Bishop Kenneth L. Carder: The tactics also are very misleading. Another example: having been targeted myself on a couple of occasions—or more than a couple—on some occasions by Mr. Tooley, over things taken out of context. An example of one of those that caused considerable conversation between me and Mr. Tooley: after 9/11 and during the aftermath of 9/11, I wrote an article for our conference newspaper that was picked up by the general news services of the United Methodist Church. The article was entitled “God Bless America and the World,” in which I said that we are appropriately praying in this time of crisis that God will bless America but let us also remember that God’s preoccupation is with the world not exclusively with America. And that while we are praying for America, also pray for the people of the world. And let us further acknowledge that God blesses in different ways—when we are asking God to bless America, are we asking for God to bless America in a specific way? Because praying for God to bless us can be a dangerous thing for God’s blessings often come in unattractive packages. Ask Abraham and Sarah who were called “God’s most blessed,” where they had to leave their homeland in their old age and go out and search for ‘a city not made with human hands.’ Or ask Mary who Gabriel said “You are the most blessed among women.” Ask her what it means to be blessed by God—it may mean standing beneath the Cross and watching your son executed. So let’s be careful that we have preconceived notions as to what it means to be blessed by God.

Well that went out to the conference newspaper. I got no negative response from my conference. I got positive responses some from people saying thank you for reminding us that we need to pray for Iraq as well as America or Palestine and Africa—countries in Africa. But one day I got a letter from Mark Tooley that said, “Since you are being featured prominently in the forthcoming reflection that I have coming up, I thought you should have a copy of this. Please let me know if I’ve stated things inaccurately and if so, let me know.” Now I assumed, and I could read the entire letter if anyone desired for me to do so, it was perfectly clear in that letter that I’m sending this to you as …for you to correct before I use it. When I shared that with a communications person in my office in Mississippi I was beginning to draft my response because I was going to say No you are not using this accurately. You’ve taken me out of context. Please use this sentence in the context of the whole paragraph or at least accompany your piece with my piece so your readers can read what the total thing I said because you are implying that I am unpatriotic, that I am against America (God blessing America), which was not the case at all. Well, while I was drafting my response, my communications director—our communications director-- went on the website of IRD—United UMAction and discovered it was already posted on the website. So I contacted Mr. Tooley to let him know that he was misusing my material, that he had apparently misinformed me; that I had assumed he was asking for my critique of his piece and correction of his piece and therefore would correct his piece accordingly before it went out. But it was obvious that he was not interested in my correction but what he was interested in was for me to give him more quotes that he could take out of context and use.

And therefore I indicated to Mr. Tooley that I would counter this by first of all—I asked him for his mailing list so I could send my piece to everybody on his mailing list at my cost and of course he didn’t—he would not send me his mailing list. I then submitted all of my piece and my commentary about his use of my document to United Methodist Communications and Infoserve in the event that they get calls which they always do about his articles and put him on notice that from henceforth I would talk with him about no issue because this is not accurate journalism, it is propaganda. It is taking things out of context, it is misusing people’s positions for (since this was going to be a part of his fundraising and request for funds) that he was raising funds at the expense of the distortion of my position. I consider that unethical. I consider that beneath authentic Christian discipleship. So I so informed him that I felt that this was a distortion of journalism with integrity for he is not a journalist but he is a propagandist and that this was a distortion for personal gain or that is the gain of his institution, at the expense of the truth. And the motto of IRD is “Defending Faith and Democracy” and that this approach undermines both and therefore…but I would talk with him and engage in conversation with him around issues of discipleship but other than that I would not talk with him about any issues because I did not frankly trust him to report me accurately or to represent my position accurately. And we had conversation about that. He tried to again ask me well what do you disagree with in the article—I refused to do that because I was not going to give additional quotes but I did say I do think you are not behaving as a disciple of Jesus Christ. I will talk with you about your discipleship and in fact, you can hold me accountable for my discipleship, too. Or you can hold me accountable for any place that I distort our tradition, our Wesleyan tradition, or orthodox Christian faith. And I would like to hold you accountable for the same thing and in this instance you are violating both our Wesleyan tradition and what I understand to be basic discipleship which requires honesty and truthfulness and also requires that we deal with respect the positions and we not distort the positions of others in order for our own personal gain or the gain of our particular ideology.

So I don’t have—I have refused to engage Mr. Tooley in any conversation about an issue like—and his issues are always homosexuality or what he interprets to be a liberal—a liberal political agenda. And I don’t think it’s about politics in this situation primarily, at least for me. It’s about discipleship and how do we remain faithful to Christian discipleship. So my conversations with him will be limited to how is it with your soul? Which is a traditional Wesleyan question and I will be glad to engage in basic discipleship questions—what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. But in terms of discussing war issues or homosexuality or those things I found it counterproductive to try to enter into discussion with him. (spoken from off camera: "Did he take you up on your offer?") No.