Rev. Wright explains theological charges against AG Jeff Sessions

The first clarification that Reverend David Wright makes when people ask him about the complaint waged against Attorney General Jeff Sessions is that the United Methodist Church is not bringing the charges.

“The charges aren’t coming from the Methodist church, they are coming from around 639 of us – clergy of various sorts and laypersons,” Wright told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “Seeing the news last week, especially around what’s been happening at the border with families and children being torn apart and trying to think about what we can do … we realized there is a very small and unknown and unutilized piece of church law that allows us to bring a complaint against a Methodist layperson.”

Rev. Wright spearheaded an effort to bring four charges against AG Jeff Sessions, who is a member of the Methodist church in Mobile, Alabama. Wright is a Pacific Northwest elder and a chaplain at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma. The complaint comes as Sessions defends a zero tolerance immigration policy at the US-Mexico border. The policy is promoted by the Trump administration. It separated more than 2,000 children from their families and sent them to detention centers. Other members of the church were eager to sign onto the complaint.

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“The response was beyond anything we dreamed of and went national very quickly,” Wright said.

The second thing Wright notes is that the four charges are theological. They are processed through what is essentially church court within the Methodist community. Pastors and church members work through them. The charges were prompted by Sessions’ usage of a Bible scripture to justify the family-busting policy.

“That was one of the pieces that moved it,” Wright said. “… he is someone who is clearly identified as someone who is a part of our denomination for most if not all of his life; he is very public about that …”

“Then when he brought the Bible into it and tried to speak religiously and theologically, that was the point when we felt we needed to respond in kind with theological charges and complaints of our own,” he said.

Jeff Sessions in church court

Wright said that through the complaints and charges, he hopes Sessions will be open to dialogue about immigration from a spiritual and theological perspective.

“And hopefully change his heart and lead him to not just stop doing what he is doing, but to change that and do what is right,” Wright said. “And heal the hurt; repair the harm.”

Wright says that he has been active in immigrant issues while both Barack Obama and George W. Bush were president. The issue has been ongoing. The recent family breakup policy, however, is something different than he has seen in the past.

“President Obama’s history on this is atrocious, but nothing to the scale or level of human suffering we are seeing enforced under the current administration,” Wright said.

RELATED: What about Obama and the border?

The reverend is not trying to get Sessions thrown out of the Methodist Church, rather, he is trying to reach the heart of a church member, he says. The process is in the hands of Sessions’ pastor and church. They could also include any of the more than 600 people who signed the complaint.

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