This is the first of two articles about the 2010 Churches for Middle East Peace advocacy conference. To read about the panel discussions, please click here.
Addressing Churches for Middle East Peace, an advocacy group known for criticisms of Israel, former United Church of Christ President John Thomas blisteringly attacked the U.S. and Israel for apparently behaving like wicked King Ahab in the Bible. But Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schori spoke more temperately, contrasting her own denomination with others advocating boycotts of Israel.
Jefferts Schori and Thomas’ talks bracketed the 2010 Advocacy Conference of the Churches for Middle East Peace (CMEP), held June 13-15 at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C. and in the Russell Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Entitled “Pursuing Peace Together: Working for Reconciliation in the Holy Land,” the ecumenical gathering heard from an Obama Administration official, a Democratic congressman, and several liberal think tank and interest group leaders.
CMEP represents over 20 church organizations, including mainline and historic peace churches, along with liberal Catholic groups and some eastern Orthodox churches. The organization favors a “two-state” solution with Palestinians governing the West Bank and Gaza and Israel reduced to its pre-1967 borders.
A common theme in the conference was Israel’s impact upon foreign policy around the globe, and CEMP’s call for an end to the Israeli and Egyptian-enforced embargo around the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip.
Naboth’s Vineyard
Speaking at the conference’s opening worship service from the story of Naboth’s vineyard in 1 Kings 21, Thomas compared King Ahab’s desire to annex Naboth’s adjacent land for a palace garden to the land strife between Israelis and Palestinians. In the biblical account, Ahab’s wife Jezebel has Naboth falsely accused and stoned so that Ahab can possess his land.
Thomas, who also serves as Chair of CMEP’s Leadership Council, seemed to equate the United States and Israel with Ahab, the two countries saying “Give me your vineyard, because it is next to mine, and I want it.”
“There are always enough scoundrels around who will trump up charges and then ultimately dispossess the Naboths of this world first of their reputation, then of their life, then of their land,” Thomas surmised. The former UCC leader proceeded to list American examples of “possessing and dispossessing”.
“How else can we read the narratives that lead to and from the trail of tears and all of the tributaries that have gone so painfully from it?” Thomas asked. “What of manifest destiny that rendered much of Mexico and Puerto Rico and islands in the Pacific ours, adjacent? Or closer to home, what else can one make of so much of the urban gentrification that we see, or even the foreclosures – which are not only cruel, but also demonically and deliberately clever?”
Thomas also aimed criticism at American Christians.
“What is our nation’s stake in this little strip of land that many call ‘holy’?” Thomas asked. “There are far too many Christians for whom this is spiritually adjacent land, land to be possessed, taken, and used in our own self-serving apocalyptic visions, which ultimately neither Arab Muslim nor Arab or Jewish Israeli, in which none of them have a future and where all become Naboths. If it is not Christ who will come to take and possess the land then there are certainly American Christians even ready to claim it as their birthright.” Thomas did not explain how American Christians were claiming sovereignty over the land in the Middle East.
“Give me your vineyard, because it is next to mine, and I want it,” the UCC minister repeated.
“There are far too many of us for whom this is morally adjacent land, land to be possessed for a kind of atonement for centuries of anti-Semitism. Is it not true that sometimes we claim this land not just or even perhaps primarily so that Jews will have a homeland, rather for the easing of our guilt-laden conscience?” Thomas implied that the state of Israel was created by Western powers for European Jews as a colonial state, ignoring the presence of Zionists and other Jews well before the Holocaust.
“For far too long, our nation has eyed this as politically and militarily adjacent land,” Thomas said. “A more or less compliant vassal state to be possessed as a client serving our strategic interests in which Naboth counts for little.”
“Isn’t this what the Holy Land has become for far too many of us? Theologically, spiritually adjacent land, morally adjacent land, strategically adjacent land?”
The UCC minister also challenged the perceived role of Christians as fair brokers, disdaining attempts at balance and suggesting that churches should instead identify with the Palestinian “Naboth”.
“It is not for us to preoccupy ourselves with the holy grail of balance whenever we open our mouths to speak about the Middle East,” Thomas said. “The language of balance is a tight rope without a net and it subjects us to a distracting manipulation that gets us nowhere. No, it is for us instead to concern ourselves relentlessly, to preoccupy ourselves with Naboth, with every Naboth who is overlooked and forgotten when the land deals are taking place. Naboth must be the church’s primary concern.”
“Think of rockets that seem to announce ‘If I can’t have your vineyard, then you won’t live in it either’,” Thomas said of Gaza. “Think of blockades that may leave the land in Naboth’s possession, but deny him the ability to make it flourish,” he said of Israel’s blockade.
Extending Peacemaking Work “Globally”
In contrast to Thomas’ fiery words, Presiding Bishop Jefferts Schori spoke in measured tones about the Episcopal Church’s role in co-founding CMEP in the 1980s and its long-term partnership with the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem since the mid-1800s.
The Episcopal Church leader cited the Anglican Communion Lambeth conference’s call for Jerusalem to be under “permanent international control” as well as the Episcopal Church’s call for a “just, two-state solution” as the “only viable avenue to a just peace.”
Jefferts Schori seemed prepared to contrast the Episcopal Church’s actions with those of the Presbyterian Church, (U.S.A), although she did not cite the other denomination by name. In 2004 the PCUSA was the first and only American church to call for divestment of Israeli companies, although it repealed that call in 2006.
“We have not called for a boycott or sanctions of Israel,” Jefferts Schori stated, adding that the church had instead called for economic investment and development of Israel, believing it would assist in bettering the region.
The Presiding Bishop also noted the efforts of her three immediate predecessors, beginning with former Presiding Bishop John M. Allin’s admonition in the 1970s against equating Zionism with racism. Jefferts Schori also cited former Presiding Bishop Edmond Lee Browning’s call for a Palestinian state during his tenure and Presiding Bishop Frank Tracy Griswold’s continuing advocacy for peacemaking in the region. She did not mention Browning’s role in the founding of Friends of Sabeel North America (FoSNA), a pro-Palestinian group that embraces liberation theology and eschews CMEP’s more measured language.
Jefferts Schori portrayed the church’s role in the Middle East as that of “healing old wounds” of anger, mistrust, and grief.
She described the Episcopal Church’s peacemaking work as extending “globally” and said the Episcopal Church “is not an American church” but instead has several overseas dioceses, all of which were “praying for peace in the Middle East.” The portrayal of the U.S.-based denomination as an international church has been increasingly referenced by Jefferts Schori. Approximately 200,000 of the church’s total 2.3-million members live in Taiwan, Micronesia, and dioceses in parts of the Caribbean and Latin America.
“We will partner with any group of any faith, or none, who shares our desire to see a just peace in the Holy Land. I am grateful for your presence and passion,” Jefferts Schori said to the assembled activists, who would later that morning lobby their members of Congress. “If we do nothing, we share in the sin of continued estrangement.”
Jefferts Schori closed with a Gospel parable about the wronged widow pestering a judge for justice, eventually getting him to grant her justice just so she will go away.
“We will not go home until justice has been served,” Jefferts Schori said. “The lives and dignity and holy possibility of far too many people depend on our willingness to nag. The peace of Jerusalem and the world depends upon our efforts. Pray for the City of Peace.”
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