Church of Scotland Shreds Bible, Canonizes Palestinian ‘Scripture’

Over at the Gatestone Institute:

The Kirk has committed theological suicide in order to promote political inanities. The former Church of Scotland is defunct; the Church of Latter Day Scots has taken over the premises.

At its recent General Assembly (May 18-24, 2013), the Church of Scotland adopted a pro-Palestinian tract entitled The Inheritance of Abraham? Its Preface admits that a previous version “caused worry and concern in parts of the Jewish Community in Israel and beyond” and offers “clarification.” The clarification is mere window-dressing, but that is beside the point. It is rather “parts of the Christian Community in Scotland and beyond” that should be worried and concerned. To judge from the amateurish theological absurdities in this document, which passed through all the relevant levels of the bureaucracy up to the General Assembly, the whole Kirk is adrift. It has abandoned a glorious past for a dubious future.

We shall look at those absurdities in a moment, but first consider the dire situation of the Kirk…

It’s long but well worth a read! To do so, click here.

HT

 

SSPX Head, Bernard Fellay: Jews Are ‘Enemies Of The Church’

What’s with the perpetual anti-Semitic leanings of this Society?!

The head of a controversial Catholic sect says that Jews are “enemies of the Church,” but the sect has denied any anti-Semitic intentions.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, declared Jews “enemies of the Church” during a talk that aired on a Canadian radio station, the Catholic News Agency recently reported. Fellay’s remarks took place on Dec. 28 at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Chapel in New Hamburg, Ontario.

Fellay, discussing negotiations with the Vatican in 2012 concerning the Society’s future, said the following during the address: “Who, during that time, was the most opposed that the Church would recognize the Society? The enemies of the Church. The Jews, the Masons, the Modernists.”

Fellay said Jewish leaders’ support of the Second Vatican Council “shows that Vatican II is their thing, not the Church’s,” according to the Catholic Register.

The Second Vatican Council modernized the Catholic Church in the 1960s and is the reason the Society of St. Pius X split from the main body and was founded in 1970 as part of the Traditionalist Catholic movement. Some traditionalists blame Jews for the reforms that took place during the Vatican II council meetings, notes the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

The Society of St. Pius X posted a press release in response to Fellay’s “enemies of the Church” comment, denying any anti-Semitic connotations. The release reads that “enemies” refers to “any group or religious sect which opposes the mission of the Catholic Church and her efforts to fulfill it: the salvation of souls.”

The release continued thus:

By referring to the Jews, Bishop Fellay’s comment was aimed at the leaders of Jewish organizations, and not the Jewish people, as is being implied by journalists. Accordingly the Society of St. Pius X denounces the repeated false accusations of anti-Semitism or hate speech made in an attempt to silence its message.

This is not the first time one of the sect’s members has spoken out against Jews.

In 1985, one of the Society’s founders, Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre also identified enemies of the sect as “Jews, Communists and Freemasons,” according to JTA. In addition, traditionalist Bishop Richard Williamson has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers to kill Jews in the Holocaust and that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 died during WWII.

Jesuit Priest Rev. James Martin expressed his disapproval of Fellay’s comment and of the Society in general. “I cannot imagine how any further talks can continue with the group,” Martin told The Huffington Post. “Theologians have been silenced for dissenting in lesser ways from official church teaching.

Meanwhile, via the Washington Post:

The Vatican reaffirmed its commitment to dialogue with Jews on Monday (Jan. 7) after the head of a traditionalist breakaway group called them “enemies of the Church.”

The Vatican chief spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said that it was “meaningless” and “unacceptable” to label Jews as “enemies” of the Catholic Church.

“Both Pope Benedict XVI and his predecessor John Paul II personally engaged in dialogue with Jews,” he said. As a sign of their commitment, Lombardi noted the two popes’ visits to Jerusalem’s Western Wall, Judaism’s most sacred site, and to synagogues in Rome and elsewhere.

The Vatican reassurance came after Bishop Bernard Fellay, head of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), said on Dec. 28 that “the enemies of the Church: the Jews, the Masons, the modernists” were opposing the group’s reconciliation with the church.

Fellay assessed the status of relations between the SSPX and the Vatican in a long speech at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy in New Hamburg, Ontario. The audio of the speech was posted on YouTube on Dec. 30.

At Benedict’s prompting, the Vatican in 2009 opened talks to repair the decades-long breach with the SSPX, focusing on the group’s rejection of the modernizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), which revolutionized the church’s relations with Judaism.

Anti-Semitic strains within the SSPX have been a major headache for the Vatican; shortly after Benedict lifted the 1988 excommunications of four SSPX bishops, it emerged that one of the bishops, Richard Williamson, was a vocal denier of the Holocaust…

On Monday, Lombardi stressed that he was not directly responding to Fellay’s words but merely restating the church’s official position on relations with Jews, which dates to the Second Vatican Council. He declined to comment on the potential impact of Fellay’s words on the dialogue between the Vatican and the SSPX.

And the Jerusalem Post:

Jews are “enemies of the Church,” the head of a radical Catholic sect said in Canada.

Bishop Bernard Fellay, superior of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, made the remark during a Dec. 28 address at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Academy in New Hamburg, Ontario, about 90 minutes’ drive west of Toronto. He was reviewing the situation of the society, which opposes Catholic Church reforms decided by the Second Vatican Council and is not recognized by the Church.

According to an audio recording posted on YouTube two days later, Fellay spoke about the society’s three years of discussions with the Vatican over the society’s future and explained how he interpreted behind-the-scenes communications.

Apparently speaking without a text, Fellay asked, “Who during that time was the most opposed that the Church would recognize the society? The enemies of the Church: the Jews, the Masons, the Modernists.”

According to the Catholic News Service, Fellay added that Jewish leaders’ support of reforming Second Vatican Council “shows that Vatican II is their thing, not the Church’s.”

As of Friday, there was no response from the society’s Swiss headquarters to a Catholic News Service email request for comment, the agency reported.

The Society of St. Pius X, , was founded in 1970 as a reaction against the Vatican’s efforts to modernize. In 2009, Pope Benedict launched talks with the society and lifted excommunications imposed on its four bishops.

One of the bishops was Richard Williamson, who has denied that the Nazis used gas chambers and asserted that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died during  World War II…

Totally unacceptable.

 

I Don’t Recognize Jesus in the Protestant Church Today

The Times of Israel:

Protestant clergymen painted a largely pessimistic view of the church’s relationship with Israel and the Jewish community during a  visit to the Holy Land, suggesting that anti-Semitism is a deep-seated problem based in Christian theology that will be difficult to uproot.

Jewish-Protestant relations are currently undergoing a severe crisis after senior leaders of Mainline Protestant churches in the US last month accused Israel of “widespread” human rights violations and urged Congress to reconsider military aid to Jerusalem.

“I am completely pessimistic in terms of believing that I, we, are going to overturn 2,000 years of erroneous theology that has manifested itself in all kinds of diatribes and anti-Semitic factions,” said the Rev. Paul Wilkinson, the associate minister at Hazel Grove Full Gospel Church, a small pro-Israel congregation in Stockport, England. “I believe we’d be fooling ourselves if we believed that we can overturn and change what I perceive to be a Goliath of theology in the church. The Goliath we face is the Goliath of replacement theology, the Goliath of Christian Palestinianism that taunts Israel, that goads Israel, that accuses Israel, that condemns Israel and those Christians who stand with Israel.”

Replacement theology, also called supercessionism, is the belief that Christendom has taken the Jewish people’s place as the recipients of promises God made in the Old Testament.

‘The problem isn’t political, the problem isn’t sociological, the problem isn’t about lack of education or lack of dialogue. The problem is a spiritual one’

“That Goliath cannot be felled with a stone and a sling as in the days of King David, because the problem isn’t political, the problem isn’t sociological, the problem isn’t about lack of education or lack of dialogue,” Wilkinson said. “The problem is a spiritual one. The problem is that there is an adversary of God, of Israel, of Christians”…

Wilkinson, the reverend from England, on the other hand, was adamant that Mainline Protestant churches are a lost cause when it comes to their views of Jews. Speaking at the consultation on Monday night, he recalled attending an international conference organized by the pro-Palestinian Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center a few years ago, which he said proved to him how deeply ingrained anti-Semitic notions are within some Christian denominations.

“That conference was my first exposure to the absolute hatred toward Israel that exists in the heart — in the heart — of the Protestant Church.”

During the conference, Wilkinson witnessed how organizers and participants denounced Israel as an apartheid state guilty of ethnically cleansing the Palestinian people, and were told that there was never a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. One speaker called the God of the Christian Zionists “the great ethnic cleanser, the genocidist,” and described the biblical Joshua as the “patron saint of ethnic cleansing,” Wilkinson said. Not one Protestant clergymen protested, he added.

In 2010, a Scottish Baptist minister gave a devotional address to members of the Scottish parliament, Wilkinson continued. “He spoke about the hope of Christmas being found in the birth of another Palestinian child, born a refugee, living under military occupation,” he recalled.

“I don’t recognize Jesus in the Protestant church today,” added Wilkinson, who wrote his dissertation about Christian Zionism and studied for some time at the International School of Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. “What we’re finding now is a propaganda campaign being waged by the Palestinian Authority, the Islamic world and by the Protestant church, including the Evangelical church.”

Speaking about Islam, Wilkinson struck a particularly bitter note: “I understand the desire to engage in interfaith dialogue with the Islamic community. Of course there will be Muslims who are friends of Israel, friends of the Jewish people. But a leopard cannot change its spots,” he said. “The world is afraid to speak out and denounce what is so blatantly obvious — that this is a religion of hate, a religion of death, a religion of subjection and oppression. And there is no hope for that religion, even though there is hope for many Muslims.”

US-born Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, of Efrat, struck a more upbeat and conciliatory tone.

“What unites us is far more important than what divides us, especially against fundamentalist Islam whose god is a god of power, not love, and who preaches jihad and war. Islam does not have to be like that, and in the far past it was not,” he said at the consultation.“Wahhabi Islam that has taken over the Middle East is not monotheism but mono-Satanism,” added Riskin, who founded the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding and Cooperation. “We have to have a united voice that talks about a God of love; then perhaps, with Jewish and Christians united in this mission, we can teach it to the world and give strength to the moderate Muslims to join us.”

Jewish-Protestant relations have been troubled for decades, but the crisis worsened drastically last month after leaders of major Protestant groups sent a joint letter to Congress, calling on US lawmakers to reconsider military aid to Israel.

The letter speaks of “widespread Israeli human rights violations committed against Palestinians, including killing of civilians, home demolitions and forced displacement, and restrictions on Palestinian movement, among others.” The 15 signatories further stated that they saw “a troubling and consistent pattern of disregard by the government of Israel for U.S. policies that support a just and lasting peace.”

While the letter asserts that the Israeli government has “a right and a duty to protect both the state and its citizens,” the signatories nonetheless urge Congress “to undertake careful scrutiny to ensure that [US military] aid is not supporting actions by the government of Israel that undermine prospects for peace.”

“As Christian leaders in the United States,” the letter states, “it is our moral responsibility to question the continuation of unconditional U.S. financial assistance to the government of Israel,” which “will only serve to sustain the status quo and Israel’s military occupation of the Palestinian territories.”

Immediately after the letter’s publication, seven major Jewish organizations withdrew their participation from an interfaith meeting scheduled for later that month.

The so-called Christian-Jewish Roundtable was planed to take place on October 22-23, but the American Jewish Committee, B’nai B’rith International, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Anti-Defamation League and other groups canceled their participation in protest over the controversial missive.

“In addition to being completely baseless, this letter demonstrates that all of our work, all of our dialogue, all of our goodwill and all of our Protestant partners’ pledges of commitment to coexistence amount to very little if such a letter can be sent to Congress without even the courtesy of a heads-up,” stated Rabbi Steven Wernick, the head of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism.

“There have always been ups and downs in the relations between Mainline Protestants and American Jews, but they have now hit a 45-year low,” Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, wrote in an op-ed two weeks ago. “And this time, they may not recover.”

However, Christians United for Israel, a group that calls itself “one of the leading Christian grassroots movements in the world,” claimed the letter did not speak for mainstream Christianity, at least in the US.

“The vast majority of American Christians realize that when Israel confronts Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, it is confronting shared enemies on our behalf,” the group’s director, David Brog, said. “And the vast majority of American Christians know that while Israel — like the US — is not perfect, both of our nations are committed to fighting terrorism while adhering to the highest moral standards.”

 

Jewish Organisations Complain About Anglican Vicar

Formal complaint documents Rev. Stephen Sizer’s offensive anti-Semitic statements and “deep hostility to Zionism.”

The Jerusalem Post:

London – Britain’s Jewish community representative organization has taken the  unprecedented step of lodging a formal complaint to the Church of England, the  country’s officially established Christian church, accusing one of its clergyman  of anti-Semitism.

The Board of Deputies of British Jews has accused Rev.  Stephen Sizer, the vicar of Virginia Water Church in Surrey and an ardent  anti-Israel campaigner, of making anti-Semitic statements and republishing  anti-Semitic material.

The action comes at a time when the relationship  between the Jewish community and the Church of England has taken a downward  turn, following its decision in July to strengthen ties with an anti-Israel  group.

According to the board’s vice-president, Jonathan Arkush, Sizer  has made statements that the board and most of the Jewish community find utterly  offensive, to the point of crossing the line into anti- Semitism.

The  representative organization lodged the complaint under the Church of England’s  disciplinary process, an act of parliament known as the Clergy Discipline  Measure 2003.

Submitting the complaint on behalf of the board, Arkush  said, “The evidence disclosed indicates that Rev. Sizer spends time trawling  dark and extreme corners of the Internet.”

“Rev. Sizer republishes items  to support the target of his polemical writing, while at the same time  introducing his readers to the racist and anti-Semitic websites from where he  draws his material,” he added.

The complaint cites numerous examples over  an 11-month period showing a clear and consistent pattern of activity that “can  no longer go unchallenged.”

In October 2011, the Church of England  minister posted a link to his Facebook page from an anti-Semitic website called “The Ugly Truth: Zionism, Jewish extremism and a few other nasty items making  our world uninhabitable today.”

Sizer removed the link three months later  only after numerous complaints.

Bishop of Manchester Rt. Rev. Nigel  McCulloch, who is also the chairman of the Council of Christians and Jews, said  at the time that “the content and delay in removing the link from Mr. Sizer’s  Facebook page was disgraceful and unbecoming for a clergyman of the Church of  England to promote.”

In March, Sizer linked a picture of US bases  surrounding Iran from the “Veterans Today” website, which publishes articles  defending Hitler, and promotes Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and the anti- Semitic musician Gilad Atzmon.

“Its home page quickly discloses articles  displaying hatred of Jews and Israel. Rev.

Sizer could not have missed  these when searching the site for material to post on his blog,” the board  maintained.

In May, four months after removing the controversial link,  Sizer acknowledged that the “Ugly Truth” contained offensive material and said  that he had “no wish” to be associated with it.

“I have on many occasions  condemned all forms of anti-Semitism and will continue so to do because it is  abhorrent to me,” Sizer maintained.

However, only a month later, he again  linked his blog to another anti-Semitic website. The homepage “Window into  Palestine” displays a Nazi flag with a swastika superimposed on a Star of David  and carries a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, describing it as an “important tome.”

The charge sheet questions the sincerity of Sizer’s  condemnation of anti-Semitism.

“Any visitor to ‘Window into Palestine’ would see immediately that it is racist and anti-Semitic. Rev. Sizer posted a  link to this website exactly one month after telling the Council of Christians  and Jews that he condemned all forms of anti-Semitism.

Arkush said that  Sizer displays an obsession with Israel and opposes its identity as a Jewish  state.

“Rev. Sizer displays a deep hostility to Zionism, which he writes  about as if it was a term of abuse. It is not difficult to come across his  views, as he is an enthusiastic self-publicist who proclaims his preoccupation  with Israel on his website, blog and Facebook and Flickr pages.”

He also  said that Sizer has few qualms about the company he keeps.

“He has shared  a platform with and quoted from Holocaust-deniers; goes on trips to Iran as the  guest of the NEDA Institute, which contributes to global efforts to deny the  Holocaust and gave an interview with Quds News Agency, a Holocaust- denying  website. Sizer is also a speaker at the provocatively named Christ at the  Checkpoint conference, which features a theology called supersessionism which  has anti-Semitic overtones”…

The complaint will now be  considered by Bishop Christopher Hill, the bishop of Guildford, which is the  jurisdictional area under which Sizer’s church falls.

 

Rabbi in Germany Prosecuted for Performing Circumcisions

I saw this over at First Thoughts:

The entire Catholic community—in Germany and throughout the world—must stand with Rabbi Goldberg and speak out against his prosecution for performing circumcisions of male infants in compliance with their parents’ wishes and Jewish law.  The threats to religious liberties and to religious people whose beliefs and practices are regarded as intolerable by those who preach the supreme importance of tolerance know no borders.

 

Church of England Targets Israel

Virtue Online:

Earlier this month the Church of England’s General Synod endorsed the World Council of Churches’ “Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI).” Essentially this program enlists anti-Israel church activists from the West to “accompany” Palestinian activists so as to “experience life under occupation.” The church ignored pleas from British Jews, including Britain’s chief rabbi.

Why would anyone want to endorse a program of the marginalized and far-left Swiss-based World Council of Churches (WCC), still best and infamously known for largely siding with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War’s final decades? During the 1970s and 1980s, the WCC strenuously denounced right-wing dictatorships while ignoring the crimes of leftist tyrannies, often even embracing them, including the tormentors of churches. Even the Soviet Union itself was largely immune to criticism from the WCC, which merrily cooperated with Soviet front groups like the Helsinki-based Christian Peace Conference.

Nearly all the world’s rightist dictatorships are long since gone, so for years the WCC has imagined that Israel is the moral equivalent of Apartheid South Africa circa 1970. Israel is virtually the only nation meriting the WCC’s extensive human rights critique, which includes the ongoing EAPPI that the Church of England has now endorsed. Why the specific endorsement was necessary must be asked, since the church, by virtue of its membership and fees, already amply supports the WCC. So evidently the endorsement was for amplification of its moral solidarity with the WCC and Palestinian liberation.

Apparently the anti-Israel vote was not even that controversial within the church’s General Synod. The total vote was 201 votes to 54, with 93 abstentions. Clergy voted 4 to 1 in favor, while the laity voted 3 to 1. Twenty-one bishops supported it while just 3 voted against. The many abstentions maybe indicate many Anglicans were just too befuddled or morally confused to decide or go on record.

Even Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, now cruising towards early retirement, could not help but pile on verbally though himself characteristically abstaining in the vote after supporting an effort to dilute the statement. He shared his “respect and gratitude for the immense courage and dedication of the volunteers” in the WCC anti-Israel program. And he sardonically observed: “There are some people, in their uncritical assumption that the government of Israel can do no wrong, who are clearly going to be very irritated by information being disseminated of the kind that EAPPI does.”

Remarkably, Archbishop Williams even seemed to discern moral equivalence between the Holocaust and the Palestinians’ situation. “Half an hour at Yad Vashem will persuade you, if you need persuading, why the state of Israel needs to exist securely,” he noted of Israel’s memorial to Holocaust victims. “Half an hour at a check-point will persuade you, if you need persuading, that there are forms of security that are indefensible and unsustainable.”

The Israeli Embassy in Britain responded to the Church of England motion by citing the obvious: “Christians face rising persecution across the region and yet, by supporting this group, the Church of England has chosen to amplify one-sided voices and to single out Israel-the only country [in the Middle East and North Africa] where Christian rights are enshrined and the Christian population is growing.”

The WCC does not have any “accompaniment” programs for solidarity with Christians in Egypt, Syria or Iraq, whose plight does not typically distress the WCC. Archbishop Williams himself has at least occasionally mentioned persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Volunteers in the anti-Israel “accompaniment” program escort aggrieved Palestinians through Israeli checkpoints, help monitor purported Israeli human rights abuses, and then return to the West to speak and agitate as pro-Palestinian activists operating under the cover of churches. They are similar to what many Western church leftist groups like the WCC did to help the Sandinista dictatorship in Nicaragua during the 1980s.

A prominent Anglican clergy serving in Baghdad, Iraq preemptively opposed his church’s support for the WCC program. “It neglects the wars against Israel’s very right to exist,” Canon Andrew White told the Jerusalem Post. “It overlooks the persecution of Jews in the Middle East that preceded the establishment of the modern State of Israel.” He also cited the silence about Christians in the region persecuted by Islamists, which he of course has witnessed firsthand.

The British Jewish community’s Board of Deputies is weighing whether to sever interfaith ties with the Church of England. And they complained about the synod’s rhetoric: “To hear the debate at the Synod littered with references to ‘powerful lobbies,’ the money expended by the Jewish community, ‘Jewish sounding names’ and the actions of the community ‘bringing shame on the memory of victims of the Holocaust,’ is deeply offensive and raises serious questions about the motivation of those behind this motion.”

Indeed. The Church of England has previously endorsed anti-Israel divestment and then retracted after enormous controversy. Hopefully it will similarly backtrack after its latest misstep. But why the irrational preoccupation with the real and imagined sins of one small nation while silent about so much else globally? Spiritually discerning minds would like to know.

We’ve mentioned the above on this blog before.

 

Church of England Supports an Anti-Israel Group

The Trumpet website reports today (July 13, 2012) that the governing body of the Church of England voted on July 9 to support a pro-Palestinian group dedicated to the demonization of of Israel.

The General Assembly passed a motion to endorse the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel (EAPPI) — a group that blames Israel for the failure of the peace process and calls for a boycott of Israel, as well as the hacking of government websites and a sit-in at Israel’s embassies.

The Church of England motion was endorsed by 201 votes to 54, with 93 abstentions.

The Israeli Embassy in England criticized the motion, saying, “By supporting this group, the Church of England has chosen to amplify one-sided voices and to single out Israel — the only country (in the Middle East) where Christian rights are enshrined and the Christian population is growing.”

Source

The Church of England has lost it, completely! Christians have a Biblical obligation to stand by Israel and the Jewish people (Gen 12:3), and pray for the peace of Jerusalem (Ps 122:6). But then the C of E has little regard for that which is Biblical, anymore.

 

 

Rev’d Stephen Sizer and his ‘Disgraceful’ Anti-Semitism

Writes Archbishop Cranmer:

From Anglican Friends of Israel:

Last weekend I debated a Christian critic of Israel. I challenged his assertion that the State of Israel ‘invites’ anti-semitism by its actions. Such thinking is very dangerous, I replied. It could provide an excuse for race hatred. He did not respond.

Our discussion sprang from a statement issued on 13 March 2012 by the much-respected Council for Christians and Jews in which they took one of Israel’s fiercest Anglican critics, Rev Stephen Sizer, to task publicly. CCJ’s Chairman, the Bishop of Manchester, called Sizer’s retaining of a link on his Facebook page to an article on an anti-semitic website for over two months, ‘disgraceful’ and conduct ‘unbecoming for a clergyman’.

The Middle East conflict arouses strong feelings on both sides: but whatever led a clergyman to overlook the hateful nature of ‘The Ugly Truth’ website having allegedly been warned twice about it? Is this an isolated incident, or just the tip of a larger iceberg?

Stephen Sizer is only one of a number of Evangelical Christians whose opposition to Israel and Zionism has arguably strayed beyond the limits of legitimate debate. Many follow the ‘Palestinian narrative’ of the ‘Naqba’ (catastrophe) of Israel’s foundation in 1948, and the Palestinian misery occasioned by Israeli oppression and injustice.

As a God of love and justice – not to mention the story of David and Goliath – are part of the Christian theological furniture, it isn’t surprising that this simple paradigm of weak vs strong and good vs evil strikes a chord with Christians. But it provides an inaccurate and perilous framework for understanding a complex conflict. It was developed by veteran terrorist Yassir Arafat – which ought to alert anyone not to take it at face value.

Christian anti-Zionists rely on two theological strands to bolster the Palestinian narrative, the first being Liberation Theology. They insist that standing against Israeli injustice and oppression becomes a Christian duty in response to The Lord’s Prayer “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.

The trouble is, the Middle East today is not the Latin American of the 1960’s. Israel is not a dictatorship but a vibrant democracy and contrary to the official narrative, Palestinians are not helpless peasants stripped of all power over their lives. Of course Israel gets things wrong; but to present her actions – actually her existence – as the sole cause of Palestinian misery is absurd.

Christian anti-Zionists all but ignore the appalling security dilemmas Israel faces. Israel’s efforts to prevent or defend itself from terrorism are labelled ‘humiliation’ of Palestinians or a ‘disproportionate response’. When Palestinian children are killed or injured in clashes, Israel alone is blamed. Christian anti-Zionists rarely criticize Palestinian leaders for feeding their children a daily diet of hatred in schools and the media; nor do they hold them responsible for aiming rockets at Israeli children from behind their own human shields, or parading their dead and injured children for cameras in order to whip up hatred of the Jewish State.

The second strand in anti-Zionist thinking within the Church is Replacement Theology…

And so we come to Toulouse. Muhammed Merar had already killed 3 soldiers when he sought out Jewish children at their school, and murdered three of them. He explained to a horrified world that he was taking revenge on behalf of Palestinian children. Hateful ideas became flesh as Merar translated a distorted narrative into action…

Read the whole post here.

Christian anti-Zionists sadly plague the blogosphere too, with their pure hatred. Sometimes veiled, hatred and hurtful it remains. And how unbecoming those who claim to be following an itinerant first century Jewish Rabbi.

 

Rabbi Dead in Attack at Jewish School in France

UPDATE:  French police arrest jihadist in pre-dawn raid here.

Three young children and a rabbi were shot dead as parents dropped their children off at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France, on Monday morning. The gunman managed to flee the scene on his scooter before police arrived.

Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, was on his way to drop off his kids at the Gan Rachi kindergarten, adjacent to the Ozar Hatorah school where he teaches, when he was gunned down along with his two sons Gavriel and Aryeh, 6 and 3 years old. Miriam Monstango, 8, the daughter of the head of Otzer Hatorah, was shot as well and died of her wounds shortly after.

French authorities have reason to believe that the gunman who attacked the Jewish school on Monday is the same gunman who shot and killed French uniformed paratroopers on Thursday, as well as another paratrooper four days earlier. Each of these attacks was carried out by a gunman traveling on a motorbike, and forensic analysis has determined that the same weapon has been used in all the shootings.

Source

 

Christians who Hate Jews

And I know of a few… Spewing out their oft veiled hatred over the blogs, yet ever revealing the loathing that is in their hearts.

Ynet News:

A few weeks ago a highly influential Church of England vicar, Stephen Sizer, promoted a website that supports Holocaust denial and warns of a Zionist conspiracy controlling the world. Reverend Sizer just received the support of the Bishop of Guildford Sizer, Reverend Christopher Hill, a former chaplain to the Queen, following calls for him to be suspended for linking to the site.

Sizer used his Facebook page to link to the piece on American website The Ugly Truth, which claims to highlight “Zionism, Jewish extremism and a few other nasty items making our world uninhabitable today.” The site also runs cartoons of Holocaust deniers and supports Iran president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

The Bishop of Willesden was suspended in 2010 after using his Facebook page to make inappropriate gossip remarks about the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. But in the face of such blatant anti-Jewish hatred, the Church of England took Sizer’s side.

The case is severe because Anglicanism is not just another Protestant denomination; rather, it’s the official UK Church headed by the Queen. Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is the spiritual head of 77 million Christians worldwide.

The hostility to Israel within the Church is rooted in a dislike for Jews. According to the Jewish Chronicle, “Rav Sizer has a long track record of arguably anti-Semitic behavior.” He has described the IDF as “Herod’s soldiers operating in Bethlehem today” (King Herod ordered his troops to kill all the Jewish babies in and around Bethlehem.)

Sizer promoted boycotts of companies on the basis that they “channel their profits to the Zionist agenda.” Sizer’s book, “Christian Zionism: Road-map to Armageddon?”, which has been endorsed by leading British and American bishops, rejects the eternalness of God’s promises to the Jewish people and revives the obscurantist anti-Jewish theology known as “supersessionism.”

‘Israel an illegal regime’

Sizer’s case is not isolated. In 2006 the UK Church reviewed its investments in companies with ties to Israel’s presence in the territories. Bishop Riah El-Assal, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem, is a well-known apologist for Palestinian terrorism. Anglican cleric Naim Ateek is the founder of the notoriously anti-Israel, Jerusalem-based Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Center, which promotes a theology severing any link between God and the Jews.

Sizer is one of the major organizers of the “Christ at the Checkpoint 2012 Conference,” which the Bible College of Bethlehem will host in March. The impressive range of theologians and pastors from churches located in the United States make the gravity of the upcoming conference and Sizer’s important position much clearer. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the US National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, “spiritual adviser” to Bill Clinton Tony Campolo, and President of the World Evangelical Alliance and Asia Evangelical Alliance, Sang-Bok David Kim, will all attend the event.

The “Bethlehem Call” manifesto, which serves as platform for the Bethlehem 2012 Conference, has just been published on the websites of the World Council of Churches, the Global Ministries of the United Church of Christ and the Disciples of Christ. It defines Israel as an “illegal regime” and a “crime against humanity” and promotes “international boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns” against Israel.

In the words of UK columnist Melanie Phillips, these are “Christians who hate the Jews.”

Many UK clerics are now saying openly that the Jewish State should never have been founded at all. In 1190, British Christians slaughtered York’s Jews after calling them “serpens antiquus qui vocatur Diabolus et Satans.” Now their Intifada from Heaven is breathing new life into a kind of demonology that bans Israel from the family of nations.

HT

I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee’

- Gen 12:3