by Denis MacEoin • March 2, 2019
at 5:00 am
- Mistakes and
falsehoods such as those we encounter throughout the UCC's
misnamed guide to "Promoting a Just Peace in
Palestine-Israel", each one seemingly trivial, cannot be
dismissed as the results of a moment's inattention. Much
effort has gone into the writing of this Guide, and factual
errors, which take up so much of the text, are clearly the
result of conscious assumptions that have never been checked
against reputable facts.
- If a body of
Christians really cares about Palestinian lives, Muslim and
Christian alike, not to mention the lives of Israeli children,
the lives of everyone on either side, then supporting an
illegal and fanatical use of violence by telling lies and
permitting distortions in order to incite an anti-Semitic
hatred that will embolden and activate further terrorist
attacks is beyond measure a contradiction of normative
Christian ethics.
- The UCC cannot
continue to assert its association with Jesus Christ, a man of
peace, when they so openly espouse the cause of Palestinian resistance
that embraces violence as a solution above any form of
peace-making. Jesus said "Blessed be the
peace-makers", yet here is a Christian church that
blesses men of violence.
The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a shrinking
Christian denomination mainly active in the United States, and
"perhaps the most liberal of the Mainline Protestant American
denominations". With just under a million members and 5,000
churches (down from two million members and 7,000 churches in 1957,
when it was founded), it still has prominent congregations in the
heartland of the American Congregationalist movements, in states
such as Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, and
Maine.
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