Word: methodist
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Hugh Sidey has never been better than in his story on "The Right Rev. Ronald Reagan." I have been a minister in the United Methodist Church for 40 years, and it pains me when my colleagues in the pulpit confuse the Gospel with political opinions and self-righteousness with justice. When the President of the U.S. falls into such blasphemy, my pain is compounded many times over...
...hold such opinions. But, argues I.R.D. Spokesman Richard John Neuhaus, the church has a responsibility to maintain "a zone of truth which represents the full range of morally serious reflection." And the leftist thrust of the Protestant activists has not won the status of a moral truth. Says Methodist Bishops' President Crutchfield of those who want to rein in the God Box: "This is not merely a right-wing attack. These are people who believe in Christians' being involved in the life of the world. They just don't want the church to come down...
...United Methodist Church, which has lost 1.4 million members since 1968, would normally welcome most converts. But its leaders must rue the day in 1979 when David Jessup, who had become a religious dropout in college, decided to join the Marvin Memorial Church of Silver Spring, Md. Jessup, 42, who works with the AFL-CIO'S Committee on Political Education, began to have questions about organizations that received Methodist funds. The end result of his curiosity is the Institute on Religion and Democracy, which, though small, can justly claim credit for the present furor over Protestant politics...
...Berkeley free-speech movement, and later the Peace Corps as well as black-voter-registration and labor-organizing campaigns. But even in his radical student days he was strongly antiCommunist. In 1980 he and his wife, in what became known as the Jessup Report, totaled up $442,000 in Methodist moneys aiding groups he judged to be Marxist or totalitarian, and sent the list to the denomination's financial overseers...
Through his campaign Jessup met folksy Texas Evangelist Ed Robb, 56, a conservative Democrat and a leader in Good News, an evangelical caucus that had long criticized Methodist agencies for overplaying social issues. Good News promoted Jessup's charges in its publications. A few months later, Jessup and Robb set up the I.R.D. in Washington, D.C., to monitor political activity by various denominations. They enlisted a credibility-building board of advisers whose 28 members range from socialist to right-wing on domestic issues but are pro-U.S. on foreign policy...