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The General Assembly Council's proposed budgets for 2007 and 2008 call for reducing the national staff by 75 positions and terminating 55 missionary assignments. Details of the budget proposals, which were approved by the council after it spent nearly 20 hours in private meetings last week considering what changes needed to be made because of declining revenues, were revealed Monday during a press conference. "This was a very grim morning," John Detterick, the council's executive director, told reporters, including The Layman Online, which participated through a conference call. "There was a great deal of apprehension as people came to work."...

LOUISVILLE, KY—The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly Council (GAC) approved a four-page document offering its "comment and advice" to the 2006 General Assembly on the sensitive issue of divestment from Israel. If the 2006 Assembly follows the advice adopted here on April 28, it would leave intact the controversial 2004 Assembly decision to pursue "a process of phased selective divestment in multinational corporations doing business in Israel." The denomination's Mission Responsibility through Investment (MRTI) Committee would remain free to recommend divestment from specific corporations in 2008 or beyond. (MRTI has indicated that it will make no divestment recommendations this year.)...

Stone throwing is the political expression of choice amongst Palestinian Arab youth, you've seen it on TV -- rocks raining down on worshippers at the Western Wall, highways lined with cement walls to prevent cars being hit -- rocks are a serious issue. Of course, the PC(USA) has discovered the horrors of stone-throwing...when it's done by Jews. Schoolgirls stoned by Israeli settlers Of course, when you read the article, there's no testimony that the schoolgirls were attacked, only their "foreign escort" tools. Christian Attitudes is all over this: ...This is reprehensible behaviour and I make no excuses for it, but...

This past September, ten days after the last Israeli soldier left the Gaza Strip as part of Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan, an unusual meeting took place in East Jerusalem. Seventeen representatives from various American Jewish organizations and from several American Protestant denominations filed in to the headquarters of Sabeel--a Palestinian "liberation theology center" headed by Palestinian Christian activist Rev. Naim Ateek, whose activities had become a source of intense controversy among his guests. Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor of the Anti-Defamation League confronted Ateek on his position that he did not accept Israel's right to exist. Ateek refused to repudiate it, quoting...

The Diocese of San Diego has experienced the defection of two parishes within the past few months. The congregation of Christ the King in Alpine chose to leave behind its church building, but the leadership of St. Anne’s, Oceanside, said the congregation has no intention of moving. California courts generally do not defer to church canons relying instead on neutral principles of law to adjudicate church property disputes. As a result of lower court rulings last year, three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles were permitted to retain their property after voting to leave the Episcopal Church. The decision...

WIESENTHAL CENTER: IN WAKE OF LATEST PASSOVER SUICIDE ATTACK CHURCHES AND NGOS MUST DROP THEIR ANTI-SECURITY FENCE CAMPAIGN Following today's deadly suicide attack in Tel Aviv by a 16-year old Islamic Jihad bomber from the West Bank which left nine dead and dozens injured, the Simon Wiesenthal Center called on Churches and NGO's to drop their anti-security fence campaign. "Once again, the world reacts with indifference to another mass murder of Jews in the Holy Land on Passover," said Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper, Dean and Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. "Today's attack proves yet again that...

BALTIMORE, MD (4/12/2006)--When Patrick Cunningham left St. John's Episcopal Church in Glyndon to follow a new spiritual path, he didn't expect to walk straight into a clash with the north Baltimore-based Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. Cunningham, who is now lay leader of a breakaway American Anglican congregation called Church of the Resurrection, is one of several church members who accuse Episcopal bishops of meddling in their affairs. They say the church, which has no home of its own, held services in a Presbyterian church on North Charles Street but that an Episcopal bishop persuaded Presbyterian officials to rescind the agreement....

Presbyterian Disaster Assistance has decided to parcel out over a seven-year period the $14.4 million remaining from a record-setting burst of generosity by Presbyterians despite some complaints by hurricane victims in the Gulf Coast states that the denomination has been slow to respond to their needs. The decision to adopt a seven-year plan was made during a recent meeting of PDA's advisory board. The denomination raised $23 million in response to hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma. About 70 percent of the contributions were made within 90 days after the storms. Donors were not informed that the distribution of their gifts...

William Sloane Coffin Jr., 81, a Presbyterian clergyman and former Yale University chaplain whose early activism against the Vietnam War brought him international notoriety during a lifelong career of civil disobedience, died April 12 at his home in Strafford, Vt. He had congestive heart failure. From the moment in 1958 when Mr. Coffin roared onto Yale's campus atop his motorcycle, he signaled that his presence would mean a distinctly radical approach to the social, political and moral upheaval that defined the next decade. Mr. Coffin called himself a "Christian revolutionary" and believed that his outspoken activism sprang from the principles...

Coming up in June, the Presbyterian Church (USA) will be holding its 217th General Assembly. On the agenda will of course be the highly contentious decision from the last General Assembly to explore divestment against corporations perceived to be aiding in Israel's "occupation." I'll let the Presbyterian News Service take it from here: Commissioners, GA business to be divided among 15 committees Committee leaders for the eight-day Assembly, which starts on June 15 in Birmingham, AL, also were named this week by OGA [Office of the General Assembly] and Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase. Each committee will have elected commissioners as moderator...

Loathing, lies and liberation theology By Paul Driessen April 10, 2006 LA OROYA, Peru – Pitched battles over ideology and public policy certainly are not confined to classrooms or legislative chambers. They are also fought in poor communities of Africa, Asia and Latin America, often pitting multinational corporations against multinational activist groups. The corporations seek to extract energy and minerals, provide much-needed jobs and capital, and serve investors and consumers – without harming human health or the environment. They often collide with well-connected global activists who loathe foreign investment, free enterprise, and especially extractive industries – and want to influence...

Visiting Cuba is a perilous adventure. It's not that the physical danger is any greater there. The peril comes from rhetorical misadventures. It is frightfully easy—and common—to say something naïve or ill-informed that can be devastating to Cuban brothers and sisters in Christ who are suffering persecution. Their anguish can only be exacerbated by blithe statements that would appear to ignore their plight altogether and encourage their oppressor. "It is obvious that the churches are active and growing here [in Cuba], and they are doing it openly," said PCUSA moderator Rick Ufford-Chase. (Photo courtesy PCUSA.) On a recent trip to...

The liberal-controlled United Church of Christ (UCC) has unveiled its latest television ad, which features an intolerant and presumably conservative church ejecting an "African-American mother," "a gay couple, an Arab-American, [and] a person using a walker," According to Thomas, the ad showcases the "extravagant" hospitality of the Christian gospel. But almost all major networks -- CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox and WB -- have rejected the ads, believing they are "issue advocacy" The spiritual descendant of New England's old Puritans, the UCC can claim an historical and social pedigree equal to the Episcopal Church. Both denominations are well-heeled, well educated and...

In my essays on France, I remarked that under guise of anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism has returned because Zionist crimes gave Judeophobia an “objective” explanation. So while the Europeans in their cognitive egocentrism, apologized for Palestinian terrorism, which they took to express thwarted national aspirations, they continued to fuel Jihadi violence. The outbreak of the Intifada and constant exposure to “le petit Mohammed” brought the violent discourse against the Jews to new heights in Europe. This was especially true in France with the highest numbers of both Jews and Muslims in Europe, where formerly mixed and functional neighborhoods of Jews and Muslims...

Liberal Jews do find a common language with liberal Christians on a host of social issues but when it comes to Israel they often part ways. American Evangelist Pat Robertson's pronouncement that Ariel Sharon's stroke was an act of Divine retribution for his abandonment of the Gaza settlements - though he subsequently apologized - was a frightening reminder of how extreme the views of those on the religious Right can be. Sadly, Robertson has something in common with some on the religious Right in Israel who have expressed similar sentiments. Yet, even as the Israeli Right can draw support from...

There is some really good news regarding the struggle against the divestment charade. A group of US Presbyterians have formed the Committee to End Divestment Now which features a forthright and systematic analysis of the larger issues, and a micro-analysis of church politics and procedural issues, with extensive details regarding the fallacies and errors involved. They conclude: These resolutions have shattered our interfaith relations with our Jewish friends. These resolutions have undone a half-century of positive efforts to improve interfaith relations, following our denomination’s less-than-impressive response to the Holocaust. Isolating Israel for punitive action, while not condemning terror-sponsoring states, means...

Diana Appelbaum has an important article in The American Thinker about the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA). It is important because of the timing. The General Assembly of the PCUSA is scheduled to convene June 15-22, 2006. It will be an opportunity to undo its notorious divestment resolution, which supporters and detractors are debating whether it is merely anti-Israel or truly anti-Semitic. The surprising thing, to many outside the PCUSA, is that the overwhelming majority of Presbyterians are not even anti-Israel. The surprising thing, to many inside, is how remarkably anti-Semitic their leadership is. Most Presbyterians, indeed, most Christians, would be...

With the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA scheduled to convene in June for the first time since the 2004 GA passed a notorious anti-Israel divestment resolution, supporters and detractors of divestment are discussing whether the Church’s decision was anti-Semitic, or – somehow - anti-Israel without being anti-Semitic. Curiously, despite the storm caused by the divestment vote, most Presbyterians remain unaware of the extent to which the PCUSA leadership has involved itself in old-fashioned theological anti-Semitism. The anti-Semitic alliances undertaken by the national church are particularly surprising in light of the well-known open-minded and unbiased attitudes of the overwhelming...

Beware any Christian pilgrimage which includes a ‘fact-finding mission’! ‘Fact-finding missions’ and propaganda campaigns feature in no Christian pilgrimages anywhere except the Holy Land. Here is the latest exercise in propaganda disguised as pilgrimage. The Holy Land Christian Ecumenical Foundation (HCEF) invites you to travel with members of Market Square Presbyterian Church this summer on a Christian pilgrimage and fact-finding mission to see the holy sites in Jordan, Palestine, and Israel and to meet with Christian communities in the Holy Land Propaganda and racism combined in one sentence here: Notice that no opportunity is offered to observe the impact of...

SAN FRANCISCO - A Presbyterian minister in Northern California is scheduled to be tried by a church judicial commission on Thursday for marrying two lesbian couples in violation of the faith's position that marriage is a covenant between a man and a woman. If found guilty by the regional governing body of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the Rev. Jane Spahr, of San Rafael, could be removed from the ministry after more than 30 years. Spahr, 63, a lesbian activist who directs a group lobbying for greater inclusion of gay Presbyterians in the church, argues she was honoring her personal conscience...