Algemeiner（http://www.algemeiner.com）
(1) Presbyterianism Unsettled, 14 February 2014
The bureaucrats in Louisville who run the day-to-day operations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are looking more and more dishonest and stupid with each passing day. For non-Presbyterians, they are a cause for disdain. For the dwindling number of people who actually belong to this church, they are becoming a source of embarrassment.
They are supposed to be religious leaders who tell the truth, but in fact, they behave like politicians offering unbelievable denials and evasions. Oddly enough, it’s the “peacemakers” within the denomination who have gotten them into trouble. (That happens a lot, doesn’t it?)
The source of their trouble is Zionism Unsettled, a nasty little text produced by the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA). (Remember the name of that organization because it’s important.) This booklet attacks Israel, Jews, Judaism and Zionism in a pretty ugly way.
It’s so bad that David Duke, a neo-Nazi who has cavorted with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a pretty nasty anti-Semite himself, rejoiced when he got his hands on it. (No, I didn’t send it to him!) PressTV even rejoiced. (No, I didn’t send it to them either!)
The fact that David Duke endorsed a document produced by the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (again, remember that name!) was apparently a source of embarrassment for the folks in Louisville.
On Feb. 13, the folks in Louisville tweeted a number of times that they didn’t have anything to do with the document, which was produced by Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA). (I keep repeating that name, don’t I?).
But people weren’t having any of it. People (such as Commentary’s Jonathan Tobin) kept referring to the document as either a “Presbyterian” or “PC(USA)” document.
That rankled the folks in Louisville who finally issued a press release that described the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) (that name again!) as an “independent group — which speaks to the church and not for the church.”
The assertion that the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is “independent” of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is patently false.
First, the organization was created by a 2004 resolution of the denomination’s General Assembly.
Then there’s the organization’s name, which includes the words “Presbyterian Church (USA).”
How can anyone honestly believe that the IPMN is independent the PC(USA) when it’s very name includes the entire name of the denomination that created it?
If the IPMN is not part of the Presbyterian Church (USA), then it is infringing on the denomination’s trademark!
There are a number of organizations associated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) – such as The Layman and Presbyterians for Middle East Peace that are independent from the denomination, but IPMN is not one of them. These organizations do not fundraise or distribute their materials through the PC(USA).
By way of comparison, the IPMN raises money through the PC(USA)’s website. And the PC(USA)’s online store is apparently the sole place on the Internet where people can get a copy of Zionism Unsettled, (at least until the IPMN and the folks and Louisville can work out a distribution deal with the people who run David Duke’s website. Maybe James M. Wall, former editor of Christian Century, can broker a deal.)
The point is that IPMN is not “independent” from the PC(USA). It is dependent on the PC(USA).
The authors of the press release invoke that old mainline canard that the IPMN “speaks to and not for” the PC(USA).
I have been hearing this phrase for years. Officials from the United Church of Christ’s headquarters in Cleveland have said this in reference to votes taken at its General Synod.
When people like what the General Synod does, the UCC folks in Cleveland issue press releases saying the UCC declared or approved this or that. But whenever there is any pushback, then the folks in Cleveland will tell you that the General Synod was “speaking to, but not for” the denomination as a whole.
The message is “Oh, that resolution? The one everyone is clobbering us for? We didn’t have anything to do with it. You need to talk to somebody else.”
When you point out that the folks in Cleveland orchestrated the passage of the resolution in question from start to finish (because that’s how they view their jobs), the next gambit is, “You don’t understand our polity.” This is mainline speak for “Good luck trying to find anyone to hold accountable in our church!”
What the Presbyterian mandarins in Louisville are trying to do is portray their lack of oversight over IPMN’s anti-Semitic propaganda as operational independence. This is evident in that part of the press release that reads “The IPMN booklet was neither paid for nor published by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).”
This raises a number of questions, the most obvious being, “Who did pay for the booklet? The Saudi Royal Family?”
I’m only half joking. There is precedent for this sort of thing. If you look at the tax documents for Americans for Middle East Understanding, the people who publish The Link, an anti-Israel publication cited by Rev. Dr. Gary Burge in his book Whose Land? Whose Promise? (another, um, problematic text), you’ll see that it is funded in part by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company. According to AMEU’s tax documents (990s), Saudi Aramco gave $70,000 to the group in 2012.
If such donations were being given to IPMN, there is no way to know because the organization operates under the aegis of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which does not have to disclose its financial information with the IRS.
And try as I might, I have been unable to find any 990s for the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), which confirms what I have been saying all along – it’s part of the denomination itself – no matter how many times the folks in Louisville say otherwise. Either that or if the IPMN is independent of the PC(USA) it has violated the law by not submitting its 990s to the IRS.
Which is it?
And what the folks in Louisville don’t seem to understand is that any donations given to the IPMN – even if they go into the organization’s separate bank account – are ultimately donations to the PC(USA) itself – because the IPMN is part of the denomination.
The fact that no adult within the PC(USA) exerts any oversight over the organization does not mean that money given to the IPMN is not ultimately donated to the PC(USA), because it is. No matter how you slice it, the PC(USA) is responsible for the publication of Zionism Unsettled.
PC(USA) officials have tried to hide behind some sort of plausible deniability about the IPMN’s actions for a long time. In 2009, I corresponded with officials in Louisville about the crazy, anti-Semitic stuff published by the IPMN.
The denomination’s Stated Clerk, Gradye Parsons responded to my concerns about IPMN’s website by reporting in an email “The Network operates as an independent organization with full control over their website. You should make direct contact with it if think (sic) changes should be made.” Translation: “You don’t understand our polity.”
Jay Rock the person in charge of the PC(USA)’s interfaith programs responded to my concerns in a similar manner, telling me I got it wrong in asserting that the IPMN was part of the denomination’s “organizational structure.” He continued, “Like our 35 other country and area networks, it is not accountable to any office, nor does it report to any staff person in the PCUSA structure; it also, like the other networks, receives no funding from the church. Please take up your concerns directly with the network.” So there it is again. “You don’t understand our polity.”
In 2010, I corresponded with the now-deceased Cynthia Bolbach soon after she was elected moderator of the PC(USA). She said she wasn’t “the appropriate person to respond” to my concerns about the IPMN, which “should properly be addressed to the Reverend Dr. B. Hunter Farrell, Director of World Mission, of our General Assembly Mission Council.” When I spoke with Farrell, he said that at some point, the denomination was going to issue a set of rules that groups like the IPMN would have to follow if they wanted to maintain their affiliation with the PC(USA). Apparently, nothing ever came of these rules. If they were issued, they do not seem to have any impact.
The PC(USA)’s General Assembly scheduled to take place this summer in Detroit, could quickly bring an end to the problems presented by the IPMN’s behavior, (and the failure of the folks in Louisville to constrain the organization) with a simple vote that disbands the IPMN and distances the denomination from the hateful materials it has produced over the course of its existence.
All of this talk about the General Assembly, and the failure of the folks in Louisville is the height of banality, for there are larger issues at stake.
Religious and ethnic minorities are being ethnically cleansed in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East with hardly a word of protest from the PC(USA). It’s an evil, violent campaign that threatens to destroy Christianity in the region of its birth. And the way things are going, it will likely be ignored by the PC(USA)’s upcoming General Assembly.
For sure, the GA will spend a lot of time talking about Israel and Jews, though.
・Dexter Van Zile (@dextervanzile) is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (@CAMERAorg).
(2) Presbyterian Anti-Zionists are Destroying Their Church by Attacking Israel, 13 February 2014
Given the hostility that emanates from the Presbyterian Church (USA) towards Israel and the Jewish people, it’s hard to see how a self-respecting Jew could set foot in a PC(USA) church.
It’s hard to see how self-respecting Presbyterians can set foot in PC(USA) churches!
The denomination has been hijacked by people who have it in for Jews and their homeland. When it comes to promoting peace and human rights, PC(USA) peacemakers have Jews on the brain.
Just how bad is it? A Presbyterian report prepared by the denomination’s peacemakers – and sold on the denomination’s website - has gotten glowing reviews from both David Duke and Iran’s PressTV. Here is David Duke’s victory lap:
In a major breakthrough in the worldwide struggle against Zionist extremism, the largest Presbyterian church in the United States, the PC(USA), has issued a formal statement calling Zionism “Jewish Supremacism” — a term first coined and made popular by Dr. David Duke.
Endorsements like this are the logical consequence of a process that began in 2004 when the PC(USA)’s General Assembly approved an overture calling on the denomination to sell its stock in companies that do business with Israel. With the passage of this initiative (which was ultimately rescinded), the General Assembly set the stage for a well-choreographed kabuki dance that has repeated itself, like clockwork, every two years.
It goes like this: Sometime early in every even-numbered year, the Jew-obsessed peacemakers in the PC(USA) release booklets and statements that attack Israel and American Jews in a pretty ham-handed way.
They also submit overtures to the denomination’s General Assembly calling on the church to declare Israel an apartheid state or to sell its stock in companies that do business with the Jewish state. The overtures come from local presbyteries (groups of local churches) within the denomination or they come from standing committees created by the denomination’s General Assembly.
The anti-Israel reports and overtures prompt outrage on the part of American Jewish leaders. Some of the more responsible folks within the denomination (there are a few) come forward to ask “What are we doing? Do we really want to be doing this?”
The General Assembly passes, some but not all, of the overtures put forth by the anti-Israel “peace” activists. People lament the extremism of the anti-Israel folks and sometimes the pro-Israel activists inside the church will get an overture passed that calls on the church to be a genuine force for peace and not to demonize anyone involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict. (These overtures are ignored both by the anti-Israel activists and denominational leaders in Louisville who go on attacking Israel between General Assemblies.)
At the end of the General Assembly, the pro-Israel folks inside the denomination talk about what needs to be done to take the momentum away from the anti-Israel folks inside the PC(USA).
Sadly, it’s always the anti-Israel folks who get off the first shot when the cycle begins again with the release of yet another anti-Zionist booklet released in the months before the General Assembly. And at about the same time, the texts of divestment overtures targeting Israel are posted on the denomination’s website.
This prompts people inside and outside the denomination to declaim just how tired everyone is of dealing with anti-Zionists in the PC(USA). Jewish leaders say the denomination has really done it this time and there is simply no dealing with this church.
The pro-Israel folks inside the denomination are caught flat-footed, again, by the reports and overtures and declare that this time, something really, really has to change.
And still everyone dances to the tune set by the anti-Zionists inside the PC(USA). The fact is, the anti-Zionists come to every General Assembly ready to play while the pro-Israel folks are still lacing up their skates when the puck is dropped.
These folks are simply obsessed. One of the most surreal moments of my life came in 2010 when I walked past a young man outside the plenary session of the General Assembly in Minneapolis. He held up quart-sized freezer bag filled with small stones. As delegates filed into vote on an Israel-related resolution, he told people that they were rocks from a Palestinian home that was demolished by the IDF.
These days, when I go to Israel, I buy rosary beads from a store in the Christian Quarter of Jerusalem. This guy went to West Bank and grabbed an artifact that testified to the evils of the Jewish state. Think about it.
Predictably enough, the dance has begun again in 2014. This year, the ballet begins with the publication of Zionism Unsettled, a 74-page booklet published by the Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) of the PC (USA), a group created by a vote of the denomination’s 2004 General Assembly and charged with “educating” the church about the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This seems like a reasonable mandate, but the IPMN has fulfilled these duties by posting racist and anti-Semitic imagery on its (now defunct) Facebook Page. The booklet is much the same. Jonathan Tobin is absolutely right when he declares: “As a work of political science or history, Zionism Unsettled is unworthy of serious discussion.”
At points, the document actually insults the intelligence. For example, it invokes the testimony of Mustafa Abu Sway, an imam from Jerusalem, who has expressed his hope that the Jewish state “would disappear.” In Zionism Unsettled, Sway talks about the inclusive nature of Islam and juxtaposes this with Zionist exclusivity.
Given that Christians and Jews have been oppressed in Muslim-majority countries throughout the Middle East, about the only people who can take this report seriously are David Duke and the people at PressTV.
Coinciding with the release of this document is an announcement that the General Assembly will be voting on a resolution that calls on the church to sell its stock in three companies that do business with Israel.
Ultimately, it’s up to the people inside the PC(USA) to fix this problem. Outside Jewish groups can raise a hue and cry, but ultimately, the people inside the church have to do the heavy lifting. They have to explain to their fellow Presbyterians that a PC(USA) organization – the IPMN – has dragged the church into the orbit of folks like David Duke.
And then self-respecting Presbyterians have to act.
・Dexter Van Zile is Christian Media Analyst for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).
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