Anglican Moral Bunkruptcy

From the Midwest Conservative Journal ...

A few days ago, the Anglican Consultative Council ... took a giant leap back toward its usual moral bankruptcy, unanimously passing this (see http://jiw.blogspot.com/2005/06/anglicans-target-israel.html posted yesterday)

....Melanie Phillips:
....... Virtually to a man (and woman) the Church of England’s hierarchy have completely swallowed the lies and libels of Palestinian propaganda. The visceral hatred of Israel felt by these churchmen is matched only by their stupendous ignorance of Israel’s history and present circumstances. The astounding moral inversion of right and wrong, truth and lies, murderer and victim in their thinking about Israel has been fed by three principal factors:

• the systematic and malevolent distortion of Israel’s history pumped out by Christian aid agencies;
• pilgrimages to the Christian holy places which are almost all in Arab areas, so that British pilgrims who know nothing about Israel or the Jews spend the whole trip in the company of Palestinian tour guides, hotel staff and so forth and scarcely speak to any Israelis and thus return to Britain full of hatred for Israel and the Jews; and
• the very close friendship between many in the CofE hierarchy and radical Palestinian Christian clerics such as Bishop Riah of Jerusalem, who have spent years attempting to provide a theological justification for writing Jews out of Israel’s historical script altogether.

As a result, as I reported in the Spectator three years ago, the Cof E’s astonishing ignorance of the history of Jewish nationhood in Judea, Samaria and Galilee gives off a strong whiff of supercessionist replacement theology, the doctrine going back to the early church fathers which stated that all God’s promises to the Jews -- including the land of Israel -– were forfeit because the Jews had denied the divinity of Christ, a doctrine which lay behind centuries of Christian anti-Jewish hatred until the Holocaust drove it underground.

And Peter Glover:
Is there, I wonder, a better way for the modern Anglican Church to embarrass itself once more in terms of its international credibility and moral standing before the world? Off-hand I cannot think of one.

...The report calls for the Church to put pressure on firms deemed to be supporting controversial Israeli policies such as the building of the security fence or the clearing of Palestinian homes. It does not, however, at any stage take into account the reasons for building the fence, the prevalence of murderous Palestinian attacks upon ordinary Israeli citizens, nor the fact that Arab suicide bombings and other attacks have dropped significantly since it was built....

While Anglican stalwart Greg Griffith may just wash his hands of the Anglican tradition altogether:

This is, perhaps, "it" for me, the beginning of the end of my affiliation with Anglicanism. The Anglican Consultative Council’s vote on a resolution on divestment from Israel is not simply a show of disapproval of Israel and its policies, but a show of solidarity with Palestinian terrorists.
My shame of being associated with this church has sunk to a new low.

This resolution is not a surprise; ethical cowardice is one the marks of mainline Christianity. What does surprise and depress is the breadth of this resolution's support. It was adopted unanimously which means that even the "conservative" ACC representatives voted for it. If this vote is any indication of support for this idea in orthodox Anglican provinces, then I don't see how it is remotely possible for me to remain an Anglican.

....the Anglican Communion has willfully chosen to ignore 2,000 years of history, the 60-year history of the State of Israel, the four major wars launched by Muslim nations in an attempt to wipe Israel off the map, the refusal by Jordan to allow Jews to visit the Western Wall during the Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem, the thousands of Israeli men, women and children murdered over the years, the refusal of the Palestinians to do anything substantive about genocidal murderers like Hamas, Islamic Jihad and others, the virulent anti-Semitism of Muslim societies..... Among other things.

But many Palestinians are Christians. So what? The sad fact is that many of the worst anti-Semites in the world go to church on Sundays. First up is the Catholic Hilarion Capucci who was once convicted of running guns for the Palestinians. Greek Orthodox Atallah Hanna publicly supported suicide bombing. The head of the Coptic Church, Pope Shenouda III, refuses to set foot in Jerusalem while Jews control it and refuses to allow other Copts to go there either. And last but not least, the Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal, once accused the Israeli army of deliberatly firing a missle at a Gaza church and hospital. ....(This Bishop is now one of the key proponents of the current divestment policy - sandgroper)

And these four men did not arise in a vacuum.

...If you're going to run guns to the murderers of Jews, if you're going to applaud the murderers of innocent men, women and children because you think their cause is just, if you refuse to visit a place simply because Jews control it and if you're comfortable writing the most vile lies about Jews to advance your politcal agenda, then you are no brother of mine and you shouldn't expect me to take your side simply because you and I share a religion......