Presbyterian News Service publishes defense of book accusing Bush of treason
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, Posted Wednesday, August 16, 2006
The Presbyterian News Service has written a response to a backlash by conservatives against the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation’s decision to release a book that accuses President George W. Bush of orchestrating the 9/11 terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center and killed thousands of Americans.
“The Presbyterian Publishing Corporation (PPC) staunchly defended its decision” to publish David Ray Griffin’s Christian Faith and the Truth behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action, the News Service said in an article by Jerry Van Marter. The story quoted the PPC as saying the purpose of the book is to “provoke serious discussion and reflection.”
Van Marter, the director of the news service, wrote, “Conservative groups in the PCUSA have maintained a steady drumbeat of criticism in recent weeks, attacking the book, attributing its publication to the denomination and claiming its publication is further dividing the church.”
It then quoted PPC President and Publisher Davis Perkins as saying that he rejected those charges, “saying that critics ‘rather than engaging the content of Griffin’s work, have chosen to cloud the issue by claiming, falsely, that the book was published by the PCUSA.'”
Griffin’s conspiracy theory, however, is being widely engaged in what Popular Mechanics describes as “healthy skepticism … [that] has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and other media.”
That lead-in was written for Popular Mechanics’ March 2005 introduction to a thorough debunking of the 9/11 conspiracy theory, later published in book form. At that time, Popular Mechanics said a Google search of “World Trade Center conspiracy” turned up 628,000 Web sites. A similar search today turned up more than 11 million. Based on the conspiracy “paranoia,” there is a potentially large and lucrative audience for Griffin’s book.
For its rebuttal, Popular Mechanics “assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military. In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.”
The Presbyterian News Service article did not suggest that Presbyterians consider the rebuttal evidence against Griffin’s claims.
It quoted Davis as saying, “We expect people to take issue with our books from time to time, but what is disappointing is that the most vocal critics of the work to date are dismissing it without having even bothered to read it. What we intended when we published this WJK book was not that people would necessarily agree or disagree with the author’s thesis, but that his well-researched argument would provoke serious discussion and reflection among Christians in this country who care about these issues. We feel this author – and all our authors – deserves this courtesy.”
On the other hand, Davis expressed surprise that there was no similar backlash when PPC published a comical theological book based on TV cartoon characters: The Gospel According to The Simpsons.
Griffin’s work is not comedy.