Do Methodists excommunicate?

Published on Sunday, October 20, 2002 by the Observer/UK
Iraq War 'Unjustifiable', says Bush's Church Head
by Ed Vulliamy in New York

President George Bush's own Methodist church has
launched a scathing attack on his preparations for
war against Iraq, saying they are 'without any
justification according to the teachings of Christ'.

Jim Winkler, head of social policy for United
Methodists, added that all attempts at a 'dialogue'
between the President and his own church over the
war had fallen on deaf ears at the White House.

His remarks came as the US continued its efforts to
achieve agreement on a UN resolution that would open
the way for a tough program of weapons inspections
in Iraq. France is believed to be concerned that the
current draft resolution might still act as a
trigger for military intervention without a full
Security Council debate if Iraq fails to comply.

Winkler is general secretary of the Board of Church
and Society for the United Methodist church, which
counts the President and the Vice-President, Dick
Cheney, among its members. The church represents
eight to nine million regular churchgoers and is the
third biggest in America.

The Methodist Church, he says, is not pacifist, but
'rejects war as a usual means of national policy'.
Methodist scriptural doctrine, he added, specifies
'war as a last resort, primarily a defensive thing.
And so far as I know, Saddam Hussein has not
mobilized military forces along the borders of the
United States, nor along his own border to invade a
neighboring country, nor have any of these countries
pleaded for our assistance, nor does he have weapons
of mass destruction targeted at the United States'.

Winkler said his church was 'keenly aware' that it
counted the President and his deputy among its
members, and that he was therefore 'frequently
encouraged by others to be very careful about how I
say things'.

For Richer
October 20, 2002
By PAUL KRUGMAN

I. The Disappearing Middle
When I was a teenager growing up on Long Island, one of my
favorite excursions was a trip to see the great Gilded Age
mansions of the North Shore. Those mansions weren't just
pieces of architectural history. They were monuments to a
bygone social era, one in which the rich could afford the
armies of servants needed to maintain a house the size of a
European palace. By the time I saw them, of course, that
era was long past. Almost none of the Long Island mansions
were still private residences. Those that hadn't been
turned into museums were occupied by nursing homes or
private schools.

For the America I grew up in -- the America of the 1950's
and 1960's -- was a middle-class society, both in reality
and in feel. The vast income and wealth inequalities of the
Gilded Age had disappeared. Yes, of course, there was the
poverty of the underclass -- but the conventional wisdom of
the time viewed that as a social rather than an economic
problem. Yes, of course, some wealthy businessmen and heirs
to large fortunes lived far better than the average
American. But they weren't rich the way the robber barons
who built the mansions had been rich, and there weren't
that many of them. The days when plutocrats were a force to
be reckoned with in American society, economically or
politically, seemed long past.

posted by Blicero : 10/20/2003 02:31:00 AM