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The New York Times today is reporting that Methodists still trying to push President Bush’s library and think tank off the S.M.U. campus are mounting a “last-ditch effort” to block the damned-near done deal. They want to put the project to a vote in front of the 290 members of the United Methodist Church’s South Central Jurisdiction, which partially funds the university. Says New York’s Rev. Andrew Weaver, “We need to inform and recruit 16 percent of the moderate delegates to block the project.”
Only, looks like it won’t be enough: SMU says it’s almost finalized a deal with the George W. Bush Foundation to build the library and so-called “policy institute.” And Bishop Scott Jones — a trustee at SMU who got his Master of Theology degree from the Perkins School of Theology and whose brother is the dean of Duke Divinity School — tells The Times that the jurisdiction’s College of Bishops has already given its blessings to the project, as in: “S.M.U. has the authority to sign a 99-year lease, renewable up to 249 years.” –Robert Wilonsky
