Methodists opposing locating the Bush Presidential Library and a related "think tank" at Southern Methodist University are not yet ready to declare victory. But momentum is with them.

The controvery has captured international media attention -- as well as that of leaders and members of the United Methodist Church, which owns the school. George and Laura Bush are both members of the denomination, and Mrs. Bush sits on the SMU board of trustees that has been leading the effort place the half billion dollar monument to her husband's presidency on the campus.

But opponents have organized an online petition drive of Methodists against the Bush complex:

"We now have as signatories fourteen Bishops in the United Methodist Church, the past President of the Methodist Church of New Zealand, two Superintendents in the British Methodist Church, over 600 United Methodist clergy, and more than nine thousand members of churches from across the United States and Canada," said the Reverend Andrew Weaver, the SMU alum who organized the petition.  

Rev. Dr. Andrew Weaver has been researching and writing about the attacks on the mainline Protestant denominations for several years, including several pieces at Talk to Action.  However, in a new article at Media Transparency -- Weaver breaks the story that the two-decade war of attrition and division against the mainline churches, led by the Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy has been orechestrated by some of the leading neo-conservative Catholic intellectuals in the Unites States.

An historic battle is unfolding for the future of mainstream Protestantism in the U.S. and in the world. You might have read press reports about the battles over gay ordination and the threats of walk-outs by hard-line conservatives. But that is only a small part of one of the biggest, and most underreported, religion stories in American history.  

But the see-no-evil press coverage may be about to change. While this has been building for some time, the increasingly forceful and public stands of Rev. John H. Thomas, president of the 1.3 million member United Church of Christ may be the story that can no longer go untold.

Thomas is standing-up for his church. He is speaking-up. He is speaking-out. He is making it clear that he won't back-off; and he won't back-down.

Speaking recently at Gettysburg College, Thomas blasted the 20-year war of attrition aimed at the mainline churches by a key grantee of neo-conservative foundations. The Washington, DC-based Institute on Religion and Democracy is the hub of a national network of conservative factions operating inside mainline churches -- and seeking to bend them to their will or break them apart.

Rev. Thomas is not the only mainstream minister in a fight-back mode. There is a fight-back movement spreading rapidly through the mainline churches -- most visibly in the blogosphere.