The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) continued acceleration of its aggressive anti-Israel policies at the 225th General Assembly meeting June 18-July 8 in Louisville, Kentucky. Presbyterian Commissioners addressed multiple international issues, including now-customary criticism aimed uniquely at Israel during the biannual governing body of the mainline Presbyterian denomination.
An overture passed July 8 on a vote of 266-116 states, “Recognize that the government of Israel’s laws, policies, and practices regarding the Palestinian people fulfill the international legal definition of apartheid.”
The overture defines apartheid as “inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them.” Overture sponsors cited the United Nations Human Rights Council, Human Rights Watch, and other secular organizations for the basis of their criticism.
A host of additional overtures included one that instructed divestment from five major oil companies due to perceived inaction regarding climate change, and another that denounced any effort to limit abortion access.
The PC(USA) has embraced anti-Israel policies in recent years, but the overture’s passage came shortly after the denomination garnered negative attention from Israel advocacy groups. The Philos Project, which works for positive Christian engagement in the near east, led a pro-Israel demonstration outside the Presbyterian Center in Louisville on June 28. Also present was Pathways, the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement, and the Anti-Defamation League. Philos presented a letter asking PC(USA) commissioners to reject the overture presented by the International Engagement Committee that names Israel an “apartheid-like state.” The group installed a balloon that read: “PCUSA: Fight Racism, Not Jews.”
This wave of backlash followed after PC(USA) Stated Clerk Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, the denomination’s top official between General Assemblies, described in January the Palestine/Israel relationship as “21st Century Slavery.” The comment drew immediate rebuke. Some Presbyterian clergy spoke out against their leadership’s anti-Israel sentiment, blaming incendiary comments for damaging interfaith witnessing amongst local communities.
The statement issued by PC(USA) leaders rebuked Nelson for “disregarding and dismissing” relationships in local communities.
“We respectfully, but urgently, ask the Stated Clerk and other PCUSA denominational leaders to change their approach and seize this moment to rebuild trust between our denomination and the American Jewish community,” the statement read. Unfortunately, it seems there has been a concerted effort amongst PC(USA) authorities to ignore such pleas.
A strong rebuke came from Rabbi Eugene Korn, the former Academic Director of the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation in Jerusalem.
“INT-02 also advocates a Palestinian ‘right of return.’ People aware of the conflict’s history know that this is code for the destruction of the Jewish state – Israel even before its 1967 occupation of the West Bank areas. This is blatantly inconsistent with PCUSA’s alleged support of the right of Israel to exist, ” Korn wrote in an open letter to PC(USA) officials.
If the PC(USA) truly advocates for peace between Israel and Palestine, the church cannot continue to ignore crimes the Palestinians have committed against Israeli citizens. Korn noted the one-sided perspective the overture presented by simply absolving Palestinians of all guilt.
“Not holding Palestinians morally responsible for their behavior smacks of bigotry. It judges Palestinians incapable of moral agency and living according to moral standards. This resolution dispels any notion that PCUSA is an honest or faithful observer of the conflict,” Korn wrote.
The PC(USA) has historically aligned itself with the United Nations through anti-Israel statements and resolutions. In 2003, the denomination passed “Resolution on Israel and Palestine: End the Occupation Now.” IRD previously reported on the anti-Israel sentiment at the 2018 General Assembly meeting. The church has explained the “apartheid” designation cites Human Rights Watch as a credible pro-Palestinian source.
“I think it fair to say PC(USA) has shown more hostility to Israel over a longer time than any other denomination,” Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations remarked.
The PC(USA) also voted to approve an overture calling for a peace treaty on the Korean Peninsula. This was prompted by PC(USA) endorsement of the Korean Peace Appeal, a running list of signatures supporting a united Korea. The conference also passed a resolution calling for peace in Ukraine.
The Leftist progression in mainline Protestantism is unsurprising, and this recent development in the PC(USA) is by now expected. It signifies denominational focus on issues tangential to the Gospel, and repeated attempts to be culturally relevant. However, the PC(USA)’s continued uninterrupted membership decline and uniquely anti-Israel animus confirms a path to devolve into weak murmurs of what it once was.
Comment by David on July 18, 2022 at 1:51 pm
“The eugenics of Lebensraum assumed it to be the right of the German Aryan master race (Herrenvolk) to remove the indigenous people in the name of their own living space.”
The Holocaust did not give anyone the right to behave like Nazis.
Comment by David S. on July 18, 2022 at 2:42 pm
David, a comparison of Israel to the Nazi regime is the most tone deaf thing I have ever heard you say. Really??? Also, you do know that even after 70 A.D. there have been a population of Jews living in that region up to modern times.
Comment by David on July 18, 2022 at 3:18 pm
The blatant anti-Semitism of the denominational leadership is just one more reason why I could no longer be a member of this denomination.
To illustrate how schizophrenic and tone deaf the PC(USA) leadership, from Mr. Nelson down to individual commissioners consider VIOL-04 On Encouraging Our Churches to Counter Polarization in Our Society. The Rationale includes the following statements: “Rather than seeking relationship, we’re not talking—or listening—to each other. Even worse, we hear in our neighbor’s words a different narrative imposed by the lens of our own opinions. Rather than seeking constructive dialogue, we recoil with contempt for those with whom we disagree.”
Yet contrast this with HSB-11, On Affirming Reproductive Justice, which included the following Background language that seems to imply that no dissent will no longer be afforded on the issue of abortion:
“In 2012, the General Assembly acknowledged that “the PCUSA has wisely recognized that people of good faith can differ in their interpretation of Scripture, their understanding of when human life begins, and their decision about the morality of abortion.”
To acquiesce to a narrow religious framing like justification for such an important public issue as abortion belies our Christian ethical responsibility to pursue social justice in our political systems even as we seek to support and promote robust theological dialogue within our community about issues over which we may disagree.”
However, the Social Witness committee in providing it’s consult on the item, then goes on to cite “F-3.0101 God Is Lord of the Conscience” of the Book of Order, in effect invoking the “diversity of thought/conscience protection” provisions of PC(USA) polity.
The PC(USA) says it wants to combat polarization, yet on issue after issue, the leadership consistently demonizes those who do not hold to its rather narrow view of the world, and excuses the behavior of its political allies that it so readily denounces in others.
Comment by David on July 18, 2022 at 4:27 pm
“Let us not ignore the truth among ourselves … politically we are the aggressors and they defend themselves… The country is theirs, because they inhabit it, whereas we want to come here and settle down, and in their view we want to take away from them their country. … Behind the terrorism [by the Arabs] is a movement, which though primitive is not devoid of idealism and self sacrifice.”
— David Ben Gurion. Quoted on pp 91-2 of Chomsky’s Fateful Triangle, which appears in Simha Flapan’s “Zionism and the Palestinians pp 141-2 citing a 1938 speech.
5 October 1937, Ben-Gurion wrote in a letter to his 16-year-old son Amos: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places…. And, if we have to use force-not to dispossess the Arabs of the Negev and Transjordan, but to guarantee our own right to settle in those places- then we have force at our disposal.”
Israel has treated the Arabs in much the same way as the US treated the native tribes—an inconvenient population. Of course, Israel claims a divine right for this. German soldiers once went about with belt buckles proclaiming, “Gott mit uns” (God with us or God is on our side.
Comment by Tom on July 18, 2022 at 5:30 pm
Why is the PCUSA shrinking so rapidly? It’s a mystery.
Comment by Loren J Golden on July 19, 2022 at 1:01 am
I’ve never been able to understand it either, Tom. After all, if you bend over backward, as the Presbyterian Church (USA) and its forebears have for the past century, striving with all your earthly strength to make your church relevant to the world, to let the world set your agenda, showing your great love for the world and the things in the world, to make yourself the greatest friend the world has ever known, to pursue the world’s wisdom to the exclusion of all else, and to be profoundly conformed to the ways of the world, ought not all your herculean efforts pay off enormous dividends, such that the world adores you and is pounding at your door, hoping to help fill your pews and your coffers to overflowing? (Rom.12.1-2, I Cor. 1.20-21, Jas. 4.4, I Jn. 2.15-17)
Comment by Patrick on July 21, 2022 at 8:58 am
This is not even the worst thing that commissioners did at the most recent General Assembly.
Comment by George on July 23, 2022 at 10:50 am
This tired old “drum” has long been beaten by fools. We Westerners are generally ignorant of Middle Eastern history. This is exacerbated by the PC/USA by their historic ignorance and rejection of scripture. It is a fact, there has never been a nation with greater claims to it’s land. The divine gift of this land to the descendants of Abraham through Isaac and Jacob (Israel) as an everlasting possession. The Romans’s couldn’t cancel that in 70 AD, it still holds today and it’s the most often repeated subject in scripture-both testaments. There are 7 things in scripture God swore to by an eternal oath. Six of them are stated from 1 to 7 times but this one 48 times! Through attacks, expulsions and human resistance of all sorts, Israel has continuously occupied it since the 4 century BC. Israel is the ONLY nation that has been there. Jerusalem has ONLY been the Jewish capital and no other. Before Israel there were only small fractious Canaanite city-states scattered here and there. No other nation has a such divine and historic title to its land. They’ve also CONQUERED and re-conquered it from invaders Persians, Egyptians, Arabs, Greeks, Romans, Philistines, Mamluk, Abbassids, Turks and others….FAR more right to the land than America has. And, the Jews formally BOUGHT the land! The Jewish National Fund was founded for this back in the 19th century.
But here’s the bottom line: scripture is clear that God LOVES the people and land of Israel in a very special way, calling them MY people and MY land. It’s clear that people who know and serve God tend to love what He loves and hate what He hates. Conversely, those who serve the Kingdom of Darkness hate what God loves and love what He hates. Nations, denominations and individuals put themselves under judgement as stated in Joel 3:2 “…because they scattered my people and divided (partitioned) MY land.” Read it! It’s ignored and rejected by Islam and faux “christianity,” but it’s God’s land and He’s the one that gave it to the Jews (and much more than they currently occupy) until the age ends. Objections are many but all share one thing: they are purely emotional, and not reasonable or intellectually sound and must ignore or reject scripture as the PC/USA does. They don’t understand that “the root supports them” and not the other way around. If God’s promises to Israel didn’t last, or were abrogated or forgotten by Him, how can the PC/USA, or anyone for that matter, have hope in Him for themselves?
Comment by George on July 23, 2022 at 10:52 am
This tired old “drum” has long been beaten by fools. We Westerners are generally ignorant of Middle Eastern history. This is exacerbated by the PC/USA by their historic ignorance and rejection of scripture.