Disagreeing to agree: PC(USA) divestiture vote leads to anti-semitic charges

It is unlikely that the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) had any idea, when it voted this summer to start the process of considering divestiture in some companies doing business in Israel, that it would set off a fireworks of protest and provoke international denunciations of Presbyterians as anti-Semitic.

But that’s exactly what has happened. In recent weeks, stories or opinion pieces about the Presbyterian action have been written in prominent publications from Time magazine and the Wall Street Journal to the Israeli Insider (that article was headlined, “With Friends Like These . . . “).

Relations between Presbyterians and Jews, already battered by a controversy some months ago over the denomination’s funding of a Messianic congregation in Philadelphia, are much worse now — a situation made more painful by the recognition that, until now, the Presbyterian church was considered by many Jews to be among the most understanding and reasoned of the Christian denominations.

All that has changed. The PC(USA)’s headquarters in Louisville has been besieged with irate letters, phone calls and e-mails. Thousands have signed petitions criticizing the PC(USA) action (an Internet petition speaks of “the moral blindness of Jew-hatred”), and some criticism of the assembly’s action has come from within the PC(USA) itself.

The session of Clayton church in Clayton, Georgia, for example, passed a statement calling the divestiture action “reckless and indefensible,” for singling out Israel as the only country to receive rebuke. It threatened to withhold money from the denomination in protest. Some pastors have spoken from the pulpit, both for and against the idea of divestiture.

“It’s not pretty,” said Jay Rock, coordinator of the PC(USA)’s Interfaith Relations Office. “It’s really an avalanche of response and questions . . . It’s a very serious issue. There are Presbyterians being contacted all over the country, being asked to sit down and talk,” and sent statements of protest.

Rock is now trying to arrange high-level, face-to-face meetings between Jewish and Presbyterian leaders, to see if some level of conciliation can be reached and the damage somehow contained.

Presbyterian leaders have said that what the assembly actually did has been misunderstood — perhaps, some say, even intentionally mischaracterized,. What it authorized is a selective divestment, taken over time, not an immediate, unilateral action affecting all companies doing business in Israel. But the foundation of goodwill built by years of interfaith dialogue and cooperation between Presbyterians and Jews appears, at least at this juncture, to be seriously damaged.

For example, Dennis Prager, a prominent Jewish talk show host and commentator in Los Angeles, denounced the PC(USA) for “committing evil in God’s name” and said it is time for Presbyterians and other Christians “to distance themselves vigorously and publicly from this morally sick church.”

The Jewish group B’nai B’rith International accused the PC(USA) of “shattering nearly 50 years of interfaith dialogue” and of calling Israel “a racist, apartheid state.” Presbyterians, they say, do not seem to understand that the security fence in Israel was built “to prevent Palestinian suicide bombers from murdering innocent Israeli civilians.”

A sense of betrayal — rooted in part in the decades of interfaith cooperation between Presbyterians and Jews — echoes through the comments of others as well.

“While many liberal Jews see fundamentalist Christians as stereotypical anti-Semites who would kill us all if they were only smart enough to figure out how to do it, upper-crust Presbyterians seem like exactly the sort of folks we’d love to have as neighbors,” Jonathan S. Tobin of Philadelphia wrote in Israel Insider. “But at some point on the path to interfaith understanding, something went terribly wrong.”

Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League, said he was surprised to learn that years of working side-by-side had not brought understanding at all.

“For all of these years, in terms of doing social justice work, the Jewish community could almost consistently count on the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to stand at our side in the fight against hunger, homelessness, for health care,” Bretton-Granatoor said in an interview. “You guys have been our best friend on the issue of social justice. However, we have patted ourselves on the back for all of that and said relations are good. And that’s because we silently agreed a long time ago not to talk about the hard stuff. And we did that at our peril.”

In other words, the supposed harmony of interfaith relations between Presbyterians and Jews has come at a price — the price of not talking enough about theology, or about Israel. Both of those issues surfaced at the General Assembly in Richmond, and what happened there set off a chain-reaction of international response. And now the conversation — heated and passionate — definitely has begun.

The assembly took several actions — one involving proposed divestiture in selected companies doing work in Israel, another regarding possible funding of more Messianic congregations, a third calling for an end to the construction of the security barrier in Israel — that drew quick, intense criticism. Rock and other PC(USA) leaders admit the response took them by surprise. Different assembly committees handled those matters, so it may be that in the flurry of business few Presbyterians connected the dots to consider how these actions, taken collectively, might be viewed by others.

And there does not seem to have been direct discussion of a point that’s been made over and over by the critics: that the PC(USA), in recommending divesture in at least some companies in protest over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, was doing something that no other Christian denomination had done before. “I don’t think it was talked about in those terms,” said Bruce Gillette, a minister who was moderator of the assembly’s Peacemaking Committee.

But that’s certainly how it’s been perceived by many Jews — that the PC(USA) was breaking new and controversial ground, in what B’nai B’rith described as a series of “hostile and aggressive” votes, which came after comparisons were drawn in the plenary discussion between this proposal and actions the PC(USA) took in the 1980s to divest from companies doing business in South Africa, in protest over apartheid.

In the criticism so far, the action this assembly took regarding divestiture has not always been described accurately. What the assembly voted to do, by a margin of 431-62, was to instruct the denomination’s Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee to begin a process of “phased selective divestment in multi-national corporations operating in Israel,” following General Assembly policy on social investing.

What that means is not a complete divestment of all companies doing business in Israel, as some sources have erroneously reported. Instead, the MRTI committee will look at what investments the Presbyterian Foundation and Board of Pensions now hold in companies doing business in Israel and will try to ascertain what involvement those companies or the banks that finance them have in work the denomination sees as jeopardizing the peace process in the Middle East.

MRTI may ultimately recommend divestment in certain of those companies, but that would not come until after significant study, after criteria were established for determining in which companies to divest, after attempts have been made to initiate conversations with those companies, and after a formal vote to add those particular companies to the PC(USA) divestiture list was taken by either the General Assembly Council or the General Assembly itself.

Clifton Kirkpatrick, the PC(USA)’s stated clerk, also has pointed out that the assembly’s action came in protest of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, and “as part of a larger commitment of the PC(USA) to human rights and social justice all around the world.”

And “these actions are rooted in a longstanding commitment to the secure existence of Israel and the Israeli people, in a similar commitment to the security and existence of Palestinians in their own state, and in a passionate vision of negotiated peace as the only viable way forward,” Kirkpatrick said in a written statement posted on the PC(USA) web site (www.pcusa.org)

“Our church has spoken consistently over the last 35 years about the injustices of the occupation,” Victor Makari, the PC(USA)’s regional liaison for the Middle East and Europe, said in an interview. “We have taken very clear actions that address the occupation, but also condemned and denounced suicide bombings and attacks on innocent people. And nothing has produced any significant results. So apparently the move by the presbytery to overture the assembly for divestiture is one to send a strong message that we are serious about the actions by the state of Israel towards the Palestinian people, not unmindful of the harm that befalls innocent Israelis from extremist acts of violence . . . The purpose of course is to send a clear message that the church is serious about the injustice that is occurring in the Holy Land.”

The overture that raised the possibility of divestment was presented by St. Augustine presbytery in Florida.

“It grew out of concerns of individual members of our presbytery for justice for Palestinians, without sacrificing the Presbyterian church’s long-term commitment to the security of Israel,” said Paul Hooker, executive presbyter in St. Augustine. Some of those who initiated the action had traveled to Israel, Hooker said, and the overture was prompted in part by what they had seen and experienced in their travels.

The assembly’s Peacemaking Committee, which considered the divestiture action, spent considerable time discussing the denomination’s long commitment to supporting Palestinian Christians, Gillette said. The committee also heard comments, he said, from Mitri Raheb, pastor of the Christmas Lutheran Church in Bethlehem, and from PC(USA) mission co-workers Marthame and Elizabeth Sanders, who work with Palestinian Christians on the West Bank. They spoke from their experience about the bleakness of the living conditions there and the difficulties posed by the security wall.

The committee seemed to feel that the PC(USA) needed to do more than just issue another plea for Israel to change its policies, Gillette said. The church has often spoken, some commissioners argued, but unless there’s a financial bite attached, will the world really listen?

But that discussion was seen much differently by Jews than by Presbyterians, said Susan Andrews, who was moderator of the 215th General Assembly. She is a pastor whose congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, has shared space with a Jewish congregation for nearly 40 years. At the assembly, “when they talked about the effectiveness of sanctions against South Africa in stopping apartheid, they were talking about the effectiveness of the strategy,” Andrews said. “That was heard by the Jews as equating Israel with South Africa.”

Bretton-Granatoor, of the Anti-Defamation League, said, “it’s impossible to escape the analogy,” even if Presbyterian leaders try to distance themselves from it. “What you have said profoundly hurts us,” he said of that analogy. “What you have said profoundly shocks us.”

Nearly as inflammatory has been the position the assembly took regarding funding of Messianic congregations.Coming to Richmond, some Presbyterians definitely were worried about how the controversy over the funding of a Messianic congregation in Philadelphia, Avodat Yisrael, might play out. Avodat Yisrael is a small new church development, started about two years ago with $260,000 in funding from the presbytery, synod and General Assembly levels, despite strong opposition from some in Philadelphia presbytery. In response, Hudson River presbytery sent an overture to this assembly asking that the PC(USA) suspend funding for any more Messianic congregations until it comes up with a policy regarding evangelization of the Jews.

For Presbyterians, one theological question to be addressed is whether, from a Reformed perspective, Jews are already seen as being in covenant with God — and, if so, what are the implications of that for evangelization and interfaith relations?

In 1987, the General Assembly approved a study paper, “A Theological Understanding of the Relationship Between Christians and Jews,” which said in part: “We affirm that the reign of God is attested both by the continuing existence of the Jewish people and by the church’s proclamation of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Hence, when speaking with Jews about matters of faith, we must always acknowledge that Jews are already in a covenantal relationship with God.”

This assembly chose, by a close vote of 260 to 233, to proceed with a study of relations between Presbyterians and Jews, but in the meantime not to prohibit funding of any new Messianic congregations (although there was no specific reference to any other Messianic new church developments currently being contemplated).

The idea of funding Messianic congregations provoked intense discussion in Richmond. Some commissioners pled with the assembly not to fund Messianic churches that Jewish leaders have said are deceptive in their approach and offensive in their use of Jewish sacred symbols, but which other commissioners described as just another part of the PC(USA)’s commitment to spreading the gospel to all people.

Bretton-Granatoor said he understands that a core Presbyterian value is to spread the news of Jesus, and said if the Presbyterians hung up a banner and invited all people to come learn about Jesus, “that wouldn’t bother me in the least.”

But “if you take a church and dress it up as a synagogue, and you take a minister and dress him up as a rabbi, and you take sacred prayers of mine and sacred music of mine and misuse it in order to spread the Good News and do it in a dishonest way” then he wonders. As a Jew, he would ask, “Why are you directing it specifically at me, when in 1987 you made a very clear statement that we Jews do live in covenant with God,” Bretton-Granatoor said. “If you have to spread the Good News with deception, I’m not sure you feel very confident about the Good News.”

Ultimately, however, the assembly voted not to ban funding for any new Messianic congregations. But it also instructed PC(USA) national staff members to “reexamine and strengthen the relationship between Christians and Jews” and to consider the implications of that for evangelism and new church development — essentially, to study the wisdom and repercussions of creating Messianic congregations and of evangelizing Jews.

Rabbi Gilbert S. Rosenthal, who is executive director of the National Council of Synagogues (an alliance of Reform and Conservative synagogues), and who attended the meetings of the assembly’s Committee on Interfaith and Ecumenical Relations where this matter was discussed, gave a foretaste of what is to come when he described himself, after the committee’s vote, as “bitterly disappointed that the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) seems to be turning back the clock 40 years.”

So where does this leave things?

For starters, both sides are frustrated. Presbyterians contend that the assembly’s actions have been misrepresented, and say that challenging Israel’s policies towards the Palestinians does not make them anti-Semitic.

“When people start name-calling, there’s not much you can do,” Rock said. “You can’t really defend yourself against name-calling. And throwing that term ‘anti-Semitic’ out is name-calling . . . That was not the motivation” of the assembly.

“That seems to be the card that angry Jews want to pull out every time there’s criticism of Israel,” Makari said of the accusations. “We have simply said the issue is not the Jews, the issue is not hating the Israelis, the issue is abhorring the occupation”

Some Jews say it doesn’t seem that way — in the Wall Street Journal, for example, lawyer Jay Lefkowitz argued that the PC(USA) was demonizing Israel and applying double standards, by not bringing economic sanctions against countries such as China and Russia for their human-rights abuses.

And so it goes.

Despite the rancor, however, both Jews and Presbyterians have spoken of the need for further conversation, for another attempt at interfaith dialogue.

“We’re working on a sit-down meeting with Jewish leaders,” Rock said in an interview, as well as trying to jointly produce materials that Presbyterian and Jewish congregations could use for discussions in their local communities.

“There’s an opportunity here for some serious conversation,” Rock said. “It’s not going to be a pleasant conversation . . . But we don’t have to stomp away from the table and not talk to each other.”

Bretton-Granatoor said the Anti-Defamation League has called for renewed dialogue with the Presbyterians, “but a different kind of dialogue. Not a dialogue that left all of us walking out of the room patting each other on the back . . . but making us sweat, because ultimately that’s the only thing that’s going to make a difference.”

Despite all the years of work with Presbyterians, Bretton-Granatoor said he now views those conversations for the most part as “a failure and not a success. Because we still don’t understand each other yet. Jews just don’t get Christians. And Christians just don’t get Jews.”