Presbyterian and Jewish congregants gathered in Shelton Chapel at Austin Seminary on March 30 in an effort to further open the lines of communication between the two communities. The gathering was the President’s Colloquium, “A Difficult Friendship: Divestment, Dialogue, and Hope.”
Two speakers addressed the challenges and opportunities facing Presbyterians and Jews in the wake of the divestiture vote last summer at the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly: the Reverend Joseph D. Small III, associate director for the PC(USA) Congregational Ministries Division and coordinator for the Office of Theology and Worship/Spiritual Formation, and Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of Interfaith Affairs for the Anti-Defamation League.
According to the PC(USA) website, “The 216th General Assembly approved several measures opposing the Israeli occupation of Palestine … including a call for the corporate witness office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) to begin gathering data to support a selective divestment of holdings in multinational corporations doing business in Israel/Palestine.”
“This action has sparked the renewal of many important conversations between rabbis and Presbyterian clergy, between congregations and synagogues, all over the country,” said Theodore J. Wardlaw, president of Austin Seminary, in his introduction.
“It is a profoundly important thing today that we offer one another our hands, even as we struggle sometimes to understand each other. When we disagree, let it be that we disagree not as enemies, but as fellow strivers toward shalom.” “It’s a pleasure to be here … but it’s a shame in a way to be here around what has been billed as a ‘difficult friendship’,” said Small. “It’s a shame to be here because these gatherings should have been taking place over the past decades, but rarely did. And it only took a particularly difficult period in our relationship to bring us together.” He called the relationship between Christians and Jews unique, as compared to the relationships between Christianity and other faiths.
Small explained the actions taken by the PC(USA) General Assembly in Richmond, Virginia, in the summer of 2004. “These four actions, taken together, combine to exacerbate an already strained relationship because of the controversy,” said Small. The actions, originating as overtures from three different Presbyteries, were: 1) to direct the Office of Theology and Worship, the Office of Interfaith Relations, and the Office of Evangelism to reexamine and strengthen the relationship between Christians and Jews, and to explore the implications of this relationship for evangelism and new church development and not to end funding for messianic Jewish congregations; 2) to express the opposition of the PC(USA) to “Christian Zionism”; 3) to call for an end to construction of the “separation barrier” in the West Bank; and 4) a call for the Mission Responsibility Through Investment Committee to initiate a process of “phased selective divestment of PC(USA) holdings of multinational corporations doing business in Israel/Palestine.”
Upon his introduction, Bretton- Granatoor also commented on the title of the colloquium. “This is not a ‘difficult friendship,’ this is a ‘nascent friendship’,” he said. “We’re really at the very beginnings of a friendship that at best is forty years in duration … The reality is that for the last forty years we have assiduously avoided the 600- pound-gorilla sitting in the room with us … our differences.” He said the actions of the PC(USA) General Assembly last summer sparked the realization that the next stage of the friendship needed to begin.
Bretton-Granatoor, after giving abbreviated histories of the Jewish narrative and attachment to “the land,” or Israel, and the Protestant narrative, addressed, in particular, the seven affirmations from a 1987 PC(USA) document that Small presented during his lecture. The affirmations are from a document titled “A Theological Understanding of the Relationship Between Christians and Jews.” He expressed frustration that the document was not passed as policy.
“I think we have to understand each other a little bit better–I think we have to engage in a very difficult conversation, that is what divides us,” said Bretton- Granatoor. “That is our obligation if we are to call this a friendship.” He said there should be “an exchange of words, not a two-way monologue.”
Small agreed with Bretton-Granatoor that there is “unfinished work to be done on each of these affirmations.” However, Small said the PC(USA) does not vote to make theological statements into policy, but can choose to call the documents to attention for future study. “The only theological policy we have is in the Book of Confessions,” said Small. He said theological work is seen as an “ongoing conversation within the church and from the church to conversation partners outside of the church.” Small recognized that the church indicated that the 1987 was a study document and then did not provide a means for it to be studied. He said the paper should now be reengaged as a way of “deepening the conversation” between Presbyterians and Jews, “and to do this not alone but to do it in active conversation and collaboration with Jews.”
Bretton-Granatoor said, “… It is painful that one cannot point to something within the PC(USA) and say there’s a definitive articulation of where we (the Jewish community) stand (in relationship with the covenant).”
“Though it is clear that it is articulated within that study guide, we don’t know that it’s a fundamental point of view of the church,” he said. Bretton- Granatoor pointed out that the Catholic Church has a document, Nostra Aetate, a 1965 declaration of the Catholic Church’s relationship to non- Christians. “Perhaps there needs to be…a clearer, more definitive understanding of where the church believes we Jews fit into your theological understanding,” said Bretton-Granatoor.
A question and answer session followed the presentation. The Reverend San Williams, pastor of University Church, announced that “Face to Faith,” a group of Austin rabbis and pastors who are committed to continuing the conversation between Christians and Jews, plans to meet to study the Scriptures together and continue conversations such as the one presented at the colloquium.
