Thursday, July 1, 2010
[The following, by Ben Cohen, is crossposted from Z Word.]
Why? Read about it here. As for the response, this powerful statement from the UK Board of Deputies of British Jews says it all:
Statement from Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council: Methodist conference
30 June 2010 - This is a very sad day, both for Jewish-Methodist relations and for everyone who wants to see positive engagement with the complex issues of Israeli-Palestinian relations. The Methodist Conference has swallowed hook, line and sinker a report full of basic historical inaccuracies, deliberate misrepresentations and distortions of Jewish theology and Israeli policy. The deeply flawed report is symptomatic of a biased process: The working group which wrote the report had already formed its conclusions at the outset. External readers were brought in to give the process a veneer of impartiality, but their criticisms were rejected. The report's authors have abused the trust of ordinary members of the Methodist Church, who assumed that they were reading and voting on an impartial and comprehensive paper, and they have abused the goodwill of the Jewish community, which tried to engage with this issue, only to find that our efforts were treated as an unwelcome distraction. This outcome is extremely serious and damaging, as we and others have explained repeatedly over recent weeks. Israel is at the root of the identity of Jews and of Judaism, and as an expression of Jewish spiritual, national and emotional aspirations, Zionism cannot simply be ruled as illegitimate in the way that the Methodist Conference has purported to do. This smacks of breathtaking insensitivity, as crass as it is misinformed. That this position should now form the basis of Methodist Church policy should cause the Conference to hang its head in shame, just as surely as it will cause the enemies of peace and reconciliation to cheer from the sidelines.
This is a depressing outrage.
They should first hang their head out of unconfessed and unadmitted ignorance and pride, and only thereafter hang their head in shame as well. That is the source of it, in general.
My own experience, and, intuitively, it seems to be common among mainline Protestant denominations and other groups as well, is that there is a basic motivation to be compassionate, understanding and leverage that into the social/political arena - with that underlying motivation and interest, they thereafter allow themselves to be co-opted by varied and essentially leftist interests/programs and presumptions.
The ignorance and pride come into play because they don't want to own up to their relatively superficial comprehensions, plus, in wanting to be perceived as politically savvy, they are often motivated out of an interest in viewing themselves as more intelligent, more informed in worldly ways, etc. than those lesser informed (according to their perceptions) fideists - i.e. the evangelicals and other groups.
There are ironies in all that, not the least of which is that secular, leftward Jews are often more prone to side with the would-be mainline Protestants, while holding the fideists in contempt and viewing them with scorn.
None of that is intended in an unkind manner in the least.