PITTSBURGH, PA (AgapePress) - The United Methodist Church is being rocked by a scandal involving the misuse of money by the denomination's top lobby office in Washington, DC.

For the past 40 years, the UM Board of Church and Society has been violating the trust agreement governing its stately Capitol Hill office building, which was erected by the church's Temperance Board.

The agreement stipulates that the "Methodist Building" and its income must be devoted in perpetuity to alcohol-related issues. However, the Board of Church and Society has instead been spending that money on a vast array of liberal political causes.

Mark Tooley

Mark Tooley is with the conservative group United Methodist Action, a division of the Institute on Religion and Democracy. He feels the church agency should be forced to comply with the longstanding agreement "because it's ultimately a legal question." Tooley points out that the board has been ignoring the terms of the trust for four decades, and continues to do so.

In fact, he says, "this lobby office uses its budget of five million dollars a year for political lobbying and for political statements that I think even most liberal United Methodists would find inappropriate for a church agency to be involved with -- partisan causes that ultimately are divisive to the Church and don't build up the Body of Christ.."

The Board of Church and Society has yet to get a legal reinterpretation of the trust agreement, but instead has stonewalled by saying the agency is in full compliance and will not comment further. Tooley believes the issue will ultimately have to be resolved in a Washington, DC, court of law.

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