The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), Gradye Parsons, has released a verbose statement demanding an end to the “violence” between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. For emphasis, he even lists ALL the names of Gazans reportedly killed by Israeli air attacks, or 174 names.
Not having seen any PCUSA official include such a list before in a press statement, I’m curious whether it’s a new policy. Perhaps Parsons is doing another statement that will list all 300 victims, including reportedly some Americans, who died today when a Malaysian airliner was shot down today over Ukraine, potentially by pro-Russian insurgents, although we don’t know the details yet.
Or maybe Parsons is also doing a public list of the thousands of victims of Boko Haram, an Islamist terror group in Nigeria. Or maybe he’ll list thousands of victims of al-Shabaab, another Islamist terror group and insurgency, in Somalia. Maybe he’ll list the tens of thousands killed in Syria’s civil war, or the hundreds of thousands killed in conflicts in Sudan or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Maybe he’ll list the slain in conflicts in Malawi, or the Central African Republic, or in Afghanistan by the Taliban, or in Iraq by ISIS.
But don’t wait for Parsons or any PCUSA official to release lists of the killed from those wars, even though those slain were no less created in God’s image than the slain in Gaza. Those wars and their afflicted don’t merit special PCUSA concern because they don’t involve Israel. Of all the conflicts in the world, and of all the scores of repressive regimes in the world, only Israel is the unique target of the PCUSA’s very special attention.
The PCUSA just voted last month to divest from three firms doing business with Israel, the only nation in the world that is the target of PCUSA divestment, because evidently Israel is uniquely pernicious, in the eyes of PCUSA officialdom.
In Parsons’ demands for what Israel and Hamas must do to achieve peace, he noticeably doesn’t include Hamas’ abandoning its official foundational purpose, which is Israel’s destruction. Nor does he explain what Israel’s more correct response should be to Hamas rockets fired into Israeli cities.
I wonder what Parsons would say if Hamas were firing rockets into Louisville, Kentucky, targeting the PCUSA headquarters building. Would Parsons be equally morally abstract about ending the “violence?”
Sadly, the PCUSA has become in its official pronouncements the silly church, having long since abandoned its once serious moral purpose in public pronouncements. But the special animus that PCUSA officials aim exclusively at Israel, under the guise of impartiality, is not just silly, it’s malevolent.
It’s not surprising that the PCUSA is losing about 100,000 members a year thanks to denominational policies that no longer prioritize the Gospel. Maybe somebody should do a news release listing all the persons who quit the PCUSA every week.
Comment by Dan on July 17, 2014 at 4:24 pm
Herr Parsons is doing an excellent job turning PCUSA into a Reichskirche.
Comment by Kevin Bishop on July 17, 2014 at 5:04 pm
This was great ! Oh wow ! Mark you could not have put it more plainly with truth. The last two sentences were priceless.
Comment by virginiagentleman on July 18, 2014 at 11:05 am
The PCUSA leadership is finding out the dark side of their vaunted “trust clause:” when members essentially abandon their church building for other fellowships rather than paying the tax for “gracious separation,” the Presbyteries become property managers of abandoned church structures. A fit witness of the denomination’s increasingly vacuous theology.
Comment by Larry Wood on July 19, 2014 at 1:15 pm
Parsons is one sick individual, as is my denomination, the PCUSA.
Comment by Alan on July 25, 2014 at 1:28 pm
I am not sure which is more morally offensive: those like Parsons who jerk their knees to equate Hamas and Israel morally, or those like Tooley who jerk their knees to defend Israel’s actions no matter how horrific they become. I challenge Tooley to admit without justificatory qualification that Israel’s recent invasion of Gaza has caused the deaths of hundreds of civilians, many of them children, and that this is morally appalling. I challenge Tooley to state publicly that a peaceful two-state solution is desirable and that Israel’s settlement policies undermine this solution and serve to strengthen radical, militant, and terrorist opposition to Israel. Most of all, I challenge Tooley to admit that being a friend to Israel (as with any friend) does not imply condoning its mistakes and moral failures but rather the opposite: we must discuss these frankly.