Should such comments just be intended to add information – or is appropriate for the council to play an advocacy role?
Near the close of its meeting May 14, the council debated a series of comments – covering everything from the conflict in Israel-Palestine to the role that young adult advisory delegates play at General Assembly.
Some were approved; the council voted one down. But a recurring question in the discussion was whether the council should just offer information for clarification – or whether it should jump into the public debate on particular issues.
One proposed comment, for example, involved an overture from San Francisco Presbytery that states that “Israel’s laws, policies, and practices constitute apartheid against the Palestinian people.”
The council considered – and ultimately approved – adding a comment to the General Assembly committee that will consider this overture, stating that the overture “accurately describes many of the current policies, actions, and laws of the Israeli government and their impact on Palestinians.”
The comment also points out that no previous General Assembly statements on the Israel-Palestine conflict have used the word apartheid, and says that “commissioners will have to judge whether this label in itself advances our church’s understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, or the search for its just resolution.”
In discussing the proposed comment, some council members said it seemed more like advocacy than clarification to them, and wondered who had written the comment and whether the council was certain it was factually correct.
But others said the comment could help commissioners to think more carefully about whether apartheid is a word they want to use in this context. “It is a hot-button word,” said council member Roger Gench of Washington, D.C. “We’re simply raising concerns,” and asking commissioners to look carefully at the overture.
In response to a question, Jay Rock, the PC(USA)’s coordinator of interfaith relations, told the council he was part of a writing team that prepared the comment, and said what the overture describes, about laws and policies in Israel, “is actually what’s happening on the ground.”
The comment, Rock said, could draw commissioners’ attention to the fact that the PC(USA) has not previously used the word “apartheid” to describe the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and “to think long and hard about whether they want to use it.”
Whether they choose to use the word apartheid or not, he said, “this is a very dire situation right now” in Israel-Palestine, and it needs to be addressed, “because it’s simply getting worse and worse.”
The council voted down, on the other hand, a proposed comment to an overture from Central Washington Presbytery concerning the extent to which young adult advisory delegates should be allowed to speak during General Assembly discussions.
Council member Doug Megill of Pennsylvania urged the council to vote against the comment – and it did – because it contained what he called “intemperate” language, seeping over into advocacy – saying, for example, that unless the proposed rules applied equally to all advisory delegates, “then it is a derogatory statement towards the young adults.”
The proposed comment also stated that “if we are to develop a church that is appealing to this and future generations, we should be paying attention to what those very people have to say.”
Clearly, individual members of the council were comfortable drawing the line in different places on these comments – bearing in mind that the General Assembly also will receive advice and comment from other groups within the church as well, and can decide, with all that advice, the extent to which it wishes to listen.
