Anglicans for Israel

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THE BOYCOTT OF ISRAEL CAMPAIGN AND CONTEMPORARY ANTISEMITISM

Denis MacShane MP (Chair 2005 All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism)
David Hirsh (Editor, Engage)
Jane Ashworth (Campaigns Director, Engage)
Richard Gold (North West Organiser, Engage)
Philip Spencer (Advisory Editor, Engage)
Panel Discussion

Click here for details on the Engage website

By Mark D. Tooley, FrontPageMagazine

The National Council of Churches (NCC) is distressed that not all Christians share its animosity towards Israel.

Preferring not to address its own demographic implosion, the NCC periodically lashes out at more demographically robust Christian movements, especially conservative evangelicals. In its latest fusillade, the NCC denounced the “Christian Zionism” of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which recently convened its second convention in Washington for pro-Israel evangelicals. Newt Gringrich was among the speakers.

“CUFI’s position of uncritical support for Israel separates it from the Anglican, Catholic, Orthodox, and traditional Protestant Churches, all of whom support Israel while at the same time advocate for a Palestinian state,” insisted the NCC’s news release, which mostly quoted Associated General Secretary for International Affairs and Peace Antonios Kireopoulos.

The NCC official asserted that “most Christians” do not share CFI’s stated goals. CFI’s objective, as its website describes, is to increase support for Israel among evangelicals by emphasizing the “the Jewish contribution to Christianity and Israel’s biblical mandate to the land through Bible teachings.”

CFI warns that “with every passing day, the threats to Israel and the Jewish people are growing,” specifically referencing Iran’s nuclear plans and Hamas’ popularity among Palestinians. “Millions of Christians across America have a deep love for Israel and the Jewish people and want to stand with them during these difficult days,” notes the CUFI website, which cites the “threats to Judeo-Christian civilization from radical Islam.”

Speaking unpleasantly about radical jihadists, of course, is unacceptable to the NCC and the Religious Left. “CUFI’s ongoing vilification of Islam is also unacceptable,” fretted Shanta Premawardhana, an NCC interfaith relations official. “The NCC continues to urge Christians to build relationships with Muslim people, the vast majority of whom are peace-loving, law-abiding people.” What the NCC never considers is that refusal to address radical Islamists is no favor to moderate Muslims who are “peace-loving.”

According to the NCC, the CFI has “advocated going to war with Iran,” which is “totally unacceptable,” Premawardhana claimed. “The NCC believes that high-level dialogues with Iran and other Middle Eastern partners is the proper method of dealing with Iran.” The NCC believes in high toned denunciations for Christians who disagree with its political agenda. But radical Islamists and other often very savage adversaries of Western Civilization always merit endless respectful dialogue, according to the NCC mindset.

The NCC, like the rest of the Religious Left, prefers to dismiss all pro-Israel evangelicals as “Left-Behind” fanatics whose support for the Jews is merely a crass and self-serving preparation for the end-times. CFI’s “efforts are the latest in a century old apocalyptic movement that began in earnest in the 19th century,” the NCC asserted. “Sometimes called Christian Zionism because of its uncritical support for the State of Israel, it is based on a literal reading of Biblical apocalyptic texts.”

Actually, Zionism and philo-semitism have a long history in Christianity, arguably dating back to the New Testament, whose writers were themselves Jews who followed a Jewish messiah, obviously. But more specifically among Western Protestants, a mystical attachment to the Jewish people and a belief in their connectedness to the land of Israel originated at least with the English Puritans. Zionism of some sort has nearly always resonated among some religionists in America over the last 400 years.

The NCC’s founders and early leaders were themselves ardent supporters of Israel. It was not until after the radicalization of the 1960’s, and the advent of Liberation Theology, that leftist Protestant prelates suddenly realized that Palestinian insurrectionists were actually God’s revolutionary vanguard against Zionist imperialism. Today, the NCC and its allies insist that they support Israel, within its pre-1967 borders. Naturally, these clerics prefer not to acknowledge that those borders are largely indefensible, and that an unrestricted “right of return” for Palestinian descendants would likely erase the Jewish state demographically.

According to Kireopoulos, the CUFI “message differs greatly with what theologians have taught for centuries” about Israel. Apparently, the NCC believes itself a mouthpiece for orthodox theology, instead of the shrinking pulpit for heterodox liberal Protestantism that it actually is. That the restoration of the Jews to Israel may serve some Providential purpose is hardly a belief confined to freakish evangelicals, as the Religous Left, sitting inside its insulated and largely empty churches, prefers to imagine.

“The NCC advocates for a two-state solution, with a secure Israel alongside a viable Palestinian state,” declared the NCC news release, sounding so very reasonable. “The NCC has stated the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories is unsupportable. This position is shared by Churches worldwide, and is counter to the position espoused by CUFI.”

According to Kireopoulos, “CUFI stands apart from the historic Churches still present in the Holy Land.” These churches for Palestinian Christians are “adversely affected by the policies supported by…CUFI.” The NCC prelate blamed pro-Israel evangelicals in the U.S. for the plight of Palestinian churches, which are “diminishing and are threatened with extinction.”

Of course, the NCC will never mention that Christian populations from throughout the Middle-East are declining, thanks largely to pressures from radical Islam. For the Religious Left, the Islamists themselves are never at fault but are merely the understandable consequence of endless Western oppressions dating to the Crusades. Almost hilariously, Kireopoulos frets about the de-emphasis on Jesus Christ by CUFI’s pro-Israel evangelicals.

“The Christian Gospel is clear that salvation came through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Kireopoulos intoned. “To supplement this message is to prevert the Gospel” that CUFI claims to preach. Naturally, the NCC and the Religious Left prefer not to mention inconvenient topics such as the resurrection of Christ in their various outreaches to Muslims. In fact, the Resurrection, which for leftist Protestants is typically just a poetic metaphor for social justice, is not a topic on which the NCC typically focuses.

Just as the NCC is almost never interested in persecuted Christians anywhere, except when the supposed perpetrators are Israel and its American evangelical supporters, so too the NCC will not usually cite the Resurrection, except as a polemic against both Israel’s Jews and their Christians friends.

Mark D. Tooley directs the United Methodist committee at the Institute on Religion and Democracy.

by Shelley Neese, FrontPage Magazine

“It’s a new day in America. The sleeping giant of Christian Zionism has awakened!” Pastor John Hagee announced in his booming voice to thunderous applause at the AIPAC Annual Policy Conference last March. What Hagee humbly omitted is that Christians United for Israel (CUFI), a group he formed just over a year ago, deserves much of the credit for arousing the sleepy 50-million-man giant.

To be sure, Zionist Christians are no recent phenomena. Neither is their communal work on behalf of Israel. For the last century, there have been Christian groups supporting Israel through their pocketbooks, prayer, and political power. What changed with CUFI is the visibility and consolidation of the Christian Zionist network. CUFI’s stated purpose is to “provide a national association through which every pro-Israel church, para-church organization, ministry or individual in America can speak and act with one voice in support of Israel in matters related to Biblical issues.”

CUFI, in a short period of time, has become one of the most important Christian grassroots organizations in America. Hesitant to call itself a lobby, preferring the term ‘national association,’ CUFI is often described as a Christian parallel to the Jewish lobbying-giant American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

With the goal of educating and mobilizing Christian support for Israel, CUFI’s signature event is the annual Washington Israel Summit in July. At last year’s Summit, 3,500 Christians convened on Washington to lobby their senators and congressmen on pro-Israel legislation. For this year’s Summit, taking place 17 July, Hagee hopes for twice as many.

For those who can’t make it to DC, CUFI’s volunteer regional directors organize Nights to Honor Israel which are held year-round all over the country. CUFI’s goal is for “Nights to Honor Israel” to be held in every major U.S. city. Thus far there have been over fifty well-attended “Nights to Honor Israel” which have raised over $10 million for charitable causes in Israel.

In forming CUFI, Pastor Hagee envisioned a united evangelical-Jewish alliance standing in defense of Israel. In his words, Congress must know “that the matter of Israel is no longer just a Jewish issue; it is a Christian-Jewish issue.” For an interfaith alliance to take hold there must be enough Jews who are willing to take CUFI’s hand in friendship. While Christian love of Israel may be unconditional, an alliance must be mutual.

The response to Pastor Hagee and the rise of CUFI among Jews has been mixed, predictably divided along liberal/conservative lines. Rabbis and Jewish community leaders who see CUFI as a negative development are generally more liberal in their domestic and foreign policy agendas. Those Jewish voices to the right are extremely optimistic about the surge in Christian support.

CUFI’s greatest moment of acceptance by the Jewish community was Pastor Hagee’s invitation to speak at AIPAC’s national convention. AIPAC broke policy by having Hagee come for a primetime slot. His impassioned speech brought standing ovations and ended with Hagee leading the crowd in a chorus of “Israel Lives!” The speech was widely covered in the press and repeatedly downloaded via the internet. It brought an enthusiastic response from Jews and Israelis that extended far beyond the walls of AIPAC. Bloggers in Israel sat by their computers crying as they heard Hagee’s words. They realized Israelis actually did have friends in the world. Jews in the U.S. said they needed more leaders in their own communities with half the ardor of Hagee and his Christian Zionists.

Not all those in the Jewish community, however, have seen Hagee’s newfound popularity as a good thing. Rabbi James Rudin from the American Jewish Committee criticized AIPAC for “being so focused on the tactical support [Hagee] offers” and ignoring his apocalyptic claims. Daniel Sokatch with the Progressive Jewish Alliance warned, “To get in bed with the hard Christian right on Israel is a dangerous path.”

Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism wrote a critical article for the Jewish Daily Forward entitled “When we Let John Hagee Speak For Us.” Yoffie claims the closer the organized Jewish community becomes to Christian Zionists, the further away they push younger, more liberal, Jews. The acceptance of right-wing Christian leaders like Hagee might alienate those Jews who are more moderate on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Yoffie says Jewish organizations should rethink their embrace of Hagee and the supportive role they play in CUFI’s “Nights to Honor Israel.”

For most Jewish critics of CUFI there is a deep-seated fear that accepting Christian support for Israel means condoning evangelicals’ opposing religious and political beliefs. CUFI executive director David Brog, himself Jewish, claims that CUFI is a one-issue organization. For Jews and Christians to be partners in the coalition they need only agree on the point of collaboration—Israel.

While debate rages in liberal Jewish circles, there is a notable absence of discussion in the Christian Zionist community. A knee-jerk reaction would be for pastoral circles to ask whether it is in Christian interest to forge an alliance with Jews who have divergent beliefs and agendas. But such a question is irrelevant. Christian Zionists are following a biblical command to love and support the Jewish people and the state of Israel. That love is unconditional.

The new beginning for Jewish-Christian relations is still burdened by 2,000 years of baggage. Rabbi Irving Greenburg in his book For the Sake of Heaven and Earth said “the rearticulation of Christian attitudes toward Judaism and the determination to end the teaching of contempt toward the Jewish religion already constitute one of the great moral cleansing revolutions of all time—in any religion.” Christianity underwent great pains to make things right, breaking with so much history and tradition to purify itself from the evils of anti-Semitism.

If some Jews remain uncomfortable with robust Christianity it is understandable. Christian Zionists must be patient, bearing out consistent genuineness and unconditional love until the wounds are healed. The Christian hand of friendship must remain outstretched to God’s chosen as long as some, or even one, grab hold.

Shelley Neese is the Managing Editor of a DC-based pro-Israel Christian publication called The Jerusalem Connection.

This Early Day Motion in the UK’s House of Commons deserves support. If you are in the UK, please urge your Member of Parliament to sign EDM 1641:

That this House notes that this week marks the 40th anniversary of the Six Day War of 1967, and Israel’s stunning victory against overwhelming odds; recalls that the war was triggered by Egypt’s aggressive armed forces build up in Sinai and the closing by Egypt of the Straits of Tiran to Israel, in breach of international law, cutting off Israel’s main oil supply route from her major supplier, Iran; remembers that subsequent to the surprise attacks in 1973 on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, and Israel’s victory then, a peace agreement was negotiated between President Sadat and Prime Minister Begin between Israel and Egypt, which has proved lasting; recognises Israel’s excellent relations with neighbours Jordan; notes that this shows Israel’s willingness to trade land for peace; and regrets the inability and unwillingness of Syria and the Palestinians to engage with Israel, to create an equally successful agreement and to bring lasting peace to the region.

Please visit here to see if your MP has signed and, if they have not done so, please contact them ask him/her to sign. The easiest way to contact is via www.writetothem.com. Please do this as soon as possible.

Forty years have now passed since the Six Day War, which resulted in Israeli control over the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza Strip, West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Take this short quiz and test your knowledge on the history behind the events of June 1967, to better enable you to put the Six Day War into its proper context - even when the media fails to do so.

Click here to take the Quiz