project for an aspiring psychology PhD student. Why would a president shove his legacy onto 72% of people who despise him for the benefit of 28% who don’t? This is a good 21st century case-study of egotism at its worst.
Good move on the churches part, though, as moral enforcement comes to bite the religious right in the behind. There’s always a breaking point.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:24 amI’m glad to see they took the moral high ground. This should be very interesting to watch how this story develops. Plus at the same time it sends a powerful message to President Bush that his shameful behavior will not be tolerated or endorsed by the United Methodist Church.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:25 amA suitable location I can think of for Bush’s liebrary would be a sewage treatment facility.
The difference, of course, is that the sewage treatment facility does serve a useful purpose in our society.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:27 amWeaver noted the positive outcome of the UMC governing body’s referral, “They’re going to be forced to allow a vote here…There will be a real vote.”
Ohhhh SNAP!!!
Nice work, Methodists. :-)
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:28 amROFLAO…..Sorry I can’t contain myself…Poor bull shit bush, no one want’s his sorry as, or the rest of him either…Maybe rover can put bush’s two coloring book’s and my pet goat in his den and call it the bush library….Blessings
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:29 amI’ve come to respect this site. Too bad you guys used the image of Bush made from a bunch of images from porn sites. Some “intern” made a mistake. That’s not a dead iraqi child on Bush’s right ear.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:39 amAre you guys f’ing kidding me.
They should allow the library. Welcome the library.
It’ll finally give Americans a chance to read all the documents the Bush Administration has withheld all these years.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 amrjkitt
Porn sites?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 amTexas is a big state; surely there are other venues…
I was gonna say that there’s probably a community college in Midland that would be fuuking DE-LIGHTED to host such an auspicious and honorable institution as the Bush Memorial Comic Book Collection and Reverential Chapel.
But it turns out there’s a cow-college there already, called Midland College. And I’m positive they’d be ec-fuukin-STATIC to have the Bush “library.”
PER-fuct…
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:47 amWhat? They don’t want the MARK of the DEVIL on their campus? Go figure.
WORST, MOST CRIMINAL PRESIDENT EVER.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:48 amjay_severin_has_a_small_pen1s
Bush won’t make his documents available while in office, faced with congressional oversight. Suddenly he’ll make them available in a private library?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:49 amIt’ll finally give Americans a chance to read all the documents the Bush Administration has withheld all these years.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
you misunderestimate the purpose of the “library.” It is NOT to preserve important documents; it is to store the completed coloring books and make them available for St. Bush acolytes. They’ll have the original “The Pet Goat,” for example.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:50 amMcWars Says:
rjkitt
Porn sites?
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:46 am
If you look at the picture very very closely, you’ll notice that the pictures are all nekked stuff. :-)
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:52 amWell using a design firm instead of historians to put together the presentation of the Bush legacy kind of says it all. This always has been an administration of form over substance. But then the election of a government has also become a matter of form over substance.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 amtokin librul Says:
But it turns out there’s a cow-college there already, called Midland College. And I’m positive they’d be ec-fuukin-STATIC to have the Bush “library.”
Why a college? There are many sewage plants that could be renamed.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:53 amTired of being lied to Says:
A suitable location I can think of for Bush’s liebrary would be a sewage treatment facility.
Good idea!
Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco Formed to Honor George W. Bush
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:00 pmshoeless Says:
Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco Formed to Honor George W. Bush
And one day, all sewage plants may eventually be know as George Bush.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:05 pmThis is really big, finally somebody is standing up to the bush name and in Texas. Perhaps ethics and morals are still around, almost makes me a believer. But rover has til July to rally the bush contributors to turn the naysayers.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 pmWe alway;s called those sewage plant’s “Pickle pond’s”. Hummm. president g.w. bush’s pickle pond library, frequent flushes allowed..Yah! I like that…Blessings
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:10 pmAs someone raised with the values of the Southern Methodist church (before becoming an atheist), I’m very proud of my former church’s stance on this.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 pmrjkitt Says:
——————————————————————————–
I’ve come to respect this site. Too bad you guys used the image of Bush made from a bunch of images from porn sites. Some “intern” made a mistake. That’s not a dead iraqi child on Bush’s right ear.
Somebody flunked his Rorsach test…But what else can you expect from a neocon.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:18 pmrjkitt is right there might be a reclining naked figure on Dubya’s forehead but there is definitely fellatio going on in Dubya’s right ear. Now, I had to zoom in the image and look at it twice to finally see it but it is there.
Good eye, rjkitt, but I doubt anyone would have been the wiser had you not mentioned it….and me too for that matter.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:28 pmOTOH, it is appropo, his administration has been and is obscene, more so than porn.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 pmI wish I could dig up the url but I’m not kidding. This image of the boy king is actually a work of art pieced together from, yeah, nekkid stuff. Perhaps this site used it as a visual example of the content of the article itself - like a metaphor for hypocrisy. Anyway, I brought up the intern excuse because that’s what huge corporations do when they infringe on somebody elses copyrighted material. I doubt it was a neocon who made the image.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 pmI’m for calling the bodily function we call a Bowel Movement be renamed a Bush Movement. Instead of taking a crap I’ll now take a bush, people will no longer be full of sh-t but full of bush, karts can be known as bush gas, and we can wipe ourselves with bush paper.
Anything I can do to help confirm his true legacy I will….
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:38 pmexcuse me, coffee is acting upon me and I need to go take a bush.
Any idea if a majority of the South Central Jurisdiction of the UMC agrees with you?
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:39 pmshoeless Says:
Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco Formed to Honor George W. Bush
Wayne Says:
And one day, all sewage plants may eventually be know as George Bush.
Then we can all say, “I have to take a Bush”.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:42 pmHah!! #32 beat me to it.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:45 pmHere’s a link to the Bush portrait done with porn images.
You can look at it in more detail there.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:49 pmIgnoranceIsNotBliss Says:
Hah!! #32 beat me to it.
Sorry, I was up early this morning and got lost online. I just about bushed my pants laughing when I read that they don’t want his library.
I’ll have fun today telling my republican friends that they are bushheads.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:55 pmGood for the Methodists!
Let them put the GWChymp memorial on the campus of
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:58 pmFU(K U.
I’ll pass, it would just ruin the porn.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:06 pmI still think dead Iraqis and soldiers would be more appropriate than porn. Porn is a good thing, whereas everything about Bush is vile and disgusting and perverted.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pmThe way Christians have been used to provide political cover for nakedly political and blatantly unchristian purposes, like say starting a war of aggression, is one of the saddest parts of the story of the right wing rise to power. It is heartening to see churches realizing they are being used in a blasphemous and dishonest way. Why should the Baptist convention provide land to a propaganda institute accountable to no one but George Bush and his coterie. What is even remotely Christian about the work of Karl Rove?
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:17 pmMaybe poor li’l George can have his friends from Dubai make him one of those fancy man-made islands to house his LIEbary. Or maybe we could just put up a bookshelf in the men’s bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Karl can be both Head LIEbarian and bathroom attendant.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm“Would you like to read a copy of “My Pet Goat” while you take a Bush, or are you just here for the RNC meeting?”
Or maybe he can use one of those defunct off shore oil refineries in the Gulf of Mexico.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:31 pmDubya sure has a lot to celebrate don`t he IE; WAR,LIES, CORRUPTION,CRONYISM,SOLDIERS DYING,WOUNDED SOLDIERS WHO COME HOME A V.A. THAT CAN`T COPE WITH THEIR P.T.S.D.,MORTGAGE CRISIS,$HITTY ECONOMY and most of all his CONTEMPT of the Constitution, Hang these creeps ASAP.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:32 pmGlad to see at least SOME of the churchies thinking for themselves.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pmBullsmith I totally agree and I’m not alone.
In 2003 The World Council of Churches (which represents a combined total of 350-450 million Christians from over 100 countries) issued a statement in opposition to war with Iraq, stating that “War against Iraq would be immoral, unwise, and in breach of the principles of the United Nations Charter.”
The Pope himself sent a personal envoy to plead with Bush not to invade Iraq.
Bush & co. ignored them all.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:33 pmOnly history can judge the actions of Still-President Bush and company. That is why it is critical that history only be written and disseminated by loyal Bush supporters rather than actual impartial historians.
May 2nd, 2008 at 1:44 pmLibrary, that’s still so funny to me. All the books the idiot can understand would fit in a portapotty. And that would make it so much easier for us to all piss on his “legacy”. Now that would be worth making a trip to Texas for.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:05 pmIgnoranceIsNotBliss Says:
Then we can all say, “I have to take a Bush”.
May 2nd, 2008 at 12:42
Then we can at least have the Bush Administration Legacy Dictionary to put in the Portapotty Library.
“I have to take a Bush.”
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:09 pmGo Cheney yourself.”
“Typical Stepfort Laura wife.”
Does anyone know if the Methodist church excommunicates people? I would think the Chimperror would be a prime candidate.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 pm844-20.
I did the math. 2.3%.
That’s the very definition of schadenfreude. Ha!
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pmOh, and I’m taking suggestions on alternative locations for the Bush Library.
Suggestions so far include:
Rikers Island
the old Branch Davidian complex in Waco
The Hague
the Ninth Circle of Hell
Guantanamo Bay
In related news, I heard that recently, a large collection of books that Chimpy was planning to donate to his presidential library was destroyed in a fire.
The real tragedy is that he hadn’t finished coloring all of them yet.
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:41 pmI went to take a Bush in Mpls & got Cheneyed by Craig instead!
May 2nd, 2008 at 2:44 pmWhat exactly is “the vision of the president”? Legally blind?
May 2nd, 2008 at 3:59 pmSomeone needs to make one of those mosaic picturesof bush’s face made from pictures of the soldiers he has killed, and then get THAT picture as a billboard posted directly oppostie the front door of wherever this piece of shit one volume “library” will be housed, probably some bathroom somewhere.
May 2nd, 2008 at 8:58 pmI loathe this sack of protoplasm.
Pete the Church does technically retain the power to excommunicate but there’s a concern that if we excommunicate Bush the Church will split into factions and people will starve as a result.
May 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 amIf the Bush Library was be built on the premises of Leavenworth Penitentiary, he could review his Presidency without having to walk far.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:14 am#5. Guido the Loving OBGYN Says:
Good. SMU’s gonna look pretty funny with a Bush libraray, but no Methodist Church on the property. I am in the Methodist community in Dallas and like most of us we’re fighting this library all the way.
Guido,
While I appreciate that you too want to fight the library “all the way,” I must remind you that when you advocate a position, it’s critical that you be honest, otherwise, your adversaries will identify your half-truths (or outright lies) and use your dishonesty to discredit the entire cause. No longer will the merits of the cause be considered, only the liars that support it.
I graduated from SMU twice. I know SMU. I know Dallas. Apparently, you don’t. The SMU campus houses two churches and the leading Methodist seminary in the world. Highland Park Methodist Church is on the SMU campus. It was founded in 1915 and the land was deeded to the church by the university. It consists of more that 250,000 square feet and its sanctuary was recognized as a “Recorded Texas Historic Landmark” in 1995. Thousands of members. The Perkins Chapel is also in the middle of the campus. Many of my friends were married there.
A Methodist University is no place for a private presidential library that will seek to hide records and to justify the use of torture while glorifying King George, the inept torturer who circumvented the democratic process to get elected twice and to send Americans into a war for the benefit of him and his royal cronies.
Still. Stick to the facts. You harm our cause when you lie.
May 3rd, 2008 at 8:48 pm