Well, now. First the Catholics, now the Methodists.
The United States Catholic Conference of Bishops has informed us,
as
reported nearby, that they did not agree to sign onto a
petition to the FCC calling for a notice of inquiry into “hate
speech” by talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and others on talk radio
and Fox News. The petition was sent out by the left-wing So We
Might See interfaith group, which claimed support in their media
package from the USCCB, the United Methodists, the Presbyterian
Church (U.S.A.), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the
Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Islamic Society of
North American. And, of course, the United Church of Christ, my
own denomination.
Now comes word that, as with the Catholic Bishops, the Methodists
are saying they too never signed on to the FCC
petition. Startlingly, the Methodists deny that they even signed
up for the Coalition. Here’s the exact quote from Mary Lynn Holly
of the United Methodist Information Service. A hat tip to an
alert reader, Gloria
White. Say the Methodists in a clear
contradiction of So We Might See:
“United Methodist Communications is not a sponsor of this
coalition at this point. Our name was inadvertently added to the
sponsorship list in error. It has now been
removed.”
This is exactly the opposite of what the So We Might See release
on the petition says. Says the group: “The So
We Might See Coalition is sending this letter to the Federal
Communications Commission and the Department of
Commerce…” The full letter can be seen
here.
The problem here is stark. The United Church of Christ, using
funds provided by George Soros and others, informed the world
that they had assembled an interfaith religious coalition on hate
speech that was taking their case to the FCC.
They listed seven coalition members who had signed onto this,
specifically listing the entire So We Might See Coalition as the
signers of the petition. Two of the seven faiths have now come
forward to say flatly they did not agree to this. Remarkably, the
Methodists are not only disowning the FCC petition — they are
even denying membership in the Coalition entirely!
At a minimum this is remarkable sloppiness. Or worse, it was the
use of the names and reputations of the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops and the United Methodists to give an
impression that simply is in fact not true — that the leaders of
these two faiths are leading a legal assault on free speech as
expressed by the people and institutions cited either in the
petition itself — Rush Limbaugh - or in the text and
accompanying links of the So We Might See media package —
Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, and Fox
News.
Either way an apology is owed to these two groups by Reverend J.
Bennett Guess of the United Church of Christ Office of
Communications, Inc. and — hopefully - by the UCC’s new
president, the Reverend Geoffrey Black.
This is embarrassingly shameful. And the left-wing outside money
that is trying to run the UCC bureaucratic agenda should be
returned, with the entire project shuttered.
What a mess.
