PCUSA: picking and choosing
The Presbyterian Church (USA) passed a resolution at its recent General Assembly that calls for selective divestment of church investments from companies that sell to Israel. Lawyer Jay Lefkowitz, writing in Opinion Journal, points out the selective nature of the PCUSA's morality:
A member of the Israeli cabinet who for years had been a prisoner of conscience in the Soviet gulag, [Natan] Sharansky defined one current expression of anti-Semitism by three features: the application of double standards to Israel, the demonization of Israel and the delegitimization of Israel.
The recent action by the Presbyterian Church sadly satisfies Mr. Sharansky's test. The church has singled out Israel, alone among all the nations of the world, for divestment. It has demonized Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, and it has delegitimized Israel's right to self-defense.
The church is not calling for divestment of its $7 billion portfolio from China, despite China's denial of the most basic political and religious rights and its particularly harsh treatment of followers of Falun Gong. It is not condemning Russia, even though Russia's policies in Chechnya are by any human-rights standard atrocious. It is not even calling for economic sanctions against Syria or Iran, whose human-rights records for their own people are egregious and whose Jewish citizens are denied the basic civil rights and liberties afforded to all Israelis, including its Arab citizens, some of whom even serve in the Knesset.
Beyond the question of whether the divestment resolution is anti-Semitic, the resolution ignores the fact that Israel is one of America's strongest and most dependable allies in the war on terrorism. Though it is far from perfect (as its own free press regularly makes clear to its citizens and its own Supreme Court recently declared to the world), Israel is the only true democracy in the region, save for the fledgling U.S.-supported Iraqi government. And like the U.S., Israel is a target of choice for terrorist attacks on civilians by the jihadists, with more than 1,000 murdered Israeli men, women and children in the past few years. So when the Presbyterian Church singles out Israel for condemnation, it offers support to those whose ideology of hatred is directed against two of the most democratic nations in the world
Well put.
Athanasius on 07.31.04 @ 08:38 PM EST [link]
WCC: we were wrong. Kind of, sort of, well, not really...
At a conference on the Church and 20th century dictatorships in Germany, Konrad Raiser said the World Council of Churches didn't give enough support to opponents of Communist tyrannies. According to Ecumenical News International:
The Rev. Konrad Raiser said during a conference here that the WCC should have been more supportive of groups, such as Solidarity in Poland and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, that opposed Communist regimes.
"While being aware of the situation and basically sympathetic to their struggle, the WCC gave priority attention to the struggles against racism and for justice and liberation in the southern countries," Raiser said during the July 16-18 conference on the Christian church and 20th century dictatorships.
"In retrospect, it would appear that the ecumenical organizations have not sufficiently recognized—at least at the official level—the historic legitimacy and the political potential of the dissident movements in the Communist countries," said Raiser, who retired at the end of 2003.
So the WCC didn't recognize the "historic legitimacy and the political potential" of the dissidents. Not, "the oppression suffered by Christians and millions of others under Communism." Not, "the righteous cries for help from those we ignored and derided as 'anti-Communist.'" Raiser, who is reputed to be unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, went on to further justify the WCC's neglect of the world's most oppressed people:
Organizations such as the WCC and the Conference of European Churches "tried to break through the Iron Curtain and to include the churches in Communist countries in the ecumenical movement," he said, but "in place of prophetic protest, the ecumenical movement concentrated on bridge-building and cooperation."
Is this starting to sound more like an explanation than an admission of error? The story definitely goes on in that vein:
The ecumenical movement had been able to "make contacts and to keep open lines of communication across the so-called Iron Curtain, when few others could," said the Rev. John Arnold, of England, a former president of the Conference of European Churches.
For church leaders in Eastern Europe, Arnold said, the ecumenical movement was "a lifeline and oxygen supply combined, and the only means of engaging in public issues other than by simply supporting the 'peace policies' of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."
The "so-called Iron Curtain"–can't bring himself to admit that maybe Winston Churchill was right, that the metaphor was an apt description of the Communist domination of Eastern Europe. And what the second half of that sentence means is anybody's guess, given the history of unbroken support for Soviet policy given in WCC forums by Orthodox representatives who were frequently more government collaborators than churchmen.
There is no evidence that the church bodies helped prop up Communist regimes, said Arnold, chair of a committee on East/West relations for the former British Council of Churches. Still, the entry into the WCC of the major Orthodox churches from Eastern Europe after 1961 did "radically change the ethos of the (World) Council," he said.
"Its focus of concern shifted away from Europe to the Third World, and this was skillfully exploited by representatives of the ROC (Russian Orthodox Church) to sideline or at least 'relativize' the concern felt in many western European churches for persecuted Christians and dissidents," he said.
If by "prop up," Arnold means that the WCC never sent guns to the Soviet Army, that's certainly true (southern Africa, unfortunately, was another story). But throughout the Cold War, the WCC stood unwaveringly with the Eastern Bloc, and against the West in its efforts to contain the spread of Communism. The WCC has long opposed any efforts by the West, and the United States in particular, to do anything to try to change the behavior or change the regimes of Communist states. The idea that the Western Europeans were champing at the bit to do so, but were stopped because of the work of ROC reps, suggests that they were either complicit or dupes. Given the current WCC preoccupation with condemning the United States, and demanding that tyrants be left alone to continue the slaughter of their nation's populations, it doesn't look like much has changed.
Athanasius on 07.31.04 @ 05:26 PM EST [link]
If you're guiltless and you know it, get the T-shirt
Well, it's great to be home. I had a terrific time at school this week, but I have to admit that I missed being able to keep up with the craziness. (I even missed Al Sharpton's diatribe in Boston, but I'm hoping to find that somewhere on the Web for the chuckles.) So let's just jump right in, shall we? How about this little item, a must-have T-shirt from Planned Parenthood that is all the rave in Paris and Milan this fashion season:
Why would a responsible medical organization like PP carry such an enticing number? Here's what they say at their Web store:
The T-shirt delivers a message that is intended to confront and subvert the sense of shame surrounding abortion that has been so deliberately created by the anti-choice movement. "I had an abortion" is a statement that breaks a silence, and not a cavalier declaration.
I don't know whether it's a "cavalier declaration" or not, but even some pro-choice folks I know think it's tasteless as all get out. But hey–if you're proud of your choice (and don't miss the never-to-be-born child), flaunt it, right?
One does rather wonder, however: if abortion is just another medical procedure, no different from an appendectomy, why exactly is it necessary to announce it to the world? And don't you think there are more psychologically effective and meaningful ways of dealing with any unnecessary "shame" than to boast about one's actions on T-shirt? And does PP really think that if it weren't for the "anti-choice movement," women would never feel any shame over having killed their children?
UPDATE: This just in from World magazine's blog:
After unveiling the latest addition to its "social fashion" line, Planned Parenthood suffered blowback from an unlikely quarter: Itself. America's biggest abortion collective is selling t-shirts with the slogan "I had an abortion" depicted on the front. But according to LifeNews.com, some local Planned Parenthood affiliates find the t-shirts embarrassing, and are distancing themselves from the mother ship.
"This is going beyond pro-choice. We're offending people," Brian Lewis, director of public policy for Planned Parenthood Health Systems of North Carolina, told the Charlotte Observer.
Idaho pro-aborts also decried the t-shirts. "I think the issue to focus on here is the effort that Planned Parenthood goes to, to prevent unwanted pregnancy," Rebecca Poedy, executive director of Planned Parenthood of Idaho, told KBCI-TV in Boise. "I think this is just a poor decision and we are just not supportive of it."
Pro-life groups also protested the shirts, stoking an uproar loud enough for Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt to issue a defensive press release on July 28: The t-shirts, she sniffed, are "a way to challenge the silence and shame around an experience many women have shared...anti-choice extremists are doing everything they can to turn that choice into a scarlet letter, and ultimately to criminalize this option. In that effort, some anti-choice activists have publicly disclosed that they had an abortion, only to cast this option in shame."
So women who had an abortion and say so on a t-shirt are noble defenders of truth, and women who speak negatively about their own abortion experiences are extremist political operatives?
Athanasius on 07.31.04 @ 04:28 PM EST [link]
