The influential Harry's Place carries an interesting article headed
Terry Gallogly’s Dishonesty Further Damages Anti-Israel Methodist Cause
It concludes:
Still, the likes of Stephen Leah and Nichola Jones are considered experts on Israel, whereas the likes of Methodist Preacher and others are shunned as being “unbalanced” by the Methodist hierarchy.
The question is now whether Methodist leaders will publicly apologise for the current state of affairs and web of lies surrounding those responsible for these anti-Israel measures, or whether they will continue on their colleagues’ quest to take Christianity back to the Dark Ages.
Meanwhile I see that the semi-official Methodist blog Connexions is applying comment moderation, apparently taking exception to members of the Jewish community who have been arguing their case (another example of discrimination?)
As I said earlier today, we Methodists really do have a problem having dialogue with Jews.
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Here is another call for a Methodist to apologise.
David - please apologise for your recent comments which, in my opinion, bring our Church into disrepute.
I am ashamed that someone who holds office in our Church can be so ungracious and malicious.
As a local preacher what you say carries weight. To write so slanderously and hurtfully about the Church and its members is appalling.
There are no 'Semi-Official' blogs as well you know.
There is no 'Methodist Hierarachy'- all appointments are made by Council and Conference - as well you know.
The extent to which your threats and posturing have damaged Jewish Methodist relations is incalculable.
Please apologise.
As many an Old Testament prophet pointed out - it is easier to blame the messenger than listen to the message.
"Slander" is the statement of something that is untrue.
Earlier this week a Jewish person drew my attention to your own blog dated 08/10/2010, which of course I had already seen:
http://the-kneeler.blogspot.com/2010/10/justice-for-israelpalestine.html
"They were pointing out the impossibility of dialogue with Methodists. You said:
"What little sympathy I had is however being slowly but steadily eroded by the lobbying by those who disagree with the recommendations of the report - not least, the recommendation that the Church be encouraged to read and reflect on it.
"As a minister, I have received a variety of emails and letters over this mater. Sadly, not one of them could be considered courteous for all of them began with the presumption that I am anti-Semitic. Many have referred to the Holocaust and several have made direct accusations about a hate campaign against the state of Israel. Some of those who sent the mail have also sent copies of the Jewish Board of Deputies response,. others have written their own responses, and in one case, I was provided with over 40 pages of additional information which it has been suggested I must allow my congregation to read in conjunction with the report in order to offset the presumed bias implicit within it.
"All have insulted my Church and presumed that behind the report there is an institutional 'it' to blame. None have taken the trouble to ask me what I personally think of the report and what I might be inclined to do as a result.
"I suspect the same degree of lobbying (which is beginning to feel like religious bullying) has been happening elsewhere."
Sadly you seem to have a very low threshold at which you take offence.
You are free to make pronouncements on the security of the people of Israel and yet when a Jew tries to put their view you use words such as "accusations", "insulted", and "bullying".
Jews have a long history of being confronted by anti-Semitism and clearly see this report and resolution as just another example.
Did you offer to meet with any of those writing to you? Did you return the calls or respond to the emails?
Were you prepared to enagage in dialogue?
From what you say here and elsewhere it is fairly certain that you didn't.
So I take your protestations with a huge pinch of salt. You are clearly offended very easily.
As Methodism leads Christianity back to the Dark Ages do I now smell a slight wiff of witch hunting?
Who will rid us of this turbulent local preacher?
David -
Again you choose to ignore the main point - your comments bring our Church into disrepute - particularly your attacks on Richard, your slurs against the Methodist Connexional Team and the faith and order committee.
You are so very wrong about my engagement with dialogue - I have responded to the emails I received and have invited local Jews who have written to participate in dialogue with the entire congregation once the congregation has read the report. Not only that, but we have also taken this up at circuit level and the whole circuit is choosing to engaging in a dialogue with representatives from the local Jewish community.
So, sorry to disappoint you, but I have been and will continue to be in dialogue - even with those who send me hate mail. But yes - I weary and despair of the sort of bullying lobbying which resorts to presumptions, false accusations, slurs and threats.. who wouldn't?
To liken yourself to a prophet and then to cast yourself in the same mold as Thomas a Becket - wow - is there no end to your ego?
Where is your grace David?
If you were really concerned about your Church and this issue, there would be evidence of grace and compassion - and - dare I say it - humility.
Where is the apology please?
It's pretty shocking that Leah has as his right hand man an anti-Semitic agitator like Terry Gallogly.
What Gallogly did was anti-Semitic agitation, intended to incite Muslim hatred of British Jews.
What have you to say about that, Angela?
Hi David, I posted the following on the Rev. Shier-Jones' blog:
So, 'Zionists' are funding The Methodist Preacher, are they?
And (mis)representing the Palestinian-Israel conflict as that of Palestinian Arab Muslim and Christian national victim-Christ colonized/crucified by alien, Zionist Jewish interlopers constitutes justice, does it? Not merely a recapitulation of the passion narrative in nationalist form, an expression of pro-Palestinian Arab Christian (and by extension Muslim) but deeply anti-Jewish nationalism?
Odd, because the one thing most obviously pertinent here, from Christian tradition and ethics, is that, for most of Christian history, not only have Jews been regarded as an ethno-national group, they have been regarded as an ethno-national group exiled and dispossessed (ethnically cleansed) by God the Father as a punishment for their rejection of Jesus Christ God the Son.
With a result being that in the 19th and 20th centuries, most Jews of old world Christendom (and Islam) were regarded not as nationally European (or Arab), but Judean, that is to say, 'Palestinian'. With the further result that most were either killer or effectively expelled: before 1914, mostly to America, after, mostly to Palestine, or what became Israel.
Given the conference report's assumption that Palestinian Arab dispossession entails a right of return and justice, it was odd that nowhere in it, or the conference, was any kind of Jewish right of return, the basis for Jewish nationalism or Zionism, acknowledged, anywhere.
What about the whitewashing of Palestinian Arab Christian behaviour and attitudes to Jews, before and after the advent of modern Zionism, or the birth of Israel? Largely by omitting Palestinian Arab Christian and Muslim sins, and by adducing Zionist, Palestinian or Israeli Jewish ones.
Palestinian Arab Christians, in their own way, practised apartheid against Jews, in the pre-Manadate period.
In the modern Palestinian nationalist period, they acquiesced in or promulgated exclusivism, expulsionism or even elimination of Palestinian or Israeli Jews.
The report, ironically, seems to hold Zionist, Palestinian and Israeli Jewish behaviour to a much higher Christian standard than that of Palestinian Arab Christians (or Muslims, who, after all, profess to revere Jesus as a prophet).
The underlying assumption of the report and most conference members, is that Palestinian Arab Christians have far more adhered to the principles of a chosen people than the Jews concerned.
Which rather assumes that historical apartheid, exclusicivism, expulsionism or eliminationism all constituted aspects of God's divine plan.
The question is: why only single out Jews for it?
David,
Sorry to disappoint you - but yes, not only did I reply, but I also invited the writers to dialogue with us as soon as our congregations have read the report. This has also been taken up at circuit level and the circuit is engaging in dialogue with representatives of the local Jewish community - do you want the dates? You see - some of us really DO want to make progress rather than headlines.
I repeat my request for an apology for the way in which - as a recognised representative of our Church - you are bringing the Church into disrepute with your slurs against our members and Church structures.
There are no semi-official blogs and your accusations of racism against Richard more than cross the line of satire or sarcasm.
We do not have a 'heirarchy' as well you know - we have a Connexional team which is appointed by the membership at Conference. They are bound by the decisions of Conference and the Methodist Council.
The impression you are knowingly giving by your comments on your blog is of a corrupt and partisan Church.
I repeat - please apologise.
Thanks Conchover for your kind remarks which I saw on my return from a evening away.
Angela, I've read your remarks here and taken a look at your blog. You have clearly had a couple of difficult days and you started one post mentioning how you had lost a night's sleep worrying about this debate.
To be honest I think this lack of sleep and anxiety demonostrates itself in your comments here.
Firstly as to who brings who into disrepute: my feeling when I first heard of how upset my Jewish friends and neighbours were by this report is that Conference had brought the Church into disrepute.
I'm actually proud to have become a Methodist. I can see how influential Methodism has been in shaping many of the attitudes and institutions which make this country such a good place to live.
I was delighted when a Jewish friend introduced me to the book "The Lost Jews of Cornwall" which showed how positive the relationship was between the Jewish community and Methodism. Her family had lived in Cornwall, my wife's family have been Methodist since Welsey first visited the country.
In 2003 I even wrote a book about the impact of Methodism on a tiny hamlet just a few miles from here and a vast continent across the Atlantic.
For the last quarter of a century I have been preaching the Word Sunday by Sunday in one of the most difficult area for contemporary Methodism. I am currently loosing sleep - not over a blog discussion - but how to fund a Methodist Church in one of Britain's poorest urban communities.
I can really do without sanctimonnious lectures from the comfort of South Malden about bringing the Methodist Church into disrepute.
Incidentally I note the use of the word "ego" and the call for "humility"
With respect I read your biography on twitter where you list yourself as:
"professional apologist and arbitrator for the human race".
I am an amatuer apologist for the Methodist Church. I am as much a Methodist as you with the exception no one pays me for the privaledge of leading worship or worrying about the Church roof.
But I am certainly not an "arbitrator for the human race"!
And you expect me to take your words about ego and humility seriously?
David, re "I even wrote a book about the impact of Methodism "- where can I get a copy ?
Paul sorry, got a bit mixed up. Replied on another strand. Either on Amazon, but now expensive, or direct from me on www.francisasbury.org or from any good bookseller. It was published by Brewin Books in 2003.
Angela Shier-Jones says
"This has also been taken up at circuit level and the circuit is engaging in dialogue with representatives of the local Jewish community - do you want the dates?"
who are the representatives of the local Jewish community? and yes, let's have the dates?
It is clear to me that your church needs some proper factual info and context before it steers itself into the partisan fire of rejectionist hatred - disguised, of course, as criticsm of the Jewsih state.
How sad that some speak of partially-sighted witness and conjecture as being fact and thereby righteously leap to ill-informed conclusion.
I, for one, await the apology of the Methodist Church for giving succour to rejection instead of support for coexistence.
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