What Would Wesley Say? Probably "Get The Hell Out Of My Church"

Somehow I missed it when Jim Winkler first said it back in March. Then I let an e-mail from a reader collect dust in my in-box for over two weeks before I finally let this speech by the chief executive of the UMC's General Board of Church and Society sink in. I know he was speaking in Portland, but did he really think about how this sort of rhetoric would sound to mainstream Methodists who heard it later? Read it for yourself:

Now, it occurs to me that extremist, shall we say “Christianist,” forces have been encouraged in this country as well. Certainly, politicians work hard to curry favor with them and their increasing cries of persecution—they can’t get the 10 Commandments posted in public places or have crèche sets placed in the town square or have their floats entered in public parades and they have to put up with gay and lesbian people and so forth has created quite a stir. Meanwhile, they are building a virtual alternative society closing themselves off insofar as possible from the rest of us. In Pakistan, the United States is deeply concerned with the madrassahs, that is, the private fundamentalist Islamist schools. Here we have so-called Christian academies and home schooling, our own form of madrassahs.