My question would be…Then WHY are the far-left, Marxist church leaders still there….

Russ Jones – OneNewsNow – 1/12/2011
A leading tea party group activist’s call for a mainline Christian denomination to close down has provoked response from The Huffington Post and several liberal bloggers.

DUI attorney and Tea Party Nation president Judson Phillips was so angered when he saw a banner at the United Methodist building on Capitol Hill proclaiming “Pass the DREAM Act” that he wrote in his blog, “I have a DREAM. That is, no more United Methodist Church.”

But Mark Tooley, president of The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) and a life-long Methodist himself, disagrees with Phillips’ extreme position.

“Ultimately, we lay people who foot the bill and who are members of the church, [and they] have responsibility for what’s being done in our name,” Tooley notes. “And rather than dreaming for our church’s demise,” he believes work should be done for its possible renewal.

Having grown up in a United Methodist Church, Phillips says the denomination is nothing more than “the ‘religious’ arm of socialism” when it supports issues like illegal immigration. But the IRD president argues that he has overlooked the positive aspects of the denomination.

“The church is still full of worshipers of Jesus Christ,” he contends. “The vast majority of lay people certainly are not adherents of Karl Marx, and a vast majority [does] not support the far left political witness of the church’s elite.”

United Methodist officials claim the DREAM Act (“The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act”) is in alignment with the principles of support for immigration reform found in resolutions passed by the General Conference. They also argue that immigration reform is in line with Jesus’ teachings.