PCUSA General Assembly Wrap-Up: At the Edge of the Cliff

The 220th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is in the books, and I’ve got to say its been an eventful week. It started off looking like it was going to be a disaster for evangelicals, supporters of traditional marriage, and supporters of Israel, but in the end the lemmings managed for once to step away from the edge of the cliff.

First, on traditional marriage: the good news is that the Assembly refused, by a 52%-48% margin, to change the way marriage is defined and practiced in the PCUSA. “One man and one woman” remains the standard. It continues to be the case that those who perform ceremonies that are represented as solemnizing marriages will be in violation of their ordination vows and subject to presbyterial discipline (though the latter is very much a hit-or-miss proposition).

The bad news is that for the next couple of years, the denomination will engage in a “season of study and prayer,” which will essentially mean people continuing to shout at one another, the Louisville headquarters putting together propaganda for gay marriage, and more evangelicals leaving because they know the issue is going to come back at them relentlessly every other year. In addition, as more and more presbyteries decide that it goes against the local ideology, or because they can’t afford it, or simply because it’s too much trouble, there will be fewer and fewer judicatories that will take the prohibition on same-sex marriage rites seriously. That, in turn, will speed up the exit of evangelicals as they see the problem is no longer just with the national church, but with their next-town-over neighbors, and the refusal of their presbytery to do anything about it. I don’t know whether the tipping point will come in the next Assembly (I thought it would be this one, and was obviously wrong), but it will come. For now, the lemmings stand at the edge and look over, and contemplate what it would be like to take that last step.

On another homosexuality-related matter, the Assembly revisited the subject of ordination of sexually active gays, and refused to send to the presbyteries a constitutional amendment that would have restored the status quo ante that existed before the “fidelity in marriage, chastity in singleness” requirement was deleted last year. In a discussion so ridiculous that one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, a proposal to add the phrase “repentance of sin and diligent use of the means of grace” to the qualifications and manner of life expected of ordained persons turned out to be very controversial. James Berkley of the Layman Online reports on the discussion:

One teaching elder dramatically called the introduction of repentance “redundant, unnecessary, and possibly confusing.”

To that, teaching elder Pat Thompson from Central Washington Presbytery asked questions he had asked in committee. “Why wouldn’t we want the phrase ‘repentance of sin’ or the use of ‘means of grace’?” he asked incredulously. “What is wrong with the repentance of sin? If you are against the repentance of sin, then vote against it. If you’re against Jesus dying on the cross, then vote against it.”

In the end only 46% of the commissioners thought calling for a life of repentance on the part of the ordained was “redundant, unnecessary, and possibly confusing.” They did decide, however, to pass a resolution that declared, “We decline to take an action that would have the effect of imposing on the whole Presbyterian Church (USA) one interpretation of Scripture in this matter” of homosexual behavior. Berkley said that this amounted to “declar[ing] formally that Scripture is too confusing, too subject to varied interpretations to unite around to decide matters of same-sex sexual morality.”

The other matter that was especially controversial had to do with Israel. The Israel Palestine Mission Network and its various non-Presbyterian, non-Christian, and far-left allies sought to enlist the PCUSA in their single-minded crusade to boycott and divest from companies doing business in Israel, as a way of indicating their belief that Israel is the focus of evil in the world. (No similar efforts were made with regard to Syria, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Iran, or any of the other murderous and totalitarian regimes that blight our planet. Israel alone is apparently worthy of being so condemned and treated.) After tortured debate that included a full-court press on the General Assembly Twitter feed (which got so bad that some pro-divestment commissioners were calling on the activists to knock it off), the Assembly finally decided by a 30 vote margin to not authorize divestment, but rather to support investment in the Palestinian territories. One commissioner memorably complained about “parliamentary sleight of hand,” simply because her side lost. As it turned out, she was engaged in a whopping piece of projection.

She and her allies tried every parliamentary trick in the book to bring divestment back for another vote. They tried to amend other resolutions to tack it on, they tried to claim they’d been denied a fair vote, one even claimed that she’d voted the wrong way in order to get the divestment resolution reconsidered (there was no way for her to prove this claim, since individual votes aren’t recorded, but the moderator allowed to to make the motion anyway–it lost, in part because of people getting frustrated with the tactics of the activists).

The activists also tried–again–to get the Assembly on record as believing that the Israeli occupation constitutes “apartheid.” This is a claim that has no relationship to reality–one commissioner, who described himself as a “fifth generation South African,” said so, not that it mattered to the True Believers–but is very important for those looking to demonize Israel, in the same way that certain segments of American society find that the most effective way to ostracize someone they don’t like is to call them a racist. Despite the fact that the Israel Palestine Mission Network and at least some of its allies have no problem associating with Holocaust deniers and other anti-Semites, they are fanatical is trying to label Israel “racist.” They failed, badly.

In the end, the anti-Israel forces had to settle for a meaningless boycott of Israeli companies using products made in the settlements or using resources found on Palestinian lands (even when willingly sold to those companies by Palestinians themselves). It’s meaningless because 1) a year from now fewer than 1 in 100 Presbyterians will know anything about it; 2) many who do know will not participate; and 3) many don’t even have access to the products in question. So what it amounts to is that the activists, who are already boycotting, will continue to do so, and a handful of others may join them. The practical effect: zero. But that’s not what this is about, of course. It’s being able to say, “see, even the PCUSA thinks the Israelis are evil, rotten, racist no-goodniks!” I’ll let you judge whether they succeeded in that or not.

So there you have it: the PCUSA stays on the edge of the cliff, small pieces of it continuing to break off underneath its feet. It will have another opportunity, two years from now, to decide whether to step back from the crumbling precipice, or to boldly jump over the side. I know what my money will be on, even if I hope I’ll be wrong again.

 

Presbyterians for Hate

The Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) is an approved organization within the Presbyterian Church (USA). It will be playing the same role at the upcoming PCUSA General Assembly that United Methodist Kairos Response played at last week’s UM General Conference, which means it will be the front group that funnels the work of outside activists into the denomination’s decision-making process.

The IPMN is run by people who either are anti-Semites, or who have no scruples about consorting with them. For the last three years, I and a handful of Presbyterian bloggers have tracked the IPMN’s frequent plunges into the sewer. I’ve done so at The Reformed Pastor in more than two dozen posts (the most revealing being this, this, this, this, this, this, and this–check out the last one inparticular; Gilad Atzmon is so bad most of the Palestinian solidarity movement won’t have anything to do with him). So bad did it get that the IPMN finally shut down its Facebook page, so that its approval of anti-Semitic tropes would be more difficult to track.

They still have a Twitter feed, however, and they’ve been no more careful about their linkage there. Yesterday, they linked to something called the Orthodox Cognate Page, which is run by a collection of people associated with the Malankara Orthodox Church of India. The link is to an article by a Palestinian Muslim journalist, Khalid Amayreh, who makes clear why he thinks Palestinian Christians are having a hard time of it:

But the special hatred (and contempt) of Christians by Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, goes deep in history and certainly precedes modern Zionism by numerous centuries.

According to Yisrael Shahak, author of Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, Judaism is imbued with a very deep hatred toward Christianity, combined with ignorance about it. He argues that Jewish hatred of Christianity, though partly aggravated by Christian persecution of Jews, was mainly religious and theological in nature. …

[Shahak's book is anti-Semitic propaganda, filled with fabrications, one of which is this: "...both before and after a meal, a pious Jew ritually washes his hands... On one of these two occasions he is worshiping God... but on the other he is worshiping Satan..." (p. 34)]

Hence, one can safely claim that Jewish and Judaic hostility to Christianity is inherent and intrinsic and transcends all Christian pogroms, including the holocaust. …

There is no doubt that Jewish hostility, dormant or otherwise, to Christianity is being deliberately kept secret as much as possible by much of the media in the West. This per se constitutes a conspiracy. After all, why of all themes and subject, Talmudic perceptions of Christianity and Christians remain more or less a taboo in western scholarship?

This is the kind of stuff that the IPMN is recommending their followers read. This is the organization that will be leading the charge for PCUSA divestment. This is a group that the denomination ought to have repudiated long since, but which still resides in the good graces of its leadership.

 

Infiltrating the Churches: Part 4

Next week, the world-wide United Methodist Church will begin its quadrennial meeting in Tampa. When the delegates, bishops, denominational staff, and other support personnel gather, they will not be alone.

In June, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will hold its biennial meeting in Pittsburgh. When the commissioners and other Presbyterians gather, they will not be alone.

In both instances, they will be met by political activists with an agenda: the delegitimization, and ultimately destruction, of Israel as a national homeland for the Jewish people. Their immediate goal: to get these two mainline denominations to put their stamp of approval on that agenda.

Over the last three days, I have offered internal documents, links, analysis, and other evidence to demonstrate that this is what is about to happen in Tampa and soon to happen in Pittsburgh. In the process, I hope I have made clear that this is about the efforts of secular, political activists who otherwise have no interest in the beliefs, practices, or positions of either of these denominations to manipulate them for their own purposes. They are being helped by a small coterie of like-minded activists within the denominations, but make no mistake: this show is being orchestrated by, informed by, led by, directed by, organized by, and resourced by organizations of the political far left.

I want to make clear at this point two things that these articles have not been about:

1) They have not been about Israel. There is much about Israeli policy in the Palestinian territories that is debatable, and a legitimate case can be made against its settlement policy, for instance, or the route of the security fence. But those who want to make this about Israel have missed the point, which is that if Methodists or Presbyterians want to criticize Israel, they should make that decision without outside interference by people who don’t have either the witness or the good of the denominations at heart.

2) This has not been about divestment. It is an article of faith on the left that divestment from South Africa led to the fall of apartheid, and that divestment from Israel can bring about an end to the occupation. In fact, I think the effect of divestment on South Africa is vastly overstated, and that divestment will have no effect on Israel at all. The only part of the “boycott, divestment, and sanctions” (BDS) movement that is likely to effect Israel in any way is sanctions, and then only if they are undertaken by most or all of the world’s nations, which is never going to happen. The actions of a couple of mainline Protestant denominations selling their pension fund stock in three companies is almost more of a joke than a serious effort. It is, in truth, a leftist form of ritual cleansing, rather than a genuine effort to have an impact on the conflict.

What this is about, as the title of the posts has said, is the infiltration of the churches by outside forces that seek to use them for their own ends. Leftists have been doing this since at least the 1960s, the result being that the churches have been dragged into lending their names to an ever-increasing number of causes and positions that have no basis in either church teaching or ethics, but solely in political views that the left views as Holy Writ, but which are actually just prudential judgments about which the churches ought to be agnostic. What special expertise does the church have, for instance, that makes it proper for a General Conference to express itself on the various forms of health insurance reform? Why should anyone listen to a General Assembly when it opines about what constitutes “fair” tax rates? And why should either be deciding whether Israel’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza constitute “apartheid,” a political judgment that has nothing to do with whether any particular actions of Israel are right or wrong?

None of this is to say that the churches should not speak out loudly and in accordance with their convictions on matters that touch the gospel and its moral implications. Rather, it is to suggest that the churches have no special competence (in fact, usually none at all) to weigh in on policy specifics. But that is just what the activists are after, and it is clear that they will do everything in their power–including interfering in the work of institutions to which they have no personal connection–in order to make it happen. Here’s praying that the delegates to General Conference, and the commissioners to General Assembly, are not swayed by the political noise that they hear directed their way.

 

Infiltrating the Churches: Part 3

This all needs to be done *quickly.* We are less than 3 weeks away from the Methodist Conference, so time is of the essence. Can you start this week? Yes, I know you’re busy, but how thrilling will it be to have been a part of history when we win?

With those words, left-wing Jewish political activists Anna Baltzer of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation and Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace encouraged others to get in on their effort to influence decisions of the United Methodist Church’s General Conference. It’s part of the tactics encapsulated in the “Toolkit: Action for Church Divestment” that has gone out to their enablers in recent weeks.

Right at the start, they make clear that this is only part of a larger political campaign:

What’s going on? What are our goals? Between now and early July, after more than eight years of hard work, two large Christian denominations — the United Methodist Church (of the world!) and the Presbyterian Church USA — will vote on divestment from companies involved in Israel’s occupation and its oppression of the Palestinian people. These churches are under attack for the courageous decisions they are about to make. With your help, we can help strengthen their resolve.

What’s the significance/importance?

*These could become the largest divestment victories in the US to date.
*They will inspire divestment efforts in other institutions and they build on other campaigns like “Stop Caterpillar,” “Hang Up on Motorola,” and the “We Divest” TIAA-CREF Campaign.
*Divestment is the right thing to do. It is a moral, nonviolent response to the immoral daily violence of the Israeli occupation.

Stepping stones: that’s how the USCEIO and JVP see the churches.

Baltzer and Levy then go on to list five things that their allies can do, the first three of which are important:

1. Contact voting delegates/commissioners before the conferences.
***This is the most important thing that we need.*** We need to reach out to these delegates to support them in doing the right thing and answering questions/concerns they might have. Phone calls and in-person meetings (if you have time and happen to live near a delegate) are recommended.

More on this in a moment.

2. Come to Tampa and/or Pittsburgh! We need tons of help at the conferences themselves. There will be opportunities to interact with delegates during breaks and to participate in special events. Other needs include tracking legislation, media, tabling, hospitality, leafleting, and more. A strong presence in favor of divestment at these conferences is really important.

You’d think these people were lobbying Congress. The fact that they have no intrinsic connection to the institution, and that many, perhaps most of the people they have there won’t either, doesn’t make the slightest difference to them. All they care about is the politics.

3. Find allies who can help speak to delegates or come to the conferences. Methodist, Presbyterian, Palestinian (esp. Palestinian Christian), and Jewish supporters are especially important.

Three responses: 1) Why bring Presbyterians to the Methodist GC? Because the denominational and polity differences don’t matter to the political activists. 2) Any Palestinian Christian that are brought are likely represent a Sabeel-approved agenda. They also will do all they can to make life under Muslim rule sound idyllic. 3) Jewish supporters of the activists anti-Israel agenda are designed to give Gentile Christians cover. They figure, “hey, if there are Jews who support this, it can’t really be anti-Israel.” Would that it were so.

Now, back to item 1. The Baltzer/Levy Legion has been give some guidance in how to approach the Methodist delegates:

1. DON’T alienate. Keep history, acronyms, politics, and attitude in check.
2. DO engage. Stay positive and build on shared values. We support freedom and equality for all people.
3. DO focus on the narrative and story you are telling. If you are Jewish or Palestinian, say so. If you have traveled to Israel and Palestine, explain what you saw. Make it personal.
4. DO listen. Pay attention to what the other person is saying. Ask questions. Do not interrupt, even if the speaker says something you do not like. When speaking with delegates, pay double attention. We will want you to report back what you heard — what do they believe, what are the obstacles they may have (if any) for voting yes, and what kind of follow-up may be needed.

“Keep history in check.” Because an informed person will know that the USCEIO-JVP version of history will distort reality beyond recognition. “Keep politics in check.” Convince them that you aren’t motivated by politics, but by a touching concern for Methodism. “Make it personal.” Because personal experience trumps truth, history, and the bigger picture.

Oh, and for any delegates to the General Conference who may be reading this: note well that what you say will be passed on to the activists.

In making calls, the Legion is provided with a script, just in case they can’t keep the talking points straight. You can find the whole thing here, but let’s look at a sample:

Hi, this is _____________. I’m a (insert: member of ______, Palestinian Christian, Jewish American,
person who has traveled to Israel/Palestine, local teacher, etc). I hope you had a Happy Easter! Do you have a moment to chat?

So I’m a person who’s a delegate to the General Conference, and I get this call from someone who tells me first thing, “I’m a Jewish American” or “I’m a local teacher” (huh?) My first thought is going to be, “and you want to talk to me why?”

(If you’re from the same area geographically, mention it here.) I’m calling because I was so happy to learn about the resolution that is being considered at General Conference to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation. I’m a strong supporter of divestment. Do you know much about the resolution? Do you have any questions that I could answer?

“So, you’re a local teacher or you’re Jewish and you want to talk to me about General Conference business? Why exactly are you sticking your nose into my church’s business? What makes you such an expert on the United Methodist Church? And why do you think you know more about our business than I do?”

If they don’t know about the resolution:
Methodist peace-seekers are working to align the church’s investment policies with your stated positions on ending the Israeli occupation.

“Well, I’m glad to hear that it is so important to you that my denomination be consistent in its political stances, even to the point of advocating that we take a specific action that conforms to your ideas of consistency.”

There are over 3,000 people around the country who have signed a petition endorsing the resolution, including many Jews, Palestinian Christians, and others.

“So 3000 people, all of whom could be members of Code Pink, and many of whom are not Methodists, have endorsed this resolution. Why exactly do they think that they are entitled to weigh in on Methodist business?”

If there are questions you can’t answer:
I don’t know the answer to that question off the top of my head but I could definitely send you the answer.

I’d be willing to bet that if the question hints at anything that runs counter to the activists’ narrative, this will happen:

If they are clearly hostile:
Thanks very much. Have a good day… (and hang up!)

They also offer a sample voicemail message that callers could leave if no one is at home:

I’m calling because I was so inspired to learn about the resolution that is being considered at General Conference to divest from companies involved in the Israeli occupation. I’m a strong supporter of divestment, along with lots of Christian leaders like the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and many Jews and rabbis – there’s actually a new letter of support from rabbis at http://www.rabbisletter.org.

See what I mean about the way Jewish support for divestment is made front and center? It’s mentioned over and over, to give those who might otherwise have doubts cover.

That aspect of their lobbying comes up as well in a video chat that took place about ten days ago. You can find it here, if you have an hour to kill. If you don’t, consider these comments in the chat bar that goes with the video presentation:

Jeffrey Mendelman from SF: You said “I’m Jewish-American”
Felice Gelman from United States: Exactly. Should we say that we are part of a campaign rather than sounding like an individual?
Jeffrey Mendelman from SF: To counter anti-semitic claims against hte movement
Craig Hunter from Denton: My suggestion as a Presbyterian — if you are Jewish, I think it is very important to mention that.
Benjamin Douglas from Sacramento, CA: I would assume he was pandering, just to get someone whom he thinks is an angry Zionist off his back.
Rochelle Gause: not acting is an action.
Katharine Davies Samway from Oakland: Why don’t we mention the huge, unbalanced response of the US, our government

You can also take a look at the training video that United Methodist Kairos Response (the tools who are being used by the activists to gain access and cover to the General Conference) has put out.

So there you have it: a concerted, organized, detailed, and intrusive effort by left-wing anti-Israel activists to infiltrate the highest decision-making body of the United Methodist Church for the purpose of manipulating it in support of their political agenda.

Tomorrow: Final thoughts.

(Cross-posted at Stand Firm.)

 

Infiltrating the Churches: Part 2

The groups seeking to influence the mainline churches denominational meetings are a motley crew of left-wing political outfits and their allies inside those denominations. In case you aren’t familiar with them, I’d like to introduce them to you.

First, there’s the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO). It calls itself “the largest and most diverse coalition working to change U.S. policy toward Israel/Palestine to support human rights, international law, and equality.” That sounds nice, but it’s just verbiage. So is the Campaign’s claim not to support either a two-state or one-state solution to the Palestinian problem.

The reason is that the USCEIO supports, as a “human right,” the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians. This refers to the claim that hundreds of thousands of Arabs were forced at gunpoint by Israel to leave the country in 1948, and that those still alive and all of their descendants should have the freedom to return to Israel, reclaim any property they claim to have held at the time, and become citizens of the country. (In fact, most of the Arabs who left Israel at the time of the invasion of the new nation by five Arab armies did so simply to get out of the way of the fighting, or because they listened to Arab propaganda and thought they’d be returning home in a few weeks once their brethren had pushed the Jews into the sea. Check out the history as it was recorded at the time here. It should also be noted that almost a million Jews were expelled from various Arab nations in 1948 and years following, and the USCEIO has never uttered a word suggesting that they should be allowed to return to their former homes.)

This, of course, is a formula for the destruction of Israel as a Jewish national homeland. Adding what is now millions of Palestinians to the over one million Arabs who are already citizens of Israel (because they didn’t leave in 1948, and have therefore enjoyed greater freedom than any of their Arab brethren for over 60 years) would create an Arab majority. Assuming Israel remained a democracy, once the Palestinians were in charge of the country, things would change, to say the least. It is hardly beyond the ream of possibility that the new Arab-ruled Israel would expel the Jewish population, just as the Iraqis, Egyptians, Libyans, Syrians, and others before them. It’s also likely that, since the vast majority of Palestinians are Muslims, that Christians and any Jews allowed to remain would become dhimmis in short order. Finally, of course, there’s the dreadful human rights record of every other Arab nation to consider. Would a Palestinian-ruled Israel ape Syria or Saudi Arabia? Maybe not, but there’s little reason for Israel’s Jewish population to expect anything different, especially given the corruption and human rights violations of the Palestinian Authority, and the anti-Semitic ravings of Hamas.

The USCEIO is of the same mind as its leftist allies: Palestinians deserve the right of national self-determination, but Jews do not. It states as much in its FAQ:

The US Campaign does not endorse either a one-state or a two-state solution, but rather upholds the Palestinian right to self-determination. We believe the Palestinians must be empowered to exercise this right, and that the international community has a responsibility towards the right of the Palestinian to self-determination.

No mention of such a right for Israelis, or Israeli Jews, is mentioned anywhere on its web site.

That the USCEIO marches in lockstep with the far left is no surprise. Among the organizations that are members of this anti-Israel umbrella is a veritable Who’s Who of the American extreme left. Among the member groups are long-time Communist fronts like the US Peace Council and the National Lawyers Guild, the International Socialist Organization, Code Pink, Global Exchange, the Council for the National Interest, the International Solidarity Movement, the U.S. Green Party, the Institute for Policy Studies, We Are Wide Awake (a project of anti-Semitic web site Veterans Today‘s Eileen Fleming), the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, the War Resisters League, If Americans Knew, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, and the U.S. Campaign fro Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

Of course, the secular left is not alone in the USCEIO, which includes a wide range of church groups. Among these are the General Board of Global Ministries and General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church, the Methodist Federation for Social Action, Episcopal Peace Fellowship, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship Israel Palestine Network, the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina, the PCUSA’s Israel Palestine Mission Network, the American Friends Service Committee, United Methodist Kairos Response, Pax Christi, Friends of Sabeel-North America, Christian Peacemakers Teams, Unitarian Universalists for Justice in the Middle East, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Don’t think, however, that these Christian organizations (other than the Methodist General Board of Global Ministries, which I’ll return to in a moment) have a lot of say within the USCEIO. Of the five staff of the Campaign, the two most important and visible are Jewish, while the other three are of indeterminate religious background (though one has an Arabic name). The membership of the Steering Committee is especially interesting. For at least the last five years, one member has been Judith LeBlanc, a vice-chair of the Communist Party USA and national field organizer for Peace Action, which is also a USCEIO member organization. Another is Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. Yet another is Felicia Eaves, whose connections to the far left include Black Voices for Justice and the Marxist-dominated United for Peace and Justice, and who has been a featured speaker at events sponsored by the likes of the neo-Stalinist International ANSWER. Also on the Steering Committee are members from the Muslim American Society, American Muslims for Palestine, and the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. Left-wing Judaism has a representative in Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace (remember this name–it will come up again tomorrow). Bringing up the rear are a couple of leftist media types (Andrew Kadi of Adalah-NY and Bill Fletcher Jr. of Black Commentator.com) and two representatives of Christian organizations: David Wildman of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries and Mike Merryman-Lotze of the American Friends Service Committee.

Merryman-Lotze is the Israel-Palestine Program Director for the AFSC, but has otherwise kept a low profile on the Internet. Wildman, the “Executive Secretary for Human Rights and Racial Justice in Mission Contexts and Relationships” at the UMGBGM, is another story. He has been talking about Israeli “apartheid” and “colonialism” for years, as well as advocating for divestment. He has said of Zionism, “It’s a theology that is deeply exclusivist and racist.” An article of his appeared at Electronic Intifada in which he wrote:

The New Testament was written in a context of Roman colonial rule, discrimination, and military occupation in Palestine. It also took place in the midst of an active armed resistance movement (the Zealots) against colonialism and occupation. So, if we want to understand fully the meaning of biblical texts for today, it is helpful to listen to Palestinians who are facing the same dynamics of military occupation, colonial control of their land and apartheid-like discrimination.

You decide just what that is supposed to mean, or justify.

The USCEIO is not alone in its efforts to infiltrate the churches. A close ally in this effort is Jewish Voice for Peace. Both the staff and board of directors of JVP are shot through with individuals with resumes full of left-wing activism:

*Executive Director Rebecca Vilkomerson: “Rebecca has over fifteen years of experience in community organizing, advocacy, program development and fundraising in the United States and Israel.”

*Director of Advocacy Sydney Levy: “Sydney has worked for over 15 years in nonprofits advocating for LGBT human rights organizing for media justice, and assisting in the preparation of death row appeals.”

*Administrative Director Jane Suskin: “Long active in justice, peace and feminist causes.”

*Board member and treasurer Jethro Eisenstein: “Since 1971 he has been involved in the longest-running civil rights case in New York, which established a right to sue the NY Police Department to restrict surveillance of peaceful political activity.”

Board member and secretary Jordan Ash: “He later dropped out of college to work as a union organizer for SEIU. After 12 years working at ACORN, where he played a leading role in the group’s campaign against predatory mortgage lending, he returned to the labor movement and now works for SEIU again.”

*Board member Noah Winer: “…was a founding campaign strategist at MoveOn.org from 2003 to 2010.”

You get the idea. JVP is a political organization, and needless to say not a Christian one. It has no interest whatsoever in Christian theology or ethics, and doesn’t care what the right stance would be for Christian denominations to take would be based on their own beliefs or interests, and yet is heavily involved in the effort to get the denominations meeting this summer to buy into its divestment/boycott/sanctions agenda.

Jewish Voice for Peace has put out a flyer in connection with the Methodist General Conference that you can see here. Among the anti-Israel voices quoted in it are Archbishop Desmond Tutu (who thinks that pretty much everything is related to apartheid), and a Holocaust survivor named Hajo Meyer, a favorite of the anti-Semite set who has expressed support for the bizarre theory that most Jews are not really Jews, but descendants of a Central Asian people called the Khazars; referred to Zionism as “racist and separatist”; and declared that the Jewish state is the modern equivalent of Nazi Germany. He’s also claimed that the definition of “anti-Semitism” has changed:

“Formerly an anti-Semite was somebody who hated Jews because they were Jews and had a Jewish soul. But nowadays an anti-Semite is somebody who is hated by Jews.”

That’s the kind of person that Jewish Voice for Peace wants United Methodists to listen to next week.

Tomorrow: the tactics being used by the political left to infiltrate the churches.

(Cross-posted at Stand Firm.)

 

Infiltrating the Churches: Part 1

Yes, well. Between Holy Week stuff, finishing a D.Min class paper, and regular pastoral duties, I’ve fallen down on the whole biblical commentary thing. Sorry about that.

I will come back to it. But for anyone who is still checking this blog out, I have something I have to do this week that I’m also cross-posting at Stand Firm. It has to do with Israel.

As several large mainline denominations prepare to meet in the next several months, political leftists are planning on using them to attack Israel and advance their agendas.

At their denominational meetings, both the United Methodist Church (April 24-May 4) and the Presbyterian Church USA (June 30-July 7) will be dealing with resolutions calling for divestment from Israel, and labeling the Israeli occupation of the West Bank “apartheid.” But it is not only Methodist and Presbyterian activists who are pushing those actions.

The denominational activists that are serving as the fronts for the political left include United Methodist Kairos Response and the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the PCUSA. Behind them is a collection of organizations of the far left, including:

• U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation (USCEIO)
• Jewish Voice for Peace
• Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions
• Rachel Corrie Foundation
• Students for Justice in Palestine
• Green Party
• St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee

In addition, there are organizations from other Christian denominations that are not content to allow fellow Christians to conduct their own business, but rather are sticking their nose in to support the anti-Israel agenda. Among these are the American Friends Service Committee, the United Church of Canada’s Israel Palestine Network, and the United Church of Canada Maritime Conference Working Group for Just Peace for Israel-Palestine. Friends of Sabeel-North America, an interfaith group that supports the work of the anti-Semitic Sabeel Center in Jerusalem, is also helping.

All of the above organizations, among others, will have a presence of some kind at the United Methodist General Conference that begins next week.

Leading and coordinating this effort is the “national organizer” for the USCEIO, Anna Baltzer. Her biography on the USCEIO site describes her this way:

Anna is an award-winning lecturer, author, and activist for Palestinian human rights. Baltzer has appeared on television more than 100 times (including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) and lectured at more than 500 universities, schools, churches, mosques, synagogues, and policy institutes around the world with her acclaimed presentation, “Life in Occupied Palestine: Eyewitness Stories & Photos,” and her full-color book: Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. Both her DVD and her book are available in our store. She is co-founder of US Campaign member group, the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee.

Discover the Networks fills out the picture with stuff that the USCEIO would rather you not know:

Baltzer has worked with both the International Solidarity Movement and the International Women’s Peace Service (IWPS). The West Bank-based IWPS, which supports “acts of nonviolent resistance to end [Israel’s] brutal and illegal military Occupation,” is a communist organization that grew out of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. [Note the prominence that the IWPS gives to Baltzer's book on their home page--DF]

Adamantly opposed to Israel’s existence as an independent “Jewish state,” Baltzer favors a “one state solution” where Jews would be a minority surrounded by Arabs sympathetic to Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

In an article she penned in March 2007, Baltzer condemned “the so-called ‘Land of Israel’” for practicing “ethnic discrimination” in many forms. She added:

“I know what Israel will say: this is only self-defense. On some level this is correct: if Israel desires control the territory that it has for more than two-thirds of its history, and to remain the state exclusively of the Jewish people, and to be democratic as well, it must find a way to create a Jewish majority on a strip of land in which the majority of inhabitants are not Jewish. There are only so many possible solutions: there’s forced mass transfer … there’s mass imprisonment (10,000 plus Palestinians are being held in Israeli jails as I write), there’s genocide … or there is apartheid.”

“Apartheid and segregation,” Baltzer concluded, “failed in South Africa and the United States and they will fail in Israel and Palestine. Ethnocentric nationalism failed in Nazi Germany and it will fail in Zionist Israel. But … [w]e cannot wait for things to get worse. The ethnic cleansing and apartheid have gone on long enough.”

In August 2007, Baltzer was the featured speaker at a Sabeel-sponsored conference in Berkeley, California. Claiming that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was rooted in a dispute over land rather than religion, she explained that Muslim Arabs do not hate Jews per se, but only resent that the latter have stolen their real estate.

In May 2008 Baltzer spoke to the Muslim Student Union at UC Irvine, where she again denounced the “Apartheid Wall” but never once mentioned the epidemic of suicide bombings that had necessitated its creation. When a student attendee asked Baltzer to comment on those suicide bombings, she replied that while such acts were certainly abominable, they needed to be understood in context; that is, one could hardly expect the Palestinians to act non-violently in the face of their suffering.

An apologist for suicide bombers, an opponent of the existence of Israel as a Jewish state and Israeli self-defense, a denizen of the far left: this is who is leading the effort to infiltrate the highest decision-making bodies of the mainline churches in order to use them in the service of the anti-Israel agenda of the extreme left.

Tomorrow: the organizations behind the infiltration effort, and their mainline enablers.

 

Another Anti-Israel Voice in PCUSA

The PSUSA’s IPMN (Israel Palestine Mission Network) helpfully offers up a link on its Twitter site to an article from the Rev. Chris Iosso,  the coordinator of the PCUSA’s ACSWP (Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy), one of the many alphabet groups within the PCUSA that seem to have nothing but political advocacy as their mission. The article, found at Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice, claims that the way to war with Iran is being greased, and finds his evidence from some interesting sources:

The first thing one encoun­ters in dis­cussing the war drum­beat tar­get­ing Iran is the one-sidedness of the debate. Glenn Green­wald of Salon gives a quick sum­mary on this point, and James Wall, for­mer Chris­t­ian Cen­tury edi­tor,describes the same real­ity. This sug­gests that the talk of war with Iran, though help­fully called, “loose talk,” by Pres­i­dent Obama in his Sun­day, March 4, speech to the Amer­i­can Israeli Pub­lic Affairs Com­mit­tee (AIPAC), is actu­ally quite delib­er­ate and orches­trated talk designed to cre­ate a mind­set favor­ing war.

James Wall, as all readers of this blog know, is an anti-Semite who would rather see Israel destroyed than defend itself, and who has repeatedly made the charge that the foreign policy of the American government is controlled by the Israelis, their lobby AIPAC in the U.S., and a cabal of Jewish “neo-cons.” He gets much of his information from a coterie of anti-Semitic news site and bloggers, some of whom he is associated with at Veterans Today (which today includes a positive review of a book entitled Confessions of an Anti-Semite) and My Catbird Seat (headline today: “Mossad Has Long Given Marching Orders to AIPAC”). If Iosso regularly reads Wall’s blog, then he should know the kind of swill he’s relying on.

Steven Walt, a polit­i­cal sci­ence “Real­ist,” ana­lyzes Iran’s pos­si­ble desire to have the capac­ity to build a bomb; hav­ing “capac­ity” has not mer­ited being bombed in the past.

I don’t know whether Walt is a “realist” or not, but I do know that he and his fellow academic John Mersheimer literally wrote the book on The Israel Lobby, which is basically a work of conspiracy theory in which the Joooooooos are in control of our destiny as a nation, are loyal only to Israel, and have imperial designs on pretty much everything. It is a mishmash, in the words of Jonah Cohen of American Thinker, of  ”circular logic,  factual errors, lack of original scholarship, mono-causal social science, unsubstantiated generalizations,  selective use of evidence, insinuations of dual loyalty, [and] strawman counterarguments.” For a lengthy list of critiques of Walt and Mersheimer, see here. Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies wrote this about the paper that the book is  based on:

Inept, even kooky academic work, then, but is it anti-Semitic? If by anti-Semitism one means obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews; if one accuses them of disloyalty, subversion or treachery, of having occult powers and of participating in secret combinations that manipulate institutions and governments; if one systematically selects everything unfair, ugly or wrong about Jews as individuals or a group and equally systematically suppresses any exculpatory information — why, yes, this paper is anti-Semitic.

Once again, interesting source Iosso leans on. He goes on:

Pro­fes­sor Juan Cole, a Mid­dle East his­to­rian at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan, ana­lyzes the polit­i­cal and human­i­tar­ian impact of the sanc­tions on Iran….(Gideon Levy of Haaretz writes with sur­prise at Israel’s abil­ity to set the terms for the debate in the United States, warn­ing that the U.S. may even­tu­ally con­sider its own pri­or­i­ties. For the amount of U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port to Israel, see the report by Josh Rueb­ner of the U.S. Cam­paign to End the Israeli Occupation.)

University of Michigan professor Juan Cole is a man of the far left whose animosity toward Israel shows up regularly at his blog Informed Comment. Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist who seems to despise his own country, and is a frequent source of “information” and quotes for the VT and MCS crowd, including Wall, as well as the IPMN. Josh Ruebner…well, all you need to know about him is his job title–”national advocacy director” of an organization that seeks Israel’s destruction as a Jewish state. Once again, sources at least questionable, and undoubtedly one-sided.

For the most part, Iosso’s article is the same kind of claptrap that I looked at yesterday coming from Jim Winkler of the United Methodist Church. It is liberally sprinkled with nonsense such as this

For Walt and Mearsheimer, the pri­mary threat to Israel’s exis­tence is not Iran but the con­tin­u­ing occu­pa­tion of Pales­tine, which is chang­ing the nature of Israel into a more war­like and exclu­sivist state.

which really tells you all you need to know about the substance.

What’s interesting here, as I’ve indicated, is not the substance but the sources. Iosso–who cannot be seen as a marginal character in the PCUSA, but is clearly a leader of its political advocacy efforts–seems to draw from the same well as the IPMN. There are far more mainstream figures that one could cite if one wanted to make the case–and a strong one–that a military attack on Iran would be a failure, counter-productive, or even disastrous for the Middle East, the U.S., and even Israel. But these guys don’t qualify, and it makes me wonder just how much the thinking that dominates the IPMN has captured the highest levels of leadership in the PCUSA. That might even be a worthwhile question for commissioners to ask at this summer’s General Assembly.

 

Horns of a Dilemma

Jim Winkler is in a quandry. The general secretary of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society is a pacifist, so he thinks nuclear weapons are bad, BAD, BAD, and that no one including the Iranians should have them. On the other hand, the evil Americans and their puppet Israel (or it is the other way around?), have them, so nothing should be done to stop the Iranians from getting them. Whatever should a peace-and-justice bureaucrat advocate? In the latest GBCS newsletter, he does both:

The drums are pounding once again for war with Iran. This seems almost incomprehensible to me when you consider that the United States has just been defeated in wars with Iraq and Afghanistan, futilely expended trillions of dollars, killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people, and lost thousands of soldiers. Besides these indicators of fruitless endeavors, are proponents of war with Iran not aware it is much larger in both geography and population than either Iraq and Afghanistan and is far more developed in terms of infrastructure?

Really, Jim? Wow, that’s fascinating. I’m going to have to give the Defense Department my copy of the World Almanac so that they can study up.

Who remains to fight this war? The exhausted soldiers who have been sent on three and four tours of duty already? Are there millions more young men and women eager and ready to fight in the hot deserts of Iran? I doubt it.

It is lunacy to think that a successful war with Iran can be accomplished by aerial bombing to destroy its nuclear facilities or by assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists. Those who desire war know full well it will involve vast numbers of soldiers and private military contractors, today’s mercenaries.

Jim may be the one who needs the Almanac. He seems to have confused Iraq with Iran.

He also seems to have adopted a favorite technique of the political left, which is to make stuff up and argue against that, rather than against what your opponents actually say. If Winkler has bothered to follow the actual debate at all, he knows that no one–no one, not even the nefarious neo-cons–have suggested putting boots on the ground in Iran. To the extent that there’s a military option at all, it involves using air assets exclusively. Same for Israel (though there’s been talk there of using a limited number of special forces as well, but that’s for Israel to decide). No one is talking about overthrowing the mullahs, but instead taking out the Iranian nuclear weapons development program. Period.

It remains unknown whether Iran actually is developing a nuclear weapon.

Only to those who spend their time with their fingers stuck in their ears shouting “I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iran already has 74 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium. Thing is, all you need for commercial electricity-producing reactors is 3% enrichment. While 20% is nowhere near ideal for a bomb (that would be 93%), it still makes bomb construction feasible. And the point is that there’s no other use for uranium enriched to that level. But Winkler gets his information strictly from his far left pals who have taken to considering Iran a paragon of virtue because is opposes The Empire and its Israeli puppet (or is it the other way around?).

Nevertheless, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and 43 other U.S. Senators have introduced Senate Resolution 380 demanding that Iran sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The resolution is prominently posted on the Web site of the principal arm of the Israeli lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Ironically, AIPAC does not insist Israel sign the very same treaty.

It never occurs to Winkler to ask, “if Iran isn’t developing nuclear weapons, why won’t it sign the NPT?” As for Israel, I know it’s impossible for Jimbo to wrap his mind around this, but it’s Israel that has been invaded several times in the last sixty years, Israel that has been threatened by Iran rather than the other way around, and Israel that requires a deterrent that balances out the vast numerical disadvantage that it has vis-a-vis its enemies.

I do not want to see Iran develop a nuclear weapon. I don’t want Israel or the United States to possess nuclear weapons. I don’t want any country on earth to possess nuclear weapons. They are immoral, useless weapons of mass destruction.

You can almost see the But sign go off in his head.

It is not any more moral for the United States or Israel to possess a nuclear weapon than it is for Iran to own one.

Think about the implications of that. Imagine if instead he had written in 1938 (as pacifists in the West did, in fact), “It is not any more moral for Great Britain or France to have a bigger or more powerful military than Germany.” It’s a formula for war, not for avoiding war. To say a thing like this, one would have to believe that the political intentions, not to mention social and political structure and military history of a given country, is irrelevant. It is just as immoral for Switzerland, which has never in its united history ever attacked another nation (but has also not been attacked because it has been militarily prepared) to possess nuclear weapons to defend itself as for North Korea (which has attacked and tried to conquer its southern neighbor within living memory) to possess them for the purpose of intimidating and possibly attacking its neighbors. That’s a view of the ethics of force in a fallen world that is naive at best, delusional at worst. Of course, if you think the U.S. and Israel are no better than Iran…

I personally think Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is half-mad. But, I confess at times to believing U.S. and Israeli leaders are half-mad, too. I can find no paragons of virtue in this situation.

Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yeah, I can see how you could confuse the three of them.

I suspect even the “Just War” advocates, who always seem to find a convenient justification for war, are having a hard time right now. This would be a war of choice, not a war of last resort.

That’s certainly true–if you’ve been asleep for the last twelve years. Ever since it was first discovered that the Iranians were working on nuclear technology (for “peaceful” and “economic” reasons, in a country sitting on top of one of the world’s largest fossil fuel reserves), the West has tried everything it could think of–diplomacy, sanctions, sweet-talking, threatening–to avoid having to use force to stop them from building The Bomb. Winkler evidently believes that no nation, under any circumstances, has the right to use force before force has been used on it. There’s just one problem with that, and the Iranians are well aware of it: one nuclear weapon with enough power exploded over Israel would destroy the entire nation (not to mention most of the Palestinians, but hey, that’s just collateral damage if we can annihilate the Joooooooos). That’s why the threat to Israel has been spoken of as “existential.” Winkler probably thinks that means Israel is afraid all its copies of Sartre will be torched.

So, here’s what I get out of this: nuclear weapons are bad, and no one should have them. No action, however, beyond what has been shown to be ineffectual should be taken to stop any nation from obtaining them, no matter what it has done or said in the past, or threatened to do in the future, because the United States and Israel have them. Israel, in particular, should take no action to stop the Iranian program until it has been incinerated, because the ethical sensitivities of a mainline Protestant bureaucrat who knows little or nothing about things military would be shattered by Jewish people under threat of annihilation failing to live by an ethical view on the use of force held by only a small portion of Christians.

Glad we got that cleared up, Jimmy. Now, why is it that United Methodists pay you to speak for them again?

 

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani: Update 12

According to Israel National News, Pastor Yousef was scheduled to be executed today, but the Iranian government has delayed that:

Iran has put off the execution of Christian Pastor Yousof Nadarkhani — probably in response to massive international pressure — but it is not clear for how long.

Nadarkhani was due to be executed on Tuesday, after having lost the final appeal against a conviction on a charge of apostasy in Iran’s Supreme Court.

In 2009, Nadarkhani filed a complaint with local officials over Islamic indoctrination of his children at school, contending that his children should not be forced to learn about a religion they do not practice.

He was arrested shortly thereafter and convicted of apostasy by a provincial court in Gilan, in the state of Rasht, where he and his wife and two children live. The pastor, a member of the Protestant Evangelical Church of Iran, was given a chance to recant, but refused.

According to Article 225 the Iranian penal code, “punishment for an Innate Apostate is death,” and “punishment for a Parental Apostate is death.” Shari’a (Islamic) law states the same.

There’s no word from Iranian media sources about this that I could find (at least not the English ones), so I don’t know what sources INN is using. But assuming this is true, it’s good news, but also a sign that the world needs to keep the pressure on. Keep praying!

(Hat tip: Kevin Curtis via Facebook.)

 

The Exploitation of Pastor Yousef 2 and Update 11

First it was the cynical left, now the lunatic right. What is it with these people? From the Christian Post:

The organization Stand Up America Now, led and founded by Dr. Terry Jones, revealed on Feb. 22 that it will burn Qurans and images of the prophet Muhammad in protest of the Islamic religion, should Iranian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani be executed for his Christian faith.

According to the Stand Up America Now website, the organization focuses on many social issues, with a special emphasis on standing up for Christian minorities persecuted in Islamic dominated countries.

On Feb. 23, 2012, Stand Up America Now, based in Gainesville, Fla., protested Islamic Awareness Month at the University of Florida, also located in Gainesville.

The organization’s president and founder, Dr. Terry Jones, describes the planned burning of the Quran as a form of protest which would “obviously get Islam’s attention,” saying that Christians “cannot just stand by and do nothing.”

Of all the lame brained stunts this publicity hound could indulge in…

I have a personal message for Terry Jones which I sent to him this morning via email (you can do the same at the Stand Up America Now site). Here it is:

Pastor Jones: The Christian Post this morning brought the distressing news that you plan on burning the Quran if Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani is executed by Iran. The Post quoted you as saying that Christians “cannot just stand by and do nothing.”

I agree. There are many ways that protests of an execution could be done, beginning, perhaps, with a prayer vigil on behalf of Pastor Yousef’s family and other Christians who are threatened with persecution by Iran outside that nation’s interest section at 2209 Wisconsin Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC. I live near Washington–I would even help organize it for you.

The method you suggest, however, would do nothing more than inflame passions throughout the Muslim world, not just in Iran, and put the lives of countless Christian brothers and sisters in danger. You may think you’d be registering a protest against tyranny, when in fact all you would be doing is making a bad situation immeasurably worse.

Please, for the love of Christ and His people, reconsider this course of action. Publicizing your anger is not more important than the lives of our brethren.

I will let you know if I get an answer.

UPDATE 11:

Press TV has changed its article on Pastor Yousef, which I reported on yesterday:

Iran’s Supreme Court has not yet handed down its final verdict in the case of the pastor Yousef Nadarkhani in order to allow authorities to further investigate the file and reach the best decision, Press TV reports.

Informed sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Press TV on Friday that the Supreme Court returned Nadarkhani’s case to a lower court in October 2011, saying investigations were incomplete and insufficient.

The lower court has yet to complete its probe, the sources said, adding that the case has not been sent back to the Supreme Court for a final verdict.

Nadarkhani, a 32-year-old Iranian born Muslim who has converted to Christianity, made headlines in the Western media which claimed he has been sentenced to death for apostasy.

Nevertheless, he has not even named the church where it is claimed he has received a degree authorizing him to perform religious duties and ceremonies in Christianity.

Western media outlets’ obsession with handwringing about Nadarkhani’s case aims to mount pressure against Iran in light of the 4th Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy, which is scheduled to take place on March 13, 2012.

Note that they have edited out both the contention that Pastor Yousef is a violent criminal, and that Western media only “claims” the pastor is a convert. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone in Tehran was reading this blog.