The moral disinvestment of the Church of England
Thursday, June 23, 2005
By: Melanie Phillips

from melaniephillips.com

Tomorrow, a report is to be debated by the Anglican Consultative Council calling on the Church of England to disinvest from companies which support Israel’s ‘occupation’ of the disputed territories. Virtually to a man (and woman) the CofE’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.

This is the disgusting context in which tomorrow’s debate must be set. The Telegraph notes:

"The report calls on the Church to put moral pressure on firms deemed to be supporting controversial Israeli policies such as the security fence or the clearing of Palestinian homes. Its authors believe that, as a last resort, the Church should disinvest its holdings in companies that prove unresponsive. Some would also like the Church to boycott goods produced in the Israeli settlements in the South Bank. These range from flowers and dates to parts for electronic equipment.

"The Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, the Rt Rev Riah Hanna Abu El-Assal, said that the adoption of the report would send a strong signal to Israel and raise awareness. "It is not the amount of money that is important," said the bishop, who was host to the network when it visited the region last year. "It is a symbolic way of speaking for those who, for example, have had their homes demolished." He said the Church had significant funds invested in companies such as the Caterpillar group, which manufactured the bulldozers used in clearance projects in Israel. He warned the council against watering down the "mild" recommendations of the report when it is debated on Friday, saying that it would undermine the Church's credibility.’

On the contrary it is only if the church accepts this travesty of a report that it will lose what remains of its credibility as a moral force.

In these dark times, it is heartening to find a principled Christian who is publicly protesting about this. On his website, Peter Glover writes:

"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… If your home and family were continually threatened with murderous violence from angry neighbours who would see your point of view, hated you, demanded your land for themselves, and wanted to drive you and your loved ones 'into the sea', would you not think of building a fence to protect them? I would be out with the hammer and nails today.

"Now I realise fully that this is a caricature of the broader Palestinian position, many Palestinians just want a peace and a Palestinian state (which I support) on the land they already possess. But so to is this report a caricature of the true justice of the Palestinian problem. Remember, that Yasser Arafat was offered, by Ehud Barak, just about everything that fulfilled Palestinians aspirations at a Camp David meeting just a few years ago - and he walked away from the peace table. The Palestinian leader, not Israel, chose, at that high point when peace could well have been achieved, to continue the cycle of unremitting violence.

"The Anglican report reveals wholehearted prejudice against Israel which is typical of the Western liberal mindset and academic elites. While its findings do not bear close scrutiny it adopts the tone of the moral high ground. In truth however, the report is full of what this morning's Daily Telegraph op-ed rightly called 'sanctimonious claptrap'. Sadly, this is becoming the hallmark of the Anglican hierarchy. .. The Anglican Church is considering following the same highly controversial path trodden by the Presbyterian Church (USA) last year. But even the rather feeble Lord George Carey has warned that such a move would be "disastrous" for peace efforts in the region and another "knife in the back" for the Israelis.

"I am a Christian. I am also a Licensed Reader in the Anglican Church. Yet I have no compunction in talking about the amoral, often immoral, un-biblical liberal idiocy that motivates the rotting heart of modern Anglicanism, at least in the liberal heartland of the house of bishops. Let us not worry about God's insistence upon equity and justice and let's cut instead to the root of the Anglican problem: bigoted, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian bias. Idiocy born of blind leftwing, socialist ideology.’

The Christian church has played an absolutely central role in the long history of Jewish persecution. The Catholic church has publicly recanted its hatred of the Jews and painfully tried to make amends for its role in the Nazi Holocaust. The Church of England has never done so but instead has swept the issue under the carpet. Now we are seeing the immoral legacy of this unfinished business. Instead of supporting the Jews against those who use terror, hatred and lies to deny them the right to live in their own restored nation state, the Church of England is singling out the Jews as the one people in the world who do not have the right to defend themselves from being murdered.

I know there are many other decent Christians who are equally appalled. Now is the time for them to make their voices heard loud and clear against this moral corruption that has overtaken their church.