Muddled United Methodist Messaging on the Middle East

United Methodist and others’ eyes turned to the Middle East after the horrifying October 7 attacks by the Islamist terrorist group, Hamas, against Israelis. As Palestinian militants raped women, kidnapped children, slaughtered babies and elderly Holocaust survivors, the death toll of over 1,400 marked the greatest mass murder of Jews on any day since the Holocaust. For those in my denomination, this brutal ethnic cleansing has recalled the ugly realities of United Methodist Church officials’ track record on Israel and Hamas.

In their political advocacy, top officials of the United Methodist Church have a long, public history of giving a free pass to Hamas while singling out the world’s lone Jewish state for a special level of hostility.

In the long term, both of these trends are on a trajectory to worsen in what is left of the post-separation United Methodist Church, especially as the initial shock and horror at Hamas’s October 7 actions subsides.

Based on their previous behavior, it was actually remarkable that numerous U.S. bishops’ statements specifically named Hamas as having done terrible things. This is the first time I recall any prominent United Methodist leaders, outside of the renewal movement, daring to criticize Hamas by name, despite earlier opportunities to do so.

Of course, no one deserves too much credit for (finally!) meeting such a low bar.

A statement issued collectively on behalf of United Methodist bishops declared that they were “appalled, and dismayed by the animosities and inhumane actions undertaken by Hamas,” and “condemn[ed] the Hamas militants who have killed and captured civilians, women and children in Israel.”

Yet, even then, United Methodist bishops showed some moral ambiguity and their reflexive habit of finding fault with Israel. They coupled their just-quoted statements with on-the-other-hand rhetoric of “The declaration of war on the part of Israel as a result is also deeply saddening” and “We equally decry the deaths of innocent civilians, women and children caught in the crossfire of the Israeli retaliation in the Gaza Strip.”

To be clear, as a basic matter of principle, it is certainly appropriate to decry Palestinian civilian deaths as well as “collective punishment” against any entire people group, and to urge the Israeli military (who is not morally infallible) to exercise jus in bello restraint to minimize civilian casualties. But the United Methodist bishops’ wording suggests a balance between the badness of both “inhumane actions undertaken by Hamas” and Israel responding by declaring war. While all lives matter, if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) take great pains to avoid civilian deaths but some ordinary Palestinians are still tragically, unintentionally killed as they are “caught in the crossfire,” this is not morally identical to Hamas’s intentionally targeting civilians. Missing this basic distinction is morally irresponsible, especially when the United Methodist bishops’ Middle East statement ignores Hamas’s habit of using Palestinian civilians as human shields, with the bishops’ wording instead suggesting that the fault for such deaths lies entirely with “Israeli retaliation.” Furthermore, it is not simply “retaliation” when the Israeli military blows up a position from which Hamas militants have been firing rockets, in order to prevent further such rocket launches.

By October 12, the apportionment-funded United Methodist political lobby office, the General Board of Church and Society (GBCS), which has long been outspoken on Middle East affairs, responded by, among other things, calling for a Hamas-benefitting “ceasefire.” The GBCS approvingly linked to the Council of Bishops statement, but oddly claimed that the bishops had “called for the immediate release of all hostages,” even though their collective statement said no such thing. For its part, the GBCS calls for U.S. Congressional leaders to, among other things, “[p]rioritize steps to secure immediate release of hostages.” But the one and only time in which the GBCS’s own statement directly mentions Hamas is to even-handedly reference “the violent conflict between Israel and Hamas,” without clarity on how this started on October 7. 

David Wilson of the Great Plains Conference is the only bishop I have seen with the minimal moral clarity to acknowledge “Israel has every right to defend itself, and its government has the responsibility to protect its people,” even as he expressed sympathy for the plight of ordinary Palestinians.

Even now, merely mentioning Hamas by name is apparently too much to expect from some United Methodist leaders. A joint statement from the UMC’s General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), the World Methodist Council, and Methodist Church in Britain awkwardly lamented “the escalation of violence” in the Middle East and talked of how “[t]he situation is complicated” without acknowledging the perpetrators, let alone how some things are not complicated, like the wrongness of rape and the deliberate mass murder of civilians. This joint statement “call[ed] on both sides not to resort to further violence.” But it was issued on October 8, within a day of attacks, before Israel had had much chance to respond, let alone prevent Hamas from being able to launch further such attacks. In other words, after Hamas’s horrific attacks, these United Methodist leaders immediately called for a Hamas-benefitting Middle East ceasefire, that would literally allow the terrorist group to get away with genocidal mass murder. 

Evidently, the leadership of United Methodists’ heavily apportionment-funded missions agency does not believe that Israel has the right to defend itself.

A truly embarrassing statement came from Cedric Bridgeforth, the openly partnered gay activist who was made the Greater Northwest Area’s bishop last year in open defiance of strengthened rules against “self-avowed practicing homosexual” ministers. He said that his heart

“breaks for families in Israel and Gaza already suffering injury and loss. And it will break again for the Palestinians, Israelis and others who will be caught in the crossfire as war rages across the area. With people being held captive by colonialist borders and nationalist policies, there is limited personal and communal agency. With powers from far away dictating strategies and funding war efforts, colonization.”

That is hardly the most coherent message. Bridgeforth’s sloppy rhetoric about “colonialist borders” and “colonization” appears to echo the extremist ideologies that see Jewish Israelis as invading “colonists” who do not belong in their ancestral homeland. Moreover, apart from declining to directly acknowledge Hamas’s wrongdoing, Bridgeforth’s statement could be heard as minimizing the responsibility of any Palestinians, even Hamas militants, for their own actions because, hey, when people are “held captive by colonialist borders and nationalist policies, there is limited personal and communal agency.” A relatively more charitable interpretation may be that he meant to emphasize the lack of fault of Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire, while exclusively blaming Israel for their plight. Such muddled Middle East messaging follows a long tradition of United Methodist bishops’ failures to speak clearly.

For its part, United Methodists for Kairos Response (UMKR), a main unofficial anti-Israel caucus, was relatively more nuanced than usual in its lengthy statement. But that’s a very relative standard. These United Methodists’ response to recent Middle East developments still focused overwhelmingly on blaming and demonizing Israel. While “deplor[ing] the targeting of unarmed Israeli civilians during the Hamas military attack on October 7,” UMKR actually said, “Clearly, that attack cannot be depicted truthfully as ‘unprovoked,’” and “we note the reports of atrocities committed by Hamas that have no confirmation.” While accusing Israel of “disinformation,” UMKR uncritically accepts statistics on Palestinian civilian casualties from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, and even approvingly links to an article claiming “Israel Bombed Al-Ahli Hospital,” contrary to the professional assessments of both CNN and the Biden administration. UMKR’s statement repeatedly accuses Israel of “genocidal” actions without ever applying that label to Hamas’s indiscriminate mass murders and kidnappings of all the Jews it could find or Hamas’s commitment to the Jewish state’s destruction. And UMKR’s current campaign to end U.S. military aid to Israel amounts to seeking to militarily weaken Israel alone, and thus make Jews more vulnerable to further such attacks.

Note that this is all from a Middle-East-focused United Methodist group, UMKR, whose work Bishop Bruce Ough (Executive Secretary of the global UMC Council of Bishops) as well as the official, apportionment-funded United Methodist missions and political-lobbying agencies have enthusiastically supported. 

Recent pronouncements by United Methodist leaders on the Middle East must be understood in the context of the UMC bureaucracy’s long hostility to Israel, callous lack of concern about threats to Israeli lives, and even activism treating all Israelis as deserving collective punishment.

As a side note, in light of key United Methodist leaders’ consistent indifference to Hamas’s guilt in inflicting suffering on ordinary Palestinians—not to mention how speakers at an Israel-demonizing conference supposedly about “Walking with Palestinian Christians” revealingly admitted that they were actually not too particularly concerned about Palestinian Christians as such—it simply appears more accurate to summarize their perspective as “anti-Israel” rather than “pro-Palestinian.”

In light of this history and the new mass exodus of conservatives as well as moderates from the UMC, United Methodist leaders will face increasing pressures to become more radically and outspokenly anti-Israel in their Middle East activism, with diminishing pushback from within what’s left of the denomination.