Thursday, August 18, 2016 / KED
I have come to believe that the mainline traditional
denominational churches hold periodic churchwide assemblies in order to pass
resolutions to alienate any demographic it has not annoyed in the last several
years.
The recent Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Churchwide
Assembly in New Orleans -
https://www.elca.org/ChurchwideAssembly
- does not appear to be an exception. It seems that several anti-Israel resolutions
were adopted at the assembly that are getting quite a bit of attention.
I am SMH – and I repeat myself here. Perhaps the ELCA missed
the memo: In the world of leadership, you accumulate enemies, don’t go out of
your way to make any. In a world that yearns for leadership, never miss an
opportunity to sit down and shut-up when it comes to politics.
Meanwhile, when I ask many folks that have left mainstream
denominational churches, why they left; I hear several themes consistently.
One they got tired of hearing that they ought to contribute
more money to the church. And two, they did not want to hear from pastors about
politics when they went to church. Three: going to church and listening to a
thought-provoking sermon is one thing but going to church week after week and
being lectured to with a wagging finger quickly gets old.
Then again, maybe too much attention has been given to the
anti-Israel resolutions. From
my
experience, a lot is accomplished at these assemblies and perhaps it is unfair
to perseverate upon the resolutions aspect of the conference. On the other
hand, the social-political resolutions really appear to be unnecessary
exposures and unforced errors on the part of the church. Especially at time
when membership is declining and budgets are getting tighter. Read “The
Shrinking Church,” by Nicole Radziszewski, in the January 2013 edition of
Lutheran Magazine -
http://www.thelutheran.org/article/article.cfm?article_id=11186
Why go out of our way to annoy potential church members?
It appears that the group, Isaiah 58, has been one of the
chief advocates for these resolutions. Read more here:
C1
and C2 Both Pass With Over 80% Margins—Thank You Church!,
C-2 Passes By
Overwhelming Majority,
C-1 Passes!
Here’s Our Press Release,
Prayer
Vigil Tonight! 8:45 Lobby of Sheraton Hotel 500 Canal Street,
ELCA
Churchwide Assembly Makes News!,
Former
YAGM Speaks in Favor of Investment Screens and His Experience,
Former
YAGM, Speaks in Favor of Investment Screen,
Former
YAGM, Speaks for Human Rights,
Former
YAGM and LSTC Student Supports C1 & C2,
Testimony
an ELCA Young Adult in Global Mission (YAGM)
Look, I get it that the Middle East is a mess. I read with
great interest many of the newspapers from the Middle East and for a
thought-provoking Israeli point of view I read Caroline Glick -
http://carolineglick.com/
I guess my perspective is that there is plenty of blame to
go around. But we have the U.S. State Department for stuff like this. What I
need is a church...
At the recent Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Churchwide
Assembly (CWA) in New Orleans the (ELCA) has approved two resolutions,
according to multiple media reports, including this one “Lutherans Back
Anti-Israel Resolutions,” by Chelsen Vicari, @ChelsenVicari, written August 15,
2016 on the website, “The Institute on Religion & Democracy’s Blog, Juicy Ecumenism.”.
Find it here:
https://juicyecumenism.com/2016/08/15/lutherans-israel-resolutions/.
Please read more of the blog here:
https://juicyecumenism.com/
There appears to be many thoughtful, well-written and thought-provoking
articles.
Articles such as “John Wesley: Enduring Persecution” by
Joseph Rossell: “Contemporary Christians committed to saving souls and
promoting justice can take much courage from John Wesley’s story, as chronicled
by Jake Hanson in Crossing the Divide…” and “America’s Lost Girls?” by Chelsen
Vicari: “America’s girls are growing up fast. It’s the cost that’s the problem.”
Again, I am not familiar with the site. I will also look
forward to see what Lutheran Magazine says about the resolutions. I will also
look on the ELCA website:
https://www.elca.org/ChurchwideAssembly
I am not familiar with this writer, Ms. Vicari. This website
was one of several that I found when I was trying to find more information on
the resolutions adopted at the recent CWA. Much of the reaction I have read -
and much of the reaction I have heard locally has not been favorable – bordering
upon hysterical.
I was really looking for some information on the some of the
traditional mainstream legacy media or newspaper sites and I was unsuccessful.
I first heard about it on a segment on NPR. Yea – well. Big surprise there. I
guess if the Lutherans had adopted pro-Israel resolutions, NPR would have
missed it.
Ms. Vicari explains:
The
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) has approved two resolutions
advanced by anti-Israel activists including a push to end all U.S. aid to the
Jewish state until the “military occupation of Palestinian land” ceases,
according to CBN
News. The resolution was adopted in an overwhelming 751
to 162 vote during the Mainline Protestant denomination’s triennial
Churchwide Assembly held in New Orleans August 8-13.
“The two resolutions
were recommended by Isaiah 58,
a group of Lutheran anti-Israel boycott activists. ‘In our Affirmation of
Baptism, one of the five promises we make as Lutherans is to ‘work for justice
and peace throughout the earth,’’ commented Jan Miller, a Rocky Mountain Synod
member and Isaiah 58 leader in a press
release. “By adopting this investment screen, the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America is taking an important step to ensure that we are not
profiting from, or complicit in, injustice in the Holy Land and elsewhere.”
One site, among many, that took exception to the
resolutions, is a site called “
Exposing
the ELCA,” by Dan Skogen, a “former ELCA seminary student and former ELCA
member who is fed up with the ELCA's consistent mockery of God's Word.”
This appears to be a rather angry site. Much of the anger
that caught my eye were anti-LGBT matters, of which I simply do not care with
the exception that I sure wish the church would simply stay out of these
matters….
Skogen wrote “ANTI-SEMITISM REIGNS IN THE ELCA: TWO ELCA
VOTES URGE AN END TO U.S. AID TO ISRAEL AND FOR A DIVESTMENT PLAN AIMED AT
ISRAEL” on August 14, 2016, “The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has
long been an enemy of the Jewish State. (see
here)
Earlier this week, at the ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly, the ELCA voted in favor
of a resolution that calls on the United States government to end all aid to
Israel until a list of ELCA demands are met. (Note that they did NOT call for
the stoppage of U.S. aid to “Palestine” which takes foreign aid money {see
here}, intended for humanitarian causes, and uses them for
weapons, military terror tunnels, etc., in their quest to kill Jewish men,
women and children.)” Read more here:
http://www.exposingtheelca.com/exposed-blog/anti-semitism-reigns-in-the-elca-two-elca-votes-urge-an-end-to-us-aid-to-israel-and-for-a-divestment-plan-aimed-at-israel#comments
It is not light reading.
Oh, one comment caught my eye: by Didaskalos on August 17,
2016: “Dan has 12 categories (links) of
ELCA heresies/apostasies on his home page, the last of which is "Other
Critical Issues." If he were to link and list each of the ever-expanding
list of ELCA heresies/apostasies separately, he'd have one of the longest home
pages on the Internet.
“Cost-cutting
suggestion for the ELCA corporate heads at its Higgins Road HQ: Copy all the Democrat
Party platform planks and Planned Parenthood talking points, and paste them
onto your home page as your adopted tenets of belief. As you keep having to lay
off personnel because of continuing member and dollar losses, simply copying
and pasting the world's latest godless fads onto your website will require
fewer staff members.”
Another thought-provoking comment came from “Dave from
Minnesota,” “I clicked on your link to
their Twitter feed, then scrolled down and read a large number of them. Not a
lot of traditional Biblical based pronouncements. But a lot of liberal
political ones:
“Anti coal and oil
statements (I'm sure those ELCA churches with declining enrollment in the upper
Midwest would love to see their heating bills doubled or tripled) For open
borders Anti-Israel Pro-Black Lives Matter Mandated anti-racism training for
church leaders and staff…”
“The largest Lutheran
denomination in the United States last week approved a pair of resolutions
that, like those adopted in recent years by other prominent Protestant groups,
is critical of Israel.
But, said observers of
interfaith relations, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, at its
triennial assembly in New Orleans, did not adopt more strident resolutions
proposed by several local church councils around the country. One of the
adopted resolutions favored an “investment screen” that would guide church
members’ investments in U.S. corporations that do business in Israel, rather
than a direct call for divestment from these firms.
And the language of
the adopted resolutions, which urge the U.S. president to “recognize the State
of Palestine” and encourage church members to “increase positive investment in
Palestine,” offers a more balanced approach to Middle East issues than some
other churches’ resolutions, the observers said.
The Lutheran
resolutions, coming two months after the Presbyterian Church (USA) adopted a
report that representatives of the Jewish community characterized as more
balanced than that denomination’s past resolutions, and three months after a
committee of the United Methodists rejected four divestment resolutions, may
represent a small move in some Protestant circles away from automatic support
for the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) movement and
towards positions that hold both Israelis and Palestinians responsible for
progress in the Middle East peace process.
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