More than 600 Methodists have rounded on US attorney general Jeff Sessions accusing him of child abuse and immorality over his role in the Trump administration's 'zero tolerance' policy that has led to children being separated from their parents.
A formal denominational complaint signed by United Methodist clergy and lay people accused Sessions, who is a Methodist, of 'dissemination of doctrines contrary to the standards of doctrine of the United Methodist Church'.
It lays down four charges against Sessionss. The first three – child abuse, immorality and racial discrimination – are in reference to the border policy and the last – regarding the dissemination of doctrines against Methodism – comes after he defended separating children from parents citing Romans 13.
The letter formally sets in motion a disciplinary process that could, if unresolved, go before a church trial. Under the harshest punishment a person's church membership could be removed but it could also include lesser punishments like losing the ability to hold office or teach Sunday school.
The letter read: 'While we are reticent to bring a formal complaint against a layperson, Mr Sessions' unique combination of tremendous social/political power, his leading role as a Sunday School teacher and former delegate to General Conference, and the severe and ongoing impact of certain of his public, professional actions demand that we, as his siblings in the United Methodist denomination, call for some degree of accountability.'
Dave Wright, an ordained United Methodist elder and chaplain at the University of Puget Sound, was behind the letter and told RNS: 'My ideal outcome is that his pastors in church leadership who know him will speak with him, and that in those conversations he will be challenged to think through the level of harm he is causing and have a change of heart — which is about as Methodist as you can get.'
The letter, which was sent to RNS, says the attorney general's 'actions and the harm he is causing to immigrants, migrants, refugees, and asylees [sic] calls for his church to step into a process to directly engage with him as a part of our community.'
'While other individuals and areas of the federal government are implicated in each of these examples, Mr Sessions – as a long-term United Methodist in a tremendously powerful, public position – is particularly accountable to us, his church,' it continues. 'He is ours, and we are his. As his denomination, we have an ethical obligation to speak boldly when one of our members is engaged in causing significant harm in matters contrary to the Discipline on the global stage.'
The extraordinary intervention by members of the Methodist Church is just the latest in a series of appalled reactions from Christian denominations at the White House's policy.
The shift towards a 'zero tolerance' approach announced by Sessions means that those suspected of being illegal immigrants now face criminal charges. As it is illegal to detain children, they are separated from their parents and held in juvenile centres, often in large cages.
US Customs and Border Protection said on Tuesday that 2,342 children had been separated from their parents at the US-Mexico border between May 5 and June 9.
The separations began after Sessions announced in April that all immigrants apprehended while crossing the US-Mexico border illegally should be criminally prosecuted.
Parents who are referred by border agents for prosecution are held in federal jails, while their children are moved into border shelter facilities under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a Department of Health and Human Services agency.
