Wednesday, March 10, 2010
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Presbyterian Peacemakers Offer Contradictory Messages About Jewish Sovereignty - '...At the suggestion of the Rev. Susan Andrews of Hudson River Presbytery, the committee added the following footnote: "The phrase 'the right of Israel to exist' is a source of pain for some members of our study committee who are in solidarity with Palestinians, who feel that the creation of the state of Israel has denied them their inalienable human rights." Ultimately, this document denies the right of the Jewish people to a homeland because this right could not be exercised without the shedding of blood. The unspoken premise is that if Israel could not be founded by a bloodless act of God, it should not have been founded, period. This metric has never been applied to any other nation state except Israel.'
Sue Andrews is a source of pain. A royal, stupid pain in the ass.
This is bad, the "history", comparing Jews (evil and violent) to Armenian immigrants (well-behaved, good) - oh brother.
I don't supposed the fact that Armenians were Christian and therefore ok as opposed to you know who has anything to do with it.
This "history" is so biased I cannot believe anybody with a college degree actually concocted it.
I'll tell you what they do have though and that is an agenda.
Why does the church do this, I just don't get it.
Sophia - yes - this is the product of a long-standing agenda.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should say I am a former Presbyterian.
But what you are seeing is just a continuation of an egregious bias and facile view of the situation that is tenaciously held by a faction within the PC(USA). Unfortunately, that faction is perched in positions of "institutional power" within the PC(USA), and ordinary Presbyterians seem disinclined, for the most part, to uproot it.
There is a long history (e.g. since the mid 90s, definitely, but possibly since the late 80s) of pro-Palestinian bias, anti-Israel bias, and (all too often) open antisemitism that can be seen if one examines documents from various offices of the PC(USA). Consider the historic reporting from the Presbyterian News Service, the statements and resources offered by the Presbyterian Israel/Palestine Mission Network, the statements of a Stated Clerk of the PC(USA) who, among other things, simply stated that the same types of human rights abuses that occured in Sudan were happening Israel... A grim picture emerges.
This is not, of course, the view of all Presbyterians, and the same thing is happening in several other Christian denominations. But the question for me is this: How do you get the members of these denominations who don't share the biases and bigotry - to grasp the seriousness of the situation and to act?