Lutherans Israel

Lutherans Back Anti-Israel Resolutions

on August 15, 2016

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has approved two resolutions advanced by anti-Israel activists including a push to end all U.S. aid to the Jewish state until the “military occupation of Palestinian land” ceases, according to CBN News. The resolution was adopted in an overwhelming 751 to 162 vote during the Mainline Protestant denomination’s triennial Churchwide Assembly held in New Orleans August 8-13.

The C1 resolution adopted by the ELCA calls on the United States to immediately halt all foreign aid until Israel ceases “settlement building and the expansion of existing settlements” while the C2 resolution requires screening church investments from companies profiting from Israel’s so-called “occupation.”

The two resolutions were recommended by Isaiah 58, a group of Lutheran anti-Israel boycott activists. “In our Affirmation of Baptism, one of the five promises we make as Lutherans is to ‘work for justice and peace throughout the earth,’” commented Jan Miller, a Rocky Mountain Synod member and Isaiah 58 leader in a press release. “By adopting this investment screen, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is taking an important step to ensure that we are not profiting from, or complicit in, injustice in the Holy Land and elsewhere.”

Similar anti-Israeli resolutions were presented by activists during the United Methodist quadrennial General Conference last May in Portland, but were either defeated or not considered in committees, failing to reach plenary session. Additionally, the 12.1 million-member denomination voted 478 to 319 to distance church agencies from the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, an organization promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

Editor’s Note: Read more here about the ELCA’s obsession with Israel in a blog post by Sarah Chin, a researcher at NGO Monitor.

  1. Comment by Dan Skogen on August 15, 2016 at 4:08 pm

    Thank you writing about this. The ELCA has been anti-Semitic, anti-Jew for a long time and these resolutions make it apparent.

  2. Comment by James Graf on August 16, 2016 at 1:39 am

    I am 67 and raised Lutheran. I am ashamed to say that. This land was
    given to the Jews by God. I suppose that Lutherans believe that God’s
    promises are only valid for 2000 years or so. I wonder what these
    Lutherans think og God’s statement to (loosely stated) to curse those
    who curse Israel. Maybe that promise is only good for 2000 years also.
    I am truly ashamed that I once considered my self a Lutheran

  3. Comment by Daniel Carlson on August 16, 2016 at 5:19 pm

    What IS Israel? Is it a nation? Not according to St. Paul, St. Peter, or the writer of the Book of Hebrews. For them, Israel is the faithful who have been covered in Christ’s righteousness.

    I am no ELCA Lutheran, but I am Lutheran, and Scripture has no room for dispensationalism, or some notion that Israel (as a nation) is equally yoked with Christians somehow. The Jews, like all of us, shall be saved by grace through faith, for that is what God has ALWAYS called them to. If they refuse Christ, then they will be cut off.

  4. Comment by Andrew Phillips on August 17, 2016 at 3:41 am

    You are a Christian but believe Jews are saved through God’s grace? No! Christ is the only way to the Father. The only way for anyone to be saved is through Christ. John 14. Jews deny Christ and there only hope of salvation is through belief in Him.

  5. Comment by Daniel Carlson on August 17, 2016 at 6:34 am

    Apparently you didn’t read a word of what I said. “If they refuse Christ, then they will be cut off…”

    What does St. Paul say? “For we are saved by GRACE through FAITH and this not of ourselves, it is the gift of God…” So like all people, the Jews, too, are saved by GRACE through FAITH! Where there is no faith, there is no salvation.

  6. Comment by Leon Krausz on April 29, 2017 at 8:56 pm

    Thanks for speaking up

  7. Comment by ericthelutheran on August 21, 2016 at 11:01 pm

    Nice false witness there, Dan. 🙂

  8. Comment by Dan Skogen on August 21, 2016 at 11:22 pm

    Plenty of evidence, Eric. http://www.exposingtheelca.com/on-israel.html

  9. Comment by ericthelutheran on August 21, 2016 at 11:23 pm

    Dan, I love you. You need serious emotional help, but I love you.

  10. Comment by Dan Skogen on August 21, 2016 at 11:55 pm

    The ELCA will lose tens of thousands of members, maybe more, because of their anti-Jew resolutions. You gotta love that, Eric.

  11. Comment by ericthelutheran on August 22, 2016 at 6:32 am

    I love God, so I love people. You’re people. God loves you too, even though you actively hate and conspire against people God loves. You are beloved by God, Dan.

  12. Comment by Dan Skogen on August 22, 2016 at 11:52 am

    You like the hateful resolutions against the Jewish state but I am the hateful one. That makes a lot of since. Stop hating Jews, Eric the Lutheran. It is vile and disgusting.

  13. Comment by ericthelutheran on August 22, 2016 at 12:53 pm

    Dan I don’t hate Jews, neither does the ELCA. The pertinent information accompanying that accusation is that we also don’t hate Palestinians.

    This was an attempt to call for just actions from Israel, who has been acting illegally in regards to Palestine for some time. At some point, violence has to end. Calling for an end to the violence and for us to stop supporting it is an imperfect action to be certain, but this is a complex issue in which no one action is sufficient or clear.

    You choose to villify me and the ELCA. I choose to love you in response to your hate.

    You choose to buy domain names that closely resemble ELCA ministries to trick people into visiting your site where you tell lies and half-truths about us, and I choose to see the light of Christ in you.

    I imagine the time you steal from your family and the money it costs for you to maintain this grudge and nurse your vendetta, and it moves me to hurt for you and the pain you must carry in order to continue in this way. And I see Christ in you and love you, my brother in the waters of baptism.

    I can do this because your comments aren’t really about me, the ELCA, or even about Israel, they’re the fruit of your own tree; and I love you.

    God loves you. You have worth and you are worthy. I hope you believe that. I believe it, you are loved.

  14. Comment by Leon Krausz on April 29, 2017 at 9:04 pm

    This Anti-Jew attitude goes back to Luther. And is raising its ugly head again. Read is book, “On the Jews and Their Lies” ). The Nazis justification of their “final solution” is barely different from Luther’s solution for his problem with the Jews.

  15. Comment by davend on August 16, 2016 at 1:29 pm

    Resolutions in the ELCA are not “advanced by activists.” They are voted on in synod (district) assemblies and put to the Church at large for a decision.

  16. Comment by Sven2S47 on August 16, 2016 at 4:54 pm

    How’s that liberalism working out for you?
    Your denomination lost a half-million members in the year after it began ordaining homosexuals.

    500,000 in one year – that’s quite an achievement, unprecedented.

  17. Comment by davend on August 17, 2016 at 1:52 am

    The conservative LCMS is losing members even faster. Liberalism has nothing to do with it.

  18. Comment by Daniel Carlson on August 17, 2016 at 6:37 am

    It has nothing to do with losing members – the world hates the Church regardless, and losing members is just an aspect of that.

    It has to do with faithfulness. Do you believe in the Word of God as given in Scripture, or do you, when things the bible says that you don’t like, just overlook it, change it, or reinterpret it to make it more culturally-appealing? Why bend-knee to culture? Will culture judge the living and the dead? Did culture die for you? Yet the ELCA all but denies Christ through their actions, their fellowships with the universalists, their throwing out of sound doctrine, etc.

  19. Comment by Amy C Thoren on August 16, 2016 at 4:48 pm

    This is not an anti-Semitic move at all, and there are MANY Jews worldwide who support justice for Palestinians. It is in the Jewish scriptures where the Lord says over and over to treat the foreigner like a citizen, since “you were once foreigners.”

  20. Comment by Amy C Thoren on August 16, 2016 at 4:51 pm

    I hope those critical of this vote recognize that Christians in the Holy Land (who are most often Arab) ache for such justice and have asked us in the US to tell their story. Mitri Raheb, Arab Lutheran pastor in Bethlehem, works for reconciliation and peace between people of all faiths, and he is not afraid to tell the truth about the injustices done to Arabs in Palestine and Gaza due to the occupation.

  21. Comment by Gabby Sprenger on August 20, 2016 at 2:23 am

    Then why don’t they face Hamas for the atrocities they commit against Gaza as well as Israel? Oh right they’re not Jews. This is all about being Jewish

  22. Comment by Skipper on August 17, 2016 at 10:40 am

    Perhaps what the ELCA really wants is war – to unsettle a fragile peace in this tiny country, only 50 miles wide and surrounded by large often unfriendly nations. I don’t think I would even call them Lutherans, since they reject the truth of God on morality. Real Lutherans respect God’s Plan of Created Order.

  23. Comment by Dan on August 17, 2016 at 10:50 am

    If you could name these folks as ELCA Lutherans in the headline it would be nice. As a LCMS Lutheran I don’t like the potential to be confused with these folks. For more detailed reasons why I feel this way, please refer to this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nx8QqiADyw , “Things Your Lutheran Pastor Totally Loves: Being Mistaken for the ELCA”.

  24. Comment by Simon Says on August 18, 2016 at 8:37 am

    Really smart. Let’s go ahead and fight for the rights of car bombers, child rapists, wife beaters, children killers. Don’t worry about the Jews who have 1000’s of missiles thrown at the every year. Their lives don’t count.

  25. Comment by revrobertwaters on August 19, 2016 at 3:27 am

    The ELCA has not been Lutheran for thirty or forty years.

  26. Comment by Wisprof on December 21, 2019 at 10:13 am

    Vast ignorance. Anti-semitism has nothing to do with disagreement with the political decisions of a nation. Opposition to Israeli politics that fosters injustice is
    not anti-semitic.

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