Solomonia Archive: Holdouts in the PC(USA), More missed points in the UCC

Thursday, September 21, 2006

Holdouts in the PC(USA), More missed points in the UCC

Will Spotts reports that, despite the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly's overwhelming refutation of the previous GA's anti-Israel stances, as feared, the professional class within the PC(USA) continues to be a problem: The More Things Change

...The MRTI [Mission Responsibility Through Investment committee] now lacks the authority to single out companies solely based on their affiliations with Israel. If they continue to engage these companies, they'd be well advised to come up with better excuses to cover their actions. For a permanent committee like the MRTI to violate the instructions of the GA is unethical and immoral. This is corruption, plain and simple. Until it stops – until Presbyterians demand that it stop – we will continue to be a force for evil in the world.

Meanwhile, the new blog MainlineTruths reports on the continuing problems within the United Church of Christ (UCC): UCC President makes a mockery of Jewish-Christian relationship

According to UC News, UCC President John Thomas delivered another speech on Jewish and Christian relationships -and the strained relationship of UCC with major Jewish groups - in his Fall Convocation Address at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities this week.

And again, John Thomas misses the reason why the UCC's relationship with Jewish groups has soured.

While Thomas reflected positively on the UCC's history with Jewish groups (and our denomination's explicit recognition of God's covenant with Jews), Thomas failed to take any responsibility for the problems he personally, and completely unnecessarily, created in the last three years...

Continues here.

Posted by Solomon at 3:54 PM on Thursday, Sep 21, 2006 | Comments (2)
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2 Comments

#1 marci | September 21, 2006 9:02 PM

The plot worsens. Apparently, from the information on the Web site you have linked to here, when a local church wants to break away from the larger church because the smaller church disagrees with the parent church, the parent church will try to legally seize the building and property of the smaller church. That will effectively destroy these independent churches. This is how the Islamofascists operate too!

#2 will spotts | October 1, 2006 4:38 PM

In the PC(USA) that is the case. The buildings and assets of the local church are "held in trust" for the denomination. There was a secret memoranded circulated by the central offices of the denomination to middle governing bodies advising draconian measures be used against individual churches. Among these were lying in court (quite literally - claiming to be hierarchical, where Presbyterian is a 3rd form of church government), removing pastors, and suing individual church members. Since most people are unable to defend themselves from such tactics when carried out by an organization the size of the PC(USA), they will be too intimidated to act.