Posted on 06/27/2005 2:11:41 PM PDT by sionnsar
The recent Anglican Consultative Council resolution on disinvestment from Israel seems to have been a foregone conclusion:
Fears that the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) would back the disinvestment campaign against Israel were allayed on Friday when delegates endorsed a resolution calling for peace in the Middle East but gave a measured reception to a September statement critical of Israeli policies prepared by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network (AJPN).
With only one dissent, the delegates adopted the resolution commending the Episcopal Church’s Social Responsibility in Investment program, asking the Anglican Observer to the United Nations lobby for the implementation of U.N. Resolutions 242 and 338, and welcoming the APJN’s September 22nd Statement on Israel.
Excuse me? "Fears...were allayed?" The final resolution reads as follows:
The Anglican Consultative Council:
a) welcomes the September 22nd 2004 statement by the Anglican Peace and Justice Network on the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict (Pages 12 - 14 of the Report)
b) commends the resolve of the Episcopal Church (USA) to take appropriate action where it finds that its corporate investments support the occupation of Palestinian lands or violence against innocent Israelis, and
i) commends such a process to other Provinces having such investments, to be considered in line with their adopted ethical investment strategies
ii) encourages investment strategies that support the infrastructure of a future Palestinian State
c) requests the Office of the Anglican Observer to the United Nations, through or in association with the UN Working Committee on Peace in the Middle East, as well as through this Council, and as a priority of that Office, to support and advocate the implementation of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 directed towards peace, justice and co-existence in the Holy Land.
At its 2003 General Convention, ECUSA passed a resolution which looked the other way on the issue of same-sex marriages and then tried to spin that as saying that it had not approved the practice. All this resolution does is state that disinvestment is not mandatory. If ECUSA wants to disinvest from Israel, the Anglican Communion will certainly do nothing about it. And that is not disapproval of the concept; the Jews do well to be angry. Anyway, the APJN presentation had the usual Concerned Witnesses.
Welsh delegate Sylvia Scarf announced her support for the resolution, describing her visit to a Palestinian home destroyed by the Israeli army. “You feel angry and you feel impotent and you feel so many emotions that you feel have to do something” she told the delegates.
And enough liberal Anglican smug self-righteousness to keep an entire Anglican province going for a year.
Dr. Jenny Te Paa of New Zealand, chairman of the AJPN, introduced the resolution addressing social justice concerns toward the environment, interfaith relations, theological education, conflict resolution, refugees, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the Friday morning session.
While the resolution addressed six distinct areas, Dr. Te Paa focused solely on the Palestinian conflict in her address, recounting the AJPN’s September 14-22 trip to Israel. She dismissed charges the group’s report was biased and said she was dismayed by the “intense lobbying” of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the ACC by outside groups opposed to the resolution.
“We claim to represent to you the absolute truth we witnessed,” she told the delegates.
I normally don't like to talk about myself but yours truly is quite the renaissance man. Not only do I work in a library and run this little enterprise but I am one of the nation's foremost Civil War historians. I once visited Fort Sumter and the Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Wilderness, New Market and Wilson's Creek battlefields so I understand the reasons why the Civil War was fought and why the North won it better than anyone. If you want the "absolute truth" about the War for Southern Independence, you have to come to me.
Jen's not biased or anything. Perish the thought.
"We heard from Israel Jewish voices, and from Palestinians, both those who reside in Israel and those who live under occupation," she said, noting the continuing policies of illegal home demolitions, detentions, check-points, identity card systems and the presence of Israeli military "that make any kind of normal life impossible."
Te Paa concluded the network presentation dispelling claims that the delegation did not speak with any Jewish or Israeli persons. "Our report recognizes the suffering of all," she said. "It recognizes that all -- Israelis and Palestinians -- have to live in dignity."
Translation: they front-loaded the trip with Palestinians and cherry-picked a few left-wing Israelis. Not that a prominent Anglican conservative bishop had any problem with that.
Archbishop Bernard Malango, primate of Central Africa, added to the discussion acknowledging that the Anglican Communion has been debating this issue for a long time and that it’s now time for action.
Jen and the rest of the Communion may believe that Anglicans aren't taking sides but the repulsive Bishop of Jerusalem gave the game away.
The Bishop in Jerusalem, the Rt. Rev. Riah Abu al-Assal, rose to speak of the plight of Palestinian Christians and asked the “Anglican Communion take action on behalf of peace and justice for co-living, not just co-existence”.
“The root cause of all the pain and suffering” in the Middle East, Bishop Riah said, “is the illegal occupation of the occupied territories, of East Jerusalem.” He advocated a two-state solution, saying demography favored the Palestinians.
Bishop Riah told the delegates “the resolution has nothing to do with punishing Israel” as “Israel has enough support from the American Administration and the Jewish lobby”.
Ah yes, the Sinister Jewish Lobby. Guess the Palestinians will just have to make do with the American movie industry and news media. As neither the Living Church report nor the sanitized ENS story mention anyone disputing al-Assal's assertion that “the root cause of all the pain and suffering” in the Middle East “is the illegal occupation of the occupied territories, of East Jerusalem," one can only assume that most of the ACC had no problem with it.
Which makes this resolution even worse.
On one level, this resolution might be an even more profound event than the Gene Robinson consecration. It won't cause a massive split; in this day and age, it would be too much to expect a province or diocese to go to bat for the Jews. But as apostate as the Robinson consecration was, it was reasonably localized. If a parish disputed it, it could leave ECUSA and place itself under an orthodox bishop, thus giving individuals who disagreed with it a place to go within the Anglican tradition.
But this resolution has the potential to drive me and I think lots of other individual Anglicans out of Anglicanism altogether. The history one has to deliberately forget or ignore to support this resolution, its obscene equation of genocidal murder and legitimate national self-defense, the fact that the vile Riah Abu al-Assal enthusiastically backs this idea, and the support it apparently has Communion-wide(not unanimous as previously reported but I take no comfort in that one dissenting vote) even among conservative Anglicans, with whom I would normally agree, means that I am seriously and perhaps fatally at odds with Anglican Christianity.
What will happen down the road only God knows. Hopefully, conservative Anglican groups will forcefully repudiate this resolution. But a long time ago, I made a prediction that I did not expect to die an Anglican. More and more, it looks as though that prediction will come true.
Traditional Anglican ping, continued in memory of its founder Arlin Adams. Well, now they've gone and done it....really, REALLY p.o.'d God..
I've been on this ECUSA=bad guys and global Anglicans=good guys way of thinking, but it now appears they're all a bunch of jerks...
But I don't completely agree with Christopher Johnson and will amend slightly:
But this resolution has the potential to drive me and I think lots of other individual Anglicans out ofIn major part this will be leaving Anglicanism altogether, but I expect the Continuing churches to grow some too.Anglicanismthe Anglican Communion altogether.
I'm starting to see that as well. I'm still not going to bail from my church until all of this happens here. The day I find out that we have a priest that is a sexually active gay is the day I walk. I was tentatively planning to try to find a traditional Anglican church, but this throws a pall over that idea.
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