July 06, 2010
British Methodists Sign Up to Help Islamists Build Ovens
And the sad thing is that these cattle don't seem to understand the first bit about the path they have chosen:
The decision last week by the Methodist Church of Britain to launch a boycott against goods emanating from settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem will send a shiver down the spine of anyone with a feel for where the rancid, global campaign against the Jewish state is currently heading.The boycott will involve transactions of the church itself, and extends to encouraging all affiliated Methodists to follow suit. The Methodists boycott no other country.
The fact that an institution professing allegiance to values of love, truth and justice should have succumbed to an agenda of hatred, hypocrisy and barbarism is sadly emblematic of the degraded spirit of our times, and of the moral inversions which blow through them.
But who, these days, can really be surprised about such happenings in modern Europe? It is only the banality, to appropriate Hannah Arendt, of this particular evil that still has the power to shock us. For, in watching the discussions at the Methodist Conference which approved the boycott, there was little in the way of the visceral hatred of Israel which we have become so accustomed to seeing in academic settings or in the trade unions. Here was a group of almost stereotypically ordinary, middle-class, English Christians calmly reciting every hackneyed anti-Israeli calumny in the book.
I want to say that American Methodists and perhaps Presbyterians have either already adopted those measures or are flirting with them. Anyone know the answer to that?
It always amazes me how "good" people can not just turn a blind eye to evil, but actively participate in it by allowing themselves to be fed beliefs they should know not to be true.
I know that there have been individual conferences of the United Methodists in the USA boycotting companies that "profit" from the Israeli actions in the "occupied territories" but I'm not aware of a denomination wide move.
In the religious cafeteria that is the US, you get everything from John Haggai's Israel love fest to actions like this.
Funny thing is we are taught to look at things in the Bible like this - content in context. So how the UMC or anyone can look at the context the state of Israel sits in, and their actions versus those of the Islamists that surround them - then decide the Israelis are the ones who need pressure applied is beyond me.
Posted by: David Wilson at July 6, 2010 09:51 AMGod made a covenant with Abraham(Genesis 12:3) - "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." I have been taught that covenant applies also to the "children of Abraham". That any so-called Christian sect could be so ignorant of scripture is appalling. I, for one, know which side of that fight that I want to be on.
Posted by: Diogenes Online at July 6, 2010 10:55 AMI pretty much gave up on organized religion back in the World Council of Churches days (are they still around) after a Presbyterian "minister" made it clear I was not welcome because I wasn't paying enough.
I had already discovered that nothing in the path to salvation as described in the Gospels required and organized religion.
Lately I have noticed that I hear more faith, Bible, and Christian instruction listening to Glenn Beck than I do in church.
And a side-by-side comparison of the Revelations and the morning newspaper is an interesting exercise.
Posted by: Larry Sheldon at July 6, 2010 11:09 AMAt the time I was feeling the call and coming back to Christianity, I looked at my originating "churches" and found them empty for a vast array of reasons. What about a man lying with a man is an abomination is unclear? What is man being the head of the household as a duty confusing. What about a... Ah, fogetabout it.
At the time, the Presbyterian "Church" (one of them? the main one I guess) had decided to be anti-Semitic as well. I realized I had to go elsewhere, and did. God felt no more comfortable there than I did, from the way my call has worked. Wouchies.
Posted by: Doom at July 6, 2010 11:41 AMThis sounds just like the situation in the 1930's when the Jews were trying to get out of Germany. The churches went out of their way to keep them in Europe.
As to the Methodist here, that was my church and they have gone nuts. It was better when we had north and south branches.
Posted by: David at July 6, 2010 01:18 PMDiogenes,
There are a number of "so-called Christian sects" that view the Abrahamic covenant in relationship to, and as completed in, the New Covenant. Thus the true Israel is the Church, not a nation-state created in 1948 by some, most certainly not all, Jews. To adhere to this theology is neither anti-Semitic, nor by any means pro-Islamic. Before 1948, it would have been incomprehensible for most Christians to have adopted the views on Israel or the Jews that have been accepted since then by pre-millenial dispensationalists, who have been dominant within evangelical Protestantism especially since the 1960s.
Posted by: Sol at July 6, 2010 02:05 PMTo paraphrase Joseph Goebbels: tell the lie; make it big; repeat it often, and people will eventually believe it.
Methodists. Presbyterians. Doesn't matter. Some Catholics even believe it's OK to murder the unborn.
Baptists, of course, are immune to such blithering nonsense.
Posted by: locomotivebreath1901 at July 6, 2010 04:22 PMMark D. Tooley has written, extensively, on United Methodist Church and its anti-Israel stance, its love fest with Chavez, and its call for impeachment of President George W. Bush (in 2006). The Methodist Federation for Social Action has played a strong leadership role in writing and promoting the relevant petitions in the individual United Methodist Church conferences. The Federation, which has been independent of the church since the 1950s, still has its offices in the same building with the national offices of the United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. So, do not expect the United Methodist Church to be cheerleading for Israel.
Posted by: Miriam LeGare at July 6, 2010 10:35 PMAnyone have a list of businesses run by Methodists so I can boycott them in retaliation?
Posted by: Kevin at July 7, 2010 07:27 AMI know for a fact piddling few listen to their pastors for political advice. Israel need not worry about it. Its not like they are Baptists.
You know how to keep a Baptist from drinking when he goes fishing? Go with him.
