Jeff Sessions Charged With 'Child Abuse' by Fellow Methodist Church Members for Border Family Separations
Jeff Sessions, himself a member of the United Methodist Church, has now found himself the target of church law charges by more than 600 members of the denomination. The church has also issued an official statement slamming Sessions for a "shocking" misuse of the Bible, which the Attorney General quoted to defend the family separations at the border.
In an official statement issued and signed by hundreds of members of the United Methodist Church on Monday, June 18, the signatories filed a formal church complaint against Sessions that include, among others, child abuse.
Sessions was also charged with other violations of the United Methodist Book of Discipline for Immorality, Racial Discrimination, and for his use of Romans 13 in his recent statement, "Dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church."
"I really never would have thought I'd be working on charges against anybody in the Methodist connection, much less a lay person," the Rev. David Wright, a United Methodist clergyman from Washington State, said about the charges that he himself helped organize.
That said, Wright added that he would prefer that it does not come to the point of having Sessions kicked out of the United Methodists Church. Instead, he would prefer that the U.S. Attorney General "reclaim his values" with the help of his pastor and the church community.
"I would look upon his being taken out of the denomination or leaving as a tragedy. That's not what I would want from this," Wright added, as quoted by CBS News.
In a statement that the UMC released last Friday, June 15, the Rev. Dr. Susan Henry Crowe recalled how the church "watched with horror" as the Trump administration separated migrant children from their families, and called Sessions' Bible-inspired defense of the policy "a shocking violation of the spirit of the Gospel."
