Ed. note: As we lead up to the General Assembly meeting in Detroit June 14-21, I will provide overviews and insights into some of the major issues coming before the Assembly. Rather than counting down the top ten as I have done in previous years, I have divided the issues into three categories: hot button issues, sleeper issues, and Trojan horses. Each "hot button" issue will get its own post; the others will be presented in groups.
When the secular press reports on the 221st
Assembly, the lead story will not be the nuances of our definition of marriage
or the future of synods. It will be
whatever the Assembly decides to do regarding Israel and Palestine. If history
is any guide, what will be lacking in that coverage will be any appreciation
for why this is an important issue to
Presbyterians. It is not that Presbyterians feel compelled to weigh in on any
controversial topic. It is because American
Presbyterians have been engaged in mission in Palestine for 195 years – almost 130
years longer than the modern nation of Israel has existed. Over that time,
Presbyterians have helped build schools, hospitals, universities and seminaries,
and developed many ties with the Palestinian people, especially the shrinking
Palestinian Christian communities. This has led many in our denomination to look
past the rhetoric of “terrorism” (critics would say naively) to view the Israeli domination of the
Palestinian people as unjust and oppressive.
A strong PC(USA) mission network, the Israel-Palestine
Mission Network (IPMN) – which does not
speak for the denomination – has been vocal in its defense of the Palestinian
people against Israeli economic and national security policies that they have
compared to South African Apartheid. An IPMN study guide published earlier this
year titled Zionism Unsettled has
increased the level of stridency in the policy debate. The ever-vigilant
pro-Israel lobby and its media supporters have been quick to condemn the study
(example: “Presbyterians Declare War on the Jews”).
Throw into the mix the Evangelical commitment to the modern
state of Israel as a test of biblical faithfulness, the deep interfaith
connections with Jewish communities in many parts of our church, and the fact that the Assembly is meeting near one of the largest Arab-American communities in the nation, and you have
an explosive combination.
All of this history will come to bear on Committee 4: Middle
East Issues at this year’s Assembly. The main event in this bout will be the
consideration of the report of the Mission Responsibility through Investment
(MRTI) committee (item 04-08) which is recommending divestment of PC(USA) funds
from three companies that have directly supported Israeli military occupation
of Palestinian lands. Acting under the
direction of previous Assemblies, MRTI has tried to be in conversation with the
three companies – Caterpillar, Hewlett-Packard, and Motorola Solutions – over the
better part of a decade to express concerns and seek changes in their business
strategies. The recommendation for divestment is the end of a long, arduous,
and carefully prescribed process. The symbolic force of such a declaration is
far greater than the actual financial impact on the corporations.
The PC(USA) has been deeply divided on this issue in the
past: the 2012 Assembly rejected divestment in favor of "positive investment in Palestine" by a vote of 333-331. Look for similarly close votes this year.
In addition to the MRTI report, there are several other
related overtures before the Assembly.
San Francisco and New Covenant Presbyteries have submitted competing
overtures about reconsideration (SF) or continued endorsement (NC) of the “two-state
solution” in Palestine. Grace Presbytery (in whose bounds I live) has submitted
an overture in support of Palestinian Human Rights that calls for the PC(USA)
to lobby the UN to invoke the label of “Apartheid” on the Israeli policies.
Item 04-05 from New Brunswick Presbytery calls for the church to go beyond
divestment and urge a boycott of Hewlett-Packard products.
Of all the overtures and recommendations, only item 04-04
(from New Covenant) can by any stretch be deemed supportive of Israel. That
will perhaps make the probability of a strongly pro-Palestinian action more
likely. If so, it will provide more fodder for the pro-Israel conservative
churches to use in pushing for dismissal from the denomination without having
to rely on sexuality issues as their sole rationale.
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