There's a bit of "small print" that has found itself onto the Methodist Church website following the catastrophic debacle over the Isreal/Palestine issue at the Portsmouth Conference.
Question 6 of a Questions and Answers on the "Methodist boycott of goods from the illegal Israeli settlements" (that in itself a gross simplification of what was said and enacted at the Portsmouth Conference) has a very handy answer:
Q. Do all the things said during the Conference debate represent the Church’s views?
A. Not necessarily. The section 7.4.1 which was adopted by the Conference is an agreed position of the Methodist Church. The report to the Conference and speeches made are there to stimulate debate following which the Conference votes. The resolutions are not binding on Methodist Church members but are there to give guidance for informed action.
So now I understand. However inflammatory and discriminatory the speeches from the floor, however biased the report, however "stitched up" the working party writing the report, however dubious the offered Further Resources in Appendix 8, however outrageous the comments from carefully selected guest speakers, however, however.....
Conference was actually offered the equivalent of a balloon dabate. It was all just a bit of fun really after which conference was free to make up its mind.
Expense
Let's start with the star speaker, Naim Ateek. I'm curious about how he came to be in Portsmouth. Did he pop into conference because he was visiting his brother-in-law in nearby Fareham? Was he asked to step in at the last minute because lunch had been delayed and they had a spare half hour?
Or was Mr Ateek, especially invited? Did the Methodist Church pay his airfare from Palestine? Did he stay in a hotel at the expense of our charitable funds?
And what sort of debate was he intended to "stimulate" when he dismissed the Holocaust as "a Zionist tool", making the grotesque statement that there was "Holocaust industry" from which the Jews made money, and expressing his "appreciation" of Hamas. Who actually was responsible for this invitation? And is the mealy mouth "answer" above the nearest our Methodist leaders will ever get to distancing themselves from such shameful statements? Or are these views shared by most, if not all Methodists?
I just wish I could say that at least one delegate walked out in protest or that someone lodged a complaint about the tone of this speech. Not so, some Methodist bloggers were even promoting the speech online.
Stitch up
Then there's the working party which drew up the report. Earlier this week I got my ear clipped because I dared to suggest that the proposed working party on Christian Zionism would be a "stitch-up". The working party that drew up the report to the Conference actually was a stitch-up, so we have form.
Read the small print: Methodist Coumcil document MC 09/80 says: Requests have been received that the group should be “balanced” and contain members who are not in agreement with Conference statements. This is not believed to be a constructive approach given the remit of the group.
So before the working group put pen to paper those Methodists who had a view counter to that of the proposer and seconder of the motion to the previous conference The Revd Nichola G Jones, and Seconder, Dr Stephen Leah were excluded. It was a "stitch up".
Nicola Jones believes that the Jews have broken their covenant with God. In a bizarre speech she told conference: Who are they and what are they chosen for? Genesis tells us again and again that God choose Abraham and makes a covenant with Abraham and his heirs. A covenant being a two-sided agreement with obligations on both parties, like marriage. God’s covenant with the Children of Israel, Abraham’s heirs, is that he will be their God and they will be his people if they walk humbly before God, obey God’s laws and are a light to the nations.
So the people of Israel are to be dispossessed of their land because Niclola Jones believes they no longer walk humbly before God, obey God's laws and are dimmed as a light to the nations? On that basis no nation on earth would be entitled to sovereign territory. Every nation would be under the same judgement. But of course we are talking about Jews, and some Christians believe that Jews are subject to different judgments than the rest of humankind. Why the discrimination?
Lunch
Nicola Jones was not a random delegate speaking after a good lunch. She was the instigator of the whole project. Her words and attitudes matter.
Stephen Leah must have been disappointed with the eventual outcome of conference. He wanted to go much further saying, but not to Conference: "I personally would like to have divestment going a little bit further into the full boycott of Israel, but I know how much I can get away with in the churches sometimes. [...] Churches are paranoid about being critical of Israel sometimes, they want to be balanced all the time, we must put pressure on church leaders."
So Stephen Leah was pushing the Church as far as he thought the Methodist Church would go. In recent days Church spokespeople have fallen over themselves to point out that the boycott is only of goods from "illegal Israeli settlements". It seems to be a sensitive matter. Stephen Leah would have preferred a boycott of all Israeli products. Why not? After all his colleague Nicola Jones told conference that Jews no longer obeyed God's laws.
Bibliographies and "further resources" are always a welcome appendix to any document. Each informs the reader of the material used in the production of a report and where the authors would like to go next.
Dubious
Appendix 8 of the conference report makes such an offering. The resources are all from just one direction. Where resources are offered from Jews they are carefully screened to ensure that they continue the general discriminatory narrative of the main report.
One author caught my eye: Stephen Sizer. Now I've heard that name somewhere before. Hasn't he got a few dubious friends? He does seem to have some controversial views. Its worth following a few links here. Why were these "further resources" so one sided? Surely they should "stimulate" debate, not smother it?
Is it any wonder that many Jewish friends feel that the Methodist Church is now exhibiting the same anti-semitism that has been the curse of Christianity for centuries?
Let us hope in the next few months we can rescue Methodism's well deserved reputation for fairness, generosity and openess.
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12 comments:
Abraham and his descendants cannot break the covenant with God because he never made it.
Abraham was cast into a deep sleep. The covenant was signed by God on both sides. This was why Jesus had to die as He had signed the covenant for Abraham.
To suggest that this covenant has been broken by the actions of any man is heresy.
May I just point out that requiring members of the working party who drew up the report to be in agreement with previous decisions of Conference is simply saying that the report should stick to its remit rather than trying to change policies which had already been accepted and agreed by the democratic decision-making body of the church. It absolutely isn't saying that the people involved had to agree with Nichola Jones and Stephen Leah. The very small print here is that the word "balanced" is placed in scare-quotes. I take that to mean that the working party wasn't meant to be imbalanced; it was simply not meant to be made up in a way that some people might have claimed to be more balanced, but which would have involved going against established democratically-agreed policies of the church. In the cold light of this post-Conference controversy it looks like a naive way of expressing it, but I don't think it's any more or less than that.
Maybe Stephen Leah would like the church to go further; but if that's the case both the working party as a whole and Conference disagreed with him. I'm not arguing for or against Stephen's views here; I'm simply suggesting we shouldn't give the impression that the Methodist Church's position is somehow identical with his. It quite clearly isn't. The church isn't a political party, of course, but I'm surprised that someone with your political background doesn't seem to grasp the idea that one individual member's views are not the same thing as the considered accepted views of the party/church - even if that individual is influential. Even if Stephen Leah does think of this very limited boycott as all he could get away with, then surely your argument is with him rather than with the church. I'm not claiming that you or he are any less a Methodist; just that Conference appears to have disagreed with you both.
It's clear you're very upset by some of the things in the report (and I acknowledge that we all have the right to be upset and disagree with some of the things which appear in reports to Conference) but as far as I can see even the report is there in order to lead to a debate, not to be the be-all-and-end-all of Methodist policy. There's a lot of inaccuracy appearing in response to what's happened, e.g. the Jerusalem Post saying "A Methodist minister is preparing to take legal action against his own church over its decision to boycott Israeli goods", which wrongly describes you and misleadingly describes the Conference decision. I can quite understand a non-Methodist publication misunderstanding the distinction between ministers and local preachers (and Methodists misunderstanding the procedures of Conference!) so I point out these inaccuracies in a spirit of helping informed debate.
In the interests of openness I should declare that I am a local preacher in the same circuit as Stephen Leah. I also know someone else who was involved in drawing up the report. I had absolutely nothing to do with the report or the Conference decision myself, though, and I've not spoken with Stephen about the report or the Conference decision. He doesn't know I'm writing this and I'm writing on nobody's behalf but my own.
Thanks Paul and Ian your contributions are very welcome. Paul I am not a lawyer but I think this decision will be scrutinised very carefully by the court. They will not be interested in the internal workings of the Methodist Church but I suspect they will be interested in the motivation for the decision.
I'm sorry about the mix up in the Jerusalem Post about my title. I keep telling people that I am not a Reverend or a Pastor but outside of the British Methodist Connexion they just don't understand.
I feel deeply ashamed at what is happening in my name as a Methodist. I believe our tithe is being misused. Hopefully the rigorous scrutiny that the British Methodist Church will have a beneficial effect.
Clearly if the racism you're accusing Conference of is not some sort of inadvertent institutionalised racism, then Conference's motivations do indeed matter. From what I can gather in the Sunday Telegraph story, the proposed court case is meant to show that the decision to recommend a boycott of goods from the illegally-occupied territories is racist and goes against human rights because it focuses on Israel/Palestine to the exclusion of other places with worse human rights records. I'm not a lawyer either, but it seems to me that Conference decisions on Israel/Palestine informed by a report on Israel/Palestine which was initiated by a request to look into the Israel/Palestine issue can hardly be criticised for only talking about Israel/Palestine. The idea that not talking about other countries' poor human rights records in this particular report is somehow racist seems a bit far-fetched to me.
If what you mean by the "motivation for the decision" is therefore the previous year's decision which asked for the report, then I suppose your lawyer would need to prove that Conference was racist in asking for the report to be drawn up while simultaneously failing to concern itself with situations in other countries. He'll need to ignore that same year's Conference decision to criticise the Sri Lankan government's movement restrictions on internally-displaced people for a start, if he really wants to show that the Methodist Church is picking on Israel and ignoring other governments' abuses of human rights. And if it was the decision to draw up the report which was racist, I wonder why you and your lawyer saw best to wait more than a year before issuing your threat of legal action.
If we are thinking in terms of institutionalised racism, though, your lawyer would presumably have to argue that Christians should not have a particular concern for the Holy Land. That's as maybe, but I'd be interested to hear how that argument wouldn't also apply to the other Abrahamic faiths.
Brother, I hear what you say about feeling ashamed at what is happening in your name as a Methodist. None of us will agree with everything Conference decides, and sometimes we will disagree so much that it hurts. If your concern is that we should be rigorous and open to scrutiny, then let me take your hand, my friend. But if your concern is the misuse of our tithe, as you put it, then I implore you not to force the church to employ lawyers.
Thanks Paul for taking the trouble to post your thoughts here.
I think you have identified how difficult this issue up. Can you just clarify - on the Sri Lanka issue, was there a call to boycott any goods, or was it simply a protest? Also can you confirm that there are Methodist Churches in Sri Lanka but none in either Israel or Palestine.
As far as I know there wasn't any call for a boycott of Sri Lankan goods (just as there isn't a call for a boycott of Israeli goods - only those which come from illegal settlements). And, as far as I know, there are Methodist Churches in Sri Lanka but not in Israel/Palestine. I'm taking your word for it on Israel/Palestine and the Methodist Church website for Sri Lanka - and I have no reason to doubt you or them.
Assuming the Sunday Telegraph have quoted you correctly, part of your objection to the Conference decision is precisely this point, that there aren't any Methodist churches in Israel/Palestine. I don't really understand how that means the Methodist Church should keep quiet about issues of justice, though. I don't see why it's relevant whether there are any churches there which call themselves Methodist, or whether the Palestinian Christians who encourage this boycott identify themselves instead with some other Christian tradition. Indeed, I don't see why it matters whether there are any Christians there or not, unless the only reason for a Christian to speak out should be to stand up for another Christian. Surely we should be standing up for the oppressed whether they are Christian or not? Otherwise, aren't we just picking and choosing and only looking after our own?
Maybe I have misunderstood your objections. Perhaps you could clarify how the resolutions Conference adopted equate to an anti-Jewish campaign. And could you please clarify what counts as the "political campaign against the Jewish state" that the church has supposedly been engaged in and has supposedly been misusing its money on?
Thanks Paul. Just one point I should have made in response a previous remark. My case is that the conference's behaviour was "discriminatory". Slightly different from "racist".
This is obviously going to be quite a fraught case and you will of course be allowed into the public gallery and hear all sides of the argument in detail.
Meanwhile my strongest evidence is the report itself that went to conference: http://www.methodistconference.org.uk/assets/downloads/confrep-14-justice-for-palestine-israel-170510.pdf
The authors made it clear that they did not see the Jewish claim to Israel as having legitimacy. That's why Methodism will now be examining Christian Zionism and by default Jewish Zionism.
The impact of a major Christian denomination saying that Israelis have no right to the land of Israel hardly bears thinking about.
Thanks for your continuing contribution. To be honest I'm working a 14 hour day at the moment in my secular job (someone has to pay the tithes to keep the Church going) so please do not be offended if I don't respond in detail to each of your points.
Thanks for your reply, David. I too ought to be getting on with the day job, so I need to be brief now. I used the word "racism" because the Sunday Telegraph report claimed you would be pursuing the case under an EU directive on racism. Perhaps it was not appropriate for me to use the word - sorry if I have misrepresented you.
I'd make the point again that the report which went to Conference is not the same thing as Methodist Church policy: that's where the internal workings of the church will have to be of interest to a court investigating the matter. In any case I'm not convinced the authors of the report did, as you suggest, make it clear that they don't see the Jewish claim to Israel as having legitimacy (even though that does open the question as to what sort of discrimination is going on if we suggest there should be an exclusively Jewish right to Israel).
You've added the "and by default Jewish Zionism" to the idea that Methodism will now be examining Christian Zionism. It's quite clear in the resolutions that it's Christian Zionism which is of particular theological interest. And the report is quite clear when talking about Zionism that it's either talking about Christian Zionism or about the particular political expression of Zionism which led to the establishment of the modern (and, I'd remind you, secular) state of Israel. This point was explicitly dealt with in the introduction to the debate at Conference too.
I agree with you wholeheartedly that the impact of a major Christian denomination saying that Israelis have no right to the land of Israel hardly bears thinking about. I'd just remind you that the report states quite clearly exactly the opposite: "We continue to affirm the right of the State of Israel to exist and that all the inhabitants of Israel/Palestine are entitled to their full human rights, including the right to live in peace and security and without the threat of violence" (paragraph 2.1). Again, I'm no lawyer but if my strongest evidence for your case was the report itself then I'd be quite worried about wasting money on lawyers' fees.
'So the people of Israel are to be dispossessed of their land because Niclola Jones believes they no longer walk humbly before God, obey God's laws and are dimmed as a light to the nations? On that basis no nation on earth would be entitled to sovereign territory. '
Least of all Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims, to be honest.
Stephen Sizer literally says that for a Christian to sympathise with Zionism is 'heresy'.
Naim Ateek has formulated a liberation theology which recapitulates the passion in Palestinian Christian, and, by extension, Muslim, nationalist form, with Zionist Jews as the new crucifiers. More or less what the Methodist Conference working group report does, adducing as many Zionist Jewish sins as it can, pretty much whitewashing those of Palestinian Arab Christians and Muslims.
That is not Christian self-examination or justice. It is Christian nationalism.
'It's quite clear in the resolutions that it's Christian Zionism which is of particular theological interest. '
Yes, but if you exclude Christians who sympathise with Zionism as heretical or immoral, you are pretty much excluding Jewish Zionism as immoral, because you are saying that, with respect to Zionism, there can be no common basis of Jewish and Christian morality. That the two are antithetical opposites, actually.
You are also trying to strip Israel of Christians friends, because you are saying that no true Christian can sympathise with the Jewish nationalism that bore the Jewish state.
And I think it is rather dishonest of you to claim you are doing otherwise. It is analogous to what the church fathers did in the early Christian centuries, when they sought to police the boundaries between Christians and Jews by anathematising Christians who observed Jewish practices.
But at least the church fathers could admit that Christian tradition was that the Jews were a nation dispossessed, so could hardly blame Jews for a desire for restoration and return, even if it was deemed never to be fulfilled.
Modern Methodists seem to have "forgotten" that that has been Christianity for most of Christian history.
And what Stephen Sizer calls 'Christian Zionism' is a Zionism which some Christians espouse in its most extreme form. It is a rhetorical trick, to define an adversarial construct in its most extreme form.
But it is not justice.
It is polemic. Highly political and nationalist polemic.
Thanks for your comments, conchovor. You start your argument following what I said with "Yes, but if (my emphasis) you exclude Christians who sympathise with Zionism as heretical or immoral...". As it happens I don't wish to exclude those Christians as heretical or immoral; so much of what you go on to say attacks a straw man rather than what I actually said, and your suggestion that I'm therefore dishonest is a bit wide of the mark. I'm inclined to assume your use of the word "you" was referring to me personally, rather than to the Methodist Church corporately, since later in your comment you refer explicitly to "modern Methodists", (rather than "you" again). But perhaps I have misunderstood you: please accept my apologies if that is the case.
In the paragraph following the quote from my comment you imply that "Christian Zionism" means simply Christians who sympathise with Zionism. I didn't mean that - apologies if I wasn't clear enough. I meant it much more in the sense in which you use it towards the end of your comment, in the sense of a particularly extreme and particularly Christian interpretation of the whole idea of Zionism. And I'm just pointing out that, as far as I can see, Christian Zionism (in this extreme sense) is what Conference agreed was worth looking at in more detail. Conference didn't look at Christian Zionism and then say "look at how awful Zionism is; we must oppose it"; they said "we ought to look a bit more carefully at this particular extremist Christian interpretation of Zionism". It's not defining an adversary by its most extreme form. In fact, it's not even saying the extreme form is the adversary. It's saying the extreme form might just possibly be the adversary, so we ought to think a bit more about it.
All I've tried to do is point out where I think there have been inaccuracies, misunderstandings or misrepresentations of what the report says and what Conference agreed should be Methodist Church policy. And to discourage David from going to the expense of playing out his concerns in the courts. I'm no expert in the Israel/Palestine issue. I'm no expert in theology. I'm no expert in politics or history. That's why I've not really tried to tackle the theology or the politics or the history. I just think that if people are going to be criticised (be that me, conchovor, David, the Methodist Conference or whoever) then it would be nice if they could be criticised for what they have actually said or done, not for some exaggerated or inaccurate straw men.
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