WHERE CREDIT IS DUE
You have to grant Katharine Jefferts Schori this much. Every now and then, the Presiding Bishop can throw a positively filthy breaking ball. Speaking in Los Angeles a while back, Mrs. Schori had this to say about the Middle East:
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori urged Episcopalians to “invest in legitimate development in Palestine’s West Bank and in Gaza” rather than focusing on divestment or boycotts of Israel, during a March 25 “Middle East Peacemakers” luncheon in Los Angeles.
“The Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott,” the presiding bishop told more than 200 people gathered at the California Club in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s not going to be helpful to endorse divestment or boycotts of Israel. It will only end in punishing Palestinians economically.”
She also called for “a two-state solution with a dignified home for Palestinians and for Israelis” and for “deeper engagement, people of different traditions eating together, listening to each other’s stories,” she said, adding that the interreligious, multi-ethnic gathering hosted by Bishop J. Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles was an example of what is possible.
Double J agreed with her.
Bruno concurred. “Bishop Katharine and I have the same opinion about peace in Jerusalem and what kind of settlement should be taking place there, and we checked it out with Bishop Suheil Dawani and he agrees with us,” he said.
For many on the Episcopal left, it was Adam Wainwright v. Carlos Beltran in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series and they were standing at the plate with a bat in their hands, watching Wainwright’s last pitch go by and listening to the umpire punch them out. Here are a few comments from the article.
“The Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott.” Reminds me of the Church Pension Fund during the anti-apartheid struggle. There is certainly a process involved in considering divestment, not least of which is what Palestinians are saying, and what voices to listen to when opinions differ. But eventually the Episcopal Church did support divestment in South Africa (in a way), and in any case, the argument that divestment “will only end in punishing Palestinians economically” is a tired and sad excuse not to do so. We might also ask ourselves how our engagement with the State of Israel has been working for us in supporting justice and dignity for Palestinians over the past 60+ years.
Urging our legislators and government to encourage dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian leaders? Urging Israel to freeze the settlement activity? Where have we been for the last 10 years? These ideas will only support and encourage continued illegal occupation and colonization of Jerusalem and the West Bank and collective punishment of Gaza residents. Are we not complicit to these crimes?
As two of the 200 or so in attendance we would say that the Presiding Bishop’s comments were met with something less than enthusiasm. In fact, after the initial astonished gasps, the feeling of energy being sucked from the room was palpable.
And we question her contention that BDS will harm the Palestinians. Palestinians have little opportunity for international trade and ever fewer opportunities to work in Israel. So economic pressure will be felt in the illegal settlements and Israel, where it is intended to move people toward peaceful change. It is hard to imagine BDS having a more harmful effect on the Palestinians than the current Israeli practices of closed borders, internal checkpoints, and land confiscation do.
As others have noted, the Presiding Bishop’s remarks contain both historical inaccuracies and calls for the church to continue efforts that have failed repeatedly. However, it is bewildering that she claims that BDS will “only harm Palestinians,” when in fact, many Palestinians, including signers of the Kairos Document, representing every single Christian denomination in the Holy Land, have called for BDS. How condescending to assert that we American Episcopalians know better than Palestinians what is good for them.
Sabeel is angry. Big time.
Your words at the March 25th Los Angeles luncheon in which you emphatically said, invest in Palestine don’t divest from Israel reached us on Monday of Holy Week. Those words shocked and hurt us. They felt like nails hammered into our bodies and the truth of our reality, as though we Palestinians are living a lie — only imagining things, and if we only eat, talk, and share our stories, everything will be alright. For twenty years now, that is exactly what we have been doing – eating, drinking, telling each other our stories, not to mention hugging and embracing, meanwhile Israel was feasting on our land. Your words sounded as someone who never came and never saw. As we go through holy week, we feel the ongoing agony, pain, and oppression of our people — our homes demolished, our land confiscated, our olive trees uprooted, our human and political rights denied and our dignity trampled. After over 40 years of misery we only hear “the Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott.”
While Christian Century contributor James Wall, a guy who probably considers The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be non-fiction(as David Fischler regularly documented here), is positively apoplectic.
An appalling shallowness has descended over Mainline Protestantism.
Mainline Protestants are shallow? Shut. Up.
Episcopalians, United Methodists and Presbyterians are actually debating how they should deal with the Israeli Occupation.
Wall thinks they should stop being so superficial and start thinking about the Middle East as deeply and as profoundly as he has.
Martin Luther King,
Your one-man leftist metaphor outlet mall.
sitting in that Birmingham city jail, would most certainly inform these prelates that there is no debating evil. A brutal military occupation is not open to debate.
Particularly when you have absolutely no knowledge of history and a willful, deliberate and intentional blindness regarding the genocidal people against whom Israel has struggled for its life for well over sixty years.
It is a disturbing spectacle. The collective ignorance displayed by many of the men and women—though, thank God, not all—who govern these denominations, boggles the mind.
Why is that? Jim would explain his confusion except for the fact that he has a previous appointment to be a snotty, arrogant little douchenozzle.
The issue, my dear Christian friends, is justice, pure and simple. And yet, there they are, these robed religiosos, dripping with interfaith piety, proclaiming that the simple act of divestment of church funds is too harsh a tactic to use against Israel’s settlement obsessed, right-wing government.
Then Wall, who’s a few gauleiters short of full Hitler, lays into Mrs. Schori.
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wants investment in Palestine, not divestment from Israel’s occupation. Who proposed that approach?
Mrs. Schori? I thought that was what she said.
Sounds very much like the warden of the world’s largest outdoor prison inviting church members to come inside the prison and do their good works.
You’re on a roll, you anti-Semitic piece of crap. Lord knows that dead Jews don’t seem to trouble you much if they trouble you at all.
One of these corporations, Caterpillar, produces heavy equipment that Israel uses to build its apartheid wall, a wall that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with stealing even more Palestinian land.
At this point Wall goes completely bat crap. According to the voices in Jimmy’s head, Katharine Jefferts Schori is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the…DUM, DUM, DUM, DUMMMMMMMMMM…Israeli lobby.
And yet, here is an Episcopal bishop, standing before 200 of her fellow Episcopalians actually calling for Palestinians and Israelis to “eat together and listen to one another’s stories”.
This is blatant Israeli propaganda. These words were not uttered in the spirit of Amos; they sound more like an American politician scrambling for Israel Lobby money than they do of a Christian leader who must at some point in her career reflected upon, and perhaps even preached on, the call from Amos 5:4 to “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream!” (NIV).
Hang on. One of Jim’s personalities just changed Jim’s mind.
The saddest thing about this failure of a church leader
DAMN, Jimmy. Usually you have to come here to read stuff like that.
to grasp the reality of injustice
Translation: that Israel hasn’t been wiped off the map.
is that she offers palliative words that sound more like a Southern bishop of the 1950s begging the segregated and segregator to live together peacefully.
So Mrs. Schori’s a female Bull Connor. Wait, what? The Presiding Bishop actually is an AIPAC sock puppet?
But, based on Bishop Schori’s public display of hasbara (propaganda) in Los Angeles, the power of the Israel Lobby trumps the truth.
Katharine Jefferts Schori is a tool of the “Israeli lobby.” Katharine Jefferts Schori. Whatever, freakshow.
Naughton’s joint linked to Wall’s shrieking hysteria without any comment and last time I looked, nobody there took issue with Wall’s tone while a few commenters agreed with the general criticisms of the Presiding Bishop.
You can judge a person by the people that person is willing to piss off so you have to give the Presiding Bishop props for getting the right people angry at her. The $64,000 question is whether her views will mean anything at GenCon this summer.
Stands are easy when they’re theoretical. What if someone proposes some kind of divestment measure and it passes the Deputies? Will Mrs. Schori go on record and publicly urge the Bishops to vote it down?
After all, the Presiding Bishop publicly opposed revisiting Resolution B033 in 2009. But when she was ignored, she adjusted accordingly and spun GenCon’s action as if nothing had happened. Will she treat this issue in the same way? Time will tell.
Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori urged Episcopalians to “invest in legitimate development in Palestine’s West Bank and in Gaza” rather than focusing on divestment or boycotts of Israel, during a March 25 “Middle East Peacemakers” luncheon in Los Angeles.
“The Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott,” the presiding bishop told more than 200 people gathered at the California Club in downtown Los Angeles. “It’s not going to be helpful to endorse divestment or boycotts of Israel. It will only end in punishing Palestinians economically.”
She also called for “a two-state solution with a dignified home for Palestinians and for Israelis” and for “deeper engagement, people of different traditions eating together, listening to each other’s stories,” she said, adding that the interreligious, multi-ethnic gathering hosted by Bishop J. Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles was an example of what is possible.
Double J agreed with her.
Bruno concurred. “Bishop Katharine and I have the same opinion about peace in Jerusalem and what kind of settlement should be taking place there, and we checked it out with Bishop Suheil Dawani and he agrees with us,” he said.
For many on the Episcopal left, it was Adam Wainwright v. Carlos Beltran in the bottom of the ninth of Game 7 of the 2006 National League Championship Series and they were standing at the plate with a bat in their hands, watching Wainwright’s last pitch go by and listening to the umpire punch them out. Here are a few comments from the article.
“The Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott.” Reminds me of the Church Pension Fund during the anti-apartheid struggle. There is certainly a process involved in considering divestment, not least of which is what Palestinians are saying, and what voices to listen to when opinions differ. But eventually the Episcopal Church did support divestment in South Africa (in a way), and in any case, the argument that divestment “will only end in punishing Palestinians economically” is a tired and sad excuse not to do so. We might also ask ourselves how our engagement with the State of Israel has been working for us in supporting justice and dignity for Palestinians over the past 60+ years.
Urging our legislators and government to encourage dialogue between Israeli and Palestinian leaders? Urging Israel to freeze the settlement activity? Where have we been for the last 10 years? These ideas will only support and encourage continued illegal occupation and colonization of Jerusalem and the West Bank and collective punishment of Gaza residents. Are we not complicit to these crimes?
As two of the 200 or so in attendance we would say that the Presiding Bishop’s comments were met with something less than enthusiasm. In fact, after the initial astonished gasps, the feeling of energy being sucked from the room was palpable.
And we question her contention that BDS will harm the Palestinians. Palestinians have little opportunity for international trade and ever fewer opportunities to work in Israel. So economic pressure will be felt in the illegal settlements and Israel, where it is intended to move people toward peaceful change. It is hard to imagine BDS having a more harmful effect on the Palestinians than the current Israeli practices of closed borders, internal checkpoints, and land confiscation do.
As others have noted, the Presiding Bishop’s remarks contain both historical inaccuracies and calls for the church to continue efforts that have failed repeatedly. However, it is bewildering that she claims that BDS will “only harm Palestinians,” when in fact, many Palestinians, including signers of the Kairos Document, representing every single Christian denomination in the Holy Land, have called for BDS. How condescending to assert that we American Episcopalians know better than Palestinians what is good for them.
Sabeel is angry. Big time.
Your words at the March 25th Los Angeles luncheon in which you emphatically said, invest in Palestine don’t divest from Israel reached us on Monday of Holy Week. Those words shocked and hurt us. They felt like nails hammered into our bodies and the truth of our reality, as though we Palestinians are living a lie — only imagining things, and if we only eat, talk, and share our stories, everything will be alright. For twenty years now, that is exactly what we have been doing – eating, drinking, telling each other our stories, not to mention hugging and embracing, meanwhile Israel was feasting on our land. Your words sounded as someone who never came and never saw. As we go through holy week, we feel the ongoing agony, pain, and oppression of our people — our homes demolished, our land confiscated, our olive trees uprooted, our human and political rights denied and our dignity trampled. After over 40 years of misery we only hear “the Episcopal Church does not endorse divestment or boycott.”
While Christian Century contributor James Wall, a guy who probably considers The Protocols of the Elders of Zion to be non-fiction(as David Fischler regularly documented here), is positively apoplectic.
An appalling shallowness has descended over Mainline Protestantism.
Mainline Protestants are shallow? Shut. Up.
Episcopalians, United Methodists and Presbyterians are actually debating how they should deal with the Israeli Occupation.
Wall thinks they should stop being so superficial and start thinking about the Middle East as deeply and as profoundly as he has.
Martin Luther King,
Your one-man leftist metaphor outlet mall.
sitting in that Birmingham city jail, would most certainly inform these prelates that there is no debating evil. A brutal military occupation is not open to debate.
Particularly when you have absolutely no knowledge of history and a willful, deliberate and intentional blindness regarding the genocidal people against whom Israel has struggled for its life for well over sixty years.
It is a disturbing spectacle. The collective ignorance displayed by many of the men and women—though, thank God, not all—who govern these denominations, boggles the mind.
Why is that? Jim would explain his confusion except for the fact that he has a previous appointment to be a snotty, arrogant little douchenozzle.
The issue, my dear Christian friends, is justice, pure and simple. And yet, there they are, these robed religiosos, dripping with interfaith piety, proclaiming that the simple act of divestment of church funds is too harsh a tactic to use against Israel’s settlement obsessed, right-wing government.
Then Wall, who’s a few gauleiters short of full Hitler, lays into Mrs. Schori.
Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori wants investment in Palestine, not divestment from Israel’s occupation. Who proposed that approach?
Mrs. Schori? I thought that was what she said.
Sounds very much like the warden of the world’s largest outdoor prison inviting church members to come inside the prison and do their good works.
You’re on a roll, you anti-Semitic piece of crap. Lord knows that dead Jews don’t seem to trouble you much if they trouble you at all.
One of these corporations, Caterpillar, produces heavy equipment that Israel uses to build its apartheid wall, a wall that has nothing to do with security and everything to do with stealing even more Palestinian land.
At this point Wall goes completely bat crap. According to the voices in Jimmy’s head, Katharine Jefferts Schori is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the…DUM, DUM, DUM, DUMMMMMMMMMM…Israeli lobby.
And yet, here is an Episcopal bishop, standing before 200 of her fellow Episcopalians actually calling for Palestinians and Israelis to “eat together and listen to one another’s stories”.
This is blatant Israeli propaganda. These words were not uttered in the spirit of Amos; they sound more like an American politician scrambling for Israel Lobby money than they do of a Christian leader who must at some point in her career reflected upon, and perhaps even preached on, the call from Amos 5:4 to “let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never failing stream!” (NIV).
Hang on. One of Jim’s personalities just changed Jim’s mind.
The saddest thing about this failure of a church leader
DAMN, Jimmy. Usually you have to come here to read stuff like that.
to grasp the reality of injustice
Translation: that Israel hasn’t been wiped off the map.
is that she offers palliative words that sound more like a Southern bishop of the 1950s begging the segregated and segregator to live together peacefully.
So Mrs. Schori’s a female Bull Connor. Wait, what? The Presiding Bishop actually is an AIPAC sock puppet?
But, based on Bishop Schori’s public display of hasbara (propaganda) in Los Angeles, the power of the Israel Lobby trumps the truth.
Katharine Jefferts Schori is a tool of the “Israeli lobby.” Katharine Jefferts Schori. Whatever, freakshow.
Naughton’s joint linked to Wall’s shrieking hysteria without any comment and last time I looked, nobody there took issue with Wall’s tone while a few commenters agreed with the general criticisms of the Presiding Bishop.
You can judge a person by the people that person is willing to piss off so you have to give the Presiding Bishop props for getting the right people angry at her. The $64,000 question is whether her views will mean anything at GenCon this summer.
Stands are easy when they’re theoretical. What if someone proposes some kind of divestment measure and it passes the Deputies? Will Mrs. Schori go on record and publicly urge the Bishops to vote it down?
After all, the Presiding Bishop publicly opposed revisiting Resolution B033 in 2009. But when she was ignored, she adjusted accordingly and spun GenCon’s action as if nothing had happened. Will she treat this issue in the same way? Time will tell.
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