Wednesday, September 17, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Dexter Van Zile: Out of the Mouths of Two Witnesses - 'For people who bill themselves as committed to non-violence and reconciliation, the so-called peace and justice activists who inhabit the progressive wing of Protestantism in the U.S. ("mainline churches") sure have targeted Israel with a lot of demonizing rhetoric in the past few years. They have also tolerated, and in some instances, defended the use of explicitly anti-Jewish themes from their allies in both the Middle East and the U.S., raising the question of whether these activists are as committed to "peacemaking" as they say they are...'
One of the more telling passages in Van Zile's piece:
"The fact that the leaders and legislative bodies of these churches have, to varying degrees, embraced this anti-Zionist narrative and keep Israel's sins – real and imagined – in their minds with greater force and vividness than two successive genocides in Sudan, China's terrible record of human rights, and the mistreatment of women in Muslim regimes throughout the Middle East, speaks volumes about the influence these activists enjoy within their churches."
When raw power speaks, many, many people learn and adopt and adapt to the language, and in general the semiotics of submission, rationalizing it on various conscious and more often on unconscious or barely conscious levels. And of course the raw power exemplified by Sunni Arab and other antagonists in the M.E. includes a raw and pervasive media/propaganda power as well, as it has never existed previously in the history of the world. Then there's general conditions, the general atmosphere in the west as a result of the Left's long march through the institutions and through consciousness and the formation of conscience in individual and societal terms.
In much the same vein, "mainline" churches have largely allowed themselves to become a type of sarcophagus "church," a type of form without any appreciable substance or suppleness. Presently, there is no end of this in sight, so saddle up and prepare for the long haul. Imo, certainly.