By Giulio Meotti.. The United Methodist Church is the major mainline Protestant denomination in the United States. Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Rick Perry, to name just a few, are all Methodists.
During its General Conference in late April in Tampa, Florida, the Church will discuss some divestment proposals targeting companies that profit from Israel’s “occupation”, such as Motorola, Caterpillar and Hewlett Packard. The Methodists boycott no other country. But they loudly proclaim a radical anti-Israel policy.
The divestment campaign can have severe consequences for the companies targeted. For example, the United Methodist Church’s pension agency reportedly has $5 million in Caterpillar stock out of $15 billion in assets.
Methodist bishops have already opposed U.S. arms sales to the Jewish State.
The Virginia and New England conferences of the Methodist Church just passed resolutions calling for divestment from Israel. The Methodist Church of Britain launched a boycott against goods emanating from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.
Last October, the historic Dumbarton United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C., which features a pew where President Abraham Lincoln once sat, also backed an anti-Israel divestment proposal.
In March, three resolutions taking anti-Israel positions were adopted by the Methodist Church’s public policy arm, which voted in favor of resolutions seeking boycotts and divestment directed against companies regarded as “complicit in the Israeli presence in the West Bank”.
Equating Israel with apartheid South Africa is a recurring theme among pro-Palestinian Methodist groups.
The Methodist Church is not alone in this anti-Israel wave. The wealthiest US Church, the Presbyterian, will also vote the divestment proposal during its General Assembly in Pittsburgh. The Church’s Committee on Mission Responsibility Through Investment urged the General Assembly to fully embrace the boycott movement against some major companies which are based in Israel.
Last November, the Presbyterian Church hold a conference in Louisville and it embraced the “Kairos Document”, which rejects the Jewish State and says that Israeli security policies are “a sin against God”.
“Liberal” Church efforts to divest from companies doing business with Israel are part of a bigger trend which demonizes Judaism. At the recent Louisville symposium, Eugene March, professor emeritus of Old Testament at Presbyterian Seminary, said the Jewish right to the land is “invalid”, while Gary Burge, professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, criticized “the territorial worldview of Judaism”.
Anti-Jewish eschatology is nothing new in the Presbyterian denomination. When the US Church voted to divest from Israel in 2004, its flagship intellectual journal, Church and Society, ran an essay by theologian Robert Hamerton-Kelly who argues that Judaism has always been “a blood-thirsty, primitive religion”.
The well-known Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann, who is professor emeritus at Presbyterian Church affiliated Columbia Theological Seminary and one of America’s most influential left-leaning theologians, wonders if any idea of “chosen people” inevitably results in “absolutism” and the “seeds of violence”. This is a return to Martin Luther’s demonology, since the founder of Protestantism argued that the Jews were no longer the chosen people but instead “the Devil’s people”.
Stephen Sizer, British theologian and leader in these mainline Churches, released a declaration to support the UN Palestinian bid: “The New Testament insists the promises God made to Avraham are fulfilled not in the Jewish people but in Jesus and those who acknowledge him”.
Historically these two Churches have occupied the corridors of power and wealth in America. So although liberal Christianity is now declining in the United States, it still is culturally and politically important. Methodists and Presbyterians are the most aggressively anti-Israel among Protestant denominations, but all five of the mainline denominations in the US – Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran and United Church of Christ – have debated and adopted policies intended to bring direct or indirect economic pressure on Israel.
As William van der Hoeven, an Evangelical with extensive Mideast experience put it as early as the 1970s, “The PLO has hijacked the main churches”. It’s a new form of Intifada “from Heaven”.
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Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book “A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel’s Victims of Terrorism”
Tags: anti-Israel, boycott, Home, Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Replacement theology
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Revelation of Truth comes from God.
Please read through the prophecies fulfilled by Jesus as Messiah.
Checkout the prophecies of and teaching of Jesus about the end times, and ask the Holy Spirit, to lead those who deny these promises to Israel, to understanding of God’s Purpose.
God is a Theocrat not a democrat. (I’m not referring to any political party).
He is not swayed by mans opinion – He looks for our obedience.
The writer fails to make the distinction between the Jewish faith and the political state of Israel. What we all need to do is target the forces on each side of this conflict that are creating barriers to a lasting peace. The settlements in the West bank are a significant barrier to peace. I’ve spent an evening in Ramallah in the west bank and looked out to the mountains to the east and saw the mountains lit up with the settlements there. It is much more than settlements. Many settlements are located in the mountains. They require safe roads in and around the west bank which also restricts the amount of lands the Palestinians have access to. There is just no way a viable Palestinian state can be built around these settlements. I applaud the efforts of these denominations for discussing and acting on this and hope others churches and large organizations in the United States and around the world will do the same.
Dear Matt,
Jewish faith is certainly not identical with the politics of the state of Israel, although the distinction is more complicated than it looks like, as Judaism is not just a religion.
In my view, it is highly questionable whether the settlements are really a barrier to peace. In the period that there were no settlements, there was no peace either. On the other hand, there has also been a period that Jewish and Arab settlements in the disputed areas have coexisted in a rather peacefull manner.
A point that is often neglected is that Jewish settlement also has attracted and stimulated Arab settlement. This is especially true for the Gush Etzion area.
Sir, your time line is simply wrong !
The New Testament insists the promises God made to Avraham are fulfilled not in the Jewish people but in Jesus and those who acknowledge him” – up to date comment 2012
as early as the 1970s, “The PLO has hijacked the main churches”
please see this from 1944 :-www.pcahistory.org/documents/pcus1944.html
THIS FUNDAMENTAL DIVERGENCE OF DISPENSATIONALISM FROM THE COVENANT THEOLOGY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH MANIFESTS ITSELF IN MANY WAYS, SOME OF WHICH ARE THE FOLLOWING:
A. The Rejection of the Unity of God’s people.
1. The Confession of Faith clearly teaches that God has one people who were brought into saving relation with Him, some under the law, others under the gospel dispensation. The Confession of Faith calls this one people of God “The Church.” (Confession of Faith, Ch. XXV, Sec. 2.) Whatever may be the national destiny of the Jewish people, according to the Confession of Faith their becoming a spiritual blessing to the world and to the Church will be contingent upon their acceptance of Jesus as the Messiah and thereby becoming a part of the Church.
2. Dispensationalism teaches that God has at least two distinct peoples, namely, the Jewish Nation and the Christian Church. He has distinctly different purposes for them, and each of these two peoples is united to Him by various and diverse covenants quite different in character. (Dispensationalism reprinted from Bibliotheca Sacra, No. 372, Vol. 93, p. 396 ff., esp. p. 448.)
I do wish that before your organization asked the question “why Israel?” you first asked the question “Who is Israel?”
Dear Ryan,
The Bible distinguishes between Israel and the nations. Israel is called by God out of the nations to be His people, a priestly kingdom. The New Testament does not annul this – it rather confirms the Old Testament concepts (cf. Rom. 15:8). In fact, the theme of ‘Israel and the nations’ could be regarded as the leading thought in Paul’s letter to the Romans. The nations shall join Israel in the praise of the Almighty. So the final goal of Scripture is unity, but a unity in diversity (see for example Rom. 15:9-13; Eph. 2; Rev. 21).
Indeed, the classical confessions have disregarded this, or at least the Scriptural place of the people of Israel (and of the land of Israel, for that matter). But many writers in the Puritan tradition have seen this and have written and preached about it.