One of the benefits of working at an inter-denominational place like the Institute on Religion and Democracy is the perspective that I as a Presbyterian gain from my colleagues in other Christian traditions. Talking daily with United Methodists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, and assorted other varieties of Christians, I see that our problems in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) are not unique or isolated. They are part of a much larger struggle over the future of Christianity worldwide. We Presbyterians who seek to uphold the historic teachings of the Church need to know that we have comrades fighting the same battle on many other fronts. Sometimes when we get discouraged, their valor can lift our hearts—or ours can lift their hearts, by God’s grace.
Sometimes, too, my non-Presbyterian colleagues lend perspective in more specific ways. One of the things we do regularly at the IRD is monitor meetings of ecumenical bodies like the National and World Councils of Churches. We want everyone to know what these bodies, which claim to represent many of our denominations, are saying and doing in our names.
We also watch how our denominational officials act in these settings where they are less observed by—and perhaps less accountable to—members of their own denominations. So I might tell my United Methodist colleagues what their UM bishops are saying at the ecumenical meetings that I cover. And they, in turn, will tell me what our PCUSA delegates are saying in the conferences that they cover.
Thus it was that a couple weeks ago I got a tip from Rebekah Sharpe, our UMAction assistant who had attended a World Council of Churches gathering in early December. (Rebekah is a young woman who has already demonstrated great calmness and courage in hostile situations. See her “IRD Diary” entry on page 15 of our December 2008 Faith & Freedom magazine, which can be downloaded after registering on the IRD website here.)
Rebekah’s report includes remarks by our new PCUSA Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons. Parsons, like many others at the WCC meeting, voiced an almost messianic jubilation about the arrival of the Obama administration. “We have the opportunity to build a whole other economy, an economy that looks more like what the Kingdom of God [is like] and less like what the world wants it to be,” the stated clerk proclaimed. I doubt that he would have allowed himself such partisan raptures if he had been speaking to a politically mixed audience of PCUSA members.
To be fair, Parsons did register a small critique of the incoming president. But it appeared to be a critique from further left than the already liberal Obama. The stated clerk expressed concern that Obama had spoken repeatedly of “saving the middle class.” Parsons objected, “It’s those middle-class folks … that I think need to confess our complicity in the [economic] mess.” Perhaps he was just applying the Calvinist doctrine of the total depravity of humankind, noting that middle-class people—like everyone else—are guilty of all kinds of sin. But the remark appeared to come straight out of the leftist class warfare lexicon, fixing blame especially on the bourgeoisie. Again, I suspect that Parsons would have adopted a gentler tone if he were addressing a mostly middle-class audience of PCUSA members.
Rebekah also gave me notes on a speech she did not report in her article. The speaker was Noushin Framke, a woman who wears various hats in the PCUSA. Framke is chair of the official Advocacy Committee for Racial Ethnic Concerns, a corresponding member of the General Assembly Council, and a leading activist in a denominationally sponsored pro-Palestinian network.
Framke told the WCC audience how “proud” she was that the PCUSA had received a “black eye” for the 2004 General Assembly directive establishing a process of anti-Israel divestment. When the 2006 assembly rescinded the divestment mandate, however, she recalled that her Israel/Palestine Mission Network paradoxically “declared victory” and “the process of divestment continued.”
In 2008, according to Framke, the network helped to organize the minority on a General Assembly committee to defeat a presbytery overture that would have halted one-sided Middle East advocacy (like her own). It also tried (unsuccessfully) to block another overture that “wanted a prophetic non-partisan stance which we thought was an oxymoron.” Instead the PCUSA-backed network pushed an affirmation of the pro-Palestinian “Amman Call” (originated by the WCC). Framke concluded that endorsing the Amman Call “made the following overtures [i.e., the call for a non-partisan stance that was also passed by the assembly] moot.”
Basically, Rebekah heard Framke confirm that the Israel/Palestine Mission Network is precisely what Presbyterian Action has said it is: a small band of activists who use their official status and denominational resources to sway the General Assembly, which they are supposed to serve, to take their favored position (pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel). And when the assembly takes another position, they ignore it and continue to advance the same agenda.
I’m glad to work together with sharp colleagues like Rebekah. They help us to see clearly the challenges that lie ahead in this New Year.
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