Repudiating Sinai and the Commandments

I was educated in an Anglican school, and have Anglican friends and relatives. I consider the King James Version of the Bible and the 1559 and 1662 Books of Common Prayer to be among the glories of the English language and exemplars of the Liturgist’s art. I have now concluded that the Anglican Communion specializes in the sort of pious sanctification of idiocy that is ultimately destructive of Christian faith.

Last Friday, the Anglican Consultative Council voted to "commend" divestment from companies supporting the policies of the State of Israel. This vote was based, in large part on what Melanie Phillips accurately described as "a travesty of a report" by the US Episcopal Church's Anglican Peace and Justice Network.

Ms Phillips' excoriation of that decision, and the report that the Church thereby endorsed is here. Read it all.

The tendentious, shrill and facile AJPN report endorses almost all of the anti-Israeli and anti-Zionist shibboleths of the extreme left and right, from the glib assumption that the disputed territories of Judea, Samaria and Gaza are unquestionably something called “Palestinian land” to the de-legitimisation of the State of Israel’s right to defend its citizens and its very right to exist. It is, in my opinion, an un-Christian and anti-Semitic document.

Take, for example, the APJN's approach to the security barrier. As Michael, of Kosher Eucharist recently remarked:

Apparently, there was some sort of minor problem with Palestinian olive farmers, busy tending their 10000000-year old sacred Palestinian olive trees which were planted by Abraham, Mohammed, Jesus, Princess Di and Tyrannosaurus Rex, somehow accidentally sending bullets towards Jewish cars driving by. The wackiest things happen around here.

The AJPN is dismissive of the fact that Arabs in the territories have expended considerable energies over the last few years in strapping explosives to their bodies and self-detonating in places where Israeli civilians, that is, women, children, the elderly, families, gather. Rather, it is “in reality, an Apartheid/Segregation wall judging by its effect on the lives of the Palestinian people”.

The security barrier is expensive both to build and to maintain. It is unsightly. The State of Israel is building it for one reason only. To separate a group of potential murderers from their intended victims. It has saved lives. It saves lives everyday. And the Anglicans whine about the inconvenience occasioned to Arab farmers and their olive trees. Those of us with a rudimentary understanding of Christian theology consider the preservation of human life to take precedence over the olive trees. Of course, the Anglicans may beg to differ, but who am I to lecture them or to convince them to adopt a Christian understanding of Revealed Truth.

The undergraduate posturing of the AJPN goes further. Not only do the report’s authors unquestioningly adopt historically spurious Arab narrative of displacement of “hundreds of thousands” of “Palestinian” “refugees” during the Israeli War of Independence, but also is effusive in its praise of Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah Abu El-Assal. Bishop Riah, notably holds the opinion that God’s covenant with Abraham was not a covenant with the Jews – the sort of un-Biblical and anti-Semitic claptrap rejected by most educated mainstream Christians of goodwill decades, if not centuries ago.

The AJPN speaks glowingly of “the honor [sic] of meeting the President of the Palestinian Authority, the late Yasser Arafat, who so warmly welcomed us in what turned out to be one of his last days among us”. That truly vile man, who shed so much blood, who was directly responsible for the slaughter of so many innocents is lauded by a “Christian” organization supposedly dedicated to ‘justice’ and to ‘peace’. The AJPN does not recognize justice and by its adoption of the propaganda line of Arafat’s Fateh movement does much to harm the cause of peace.

For the worldwide Anglican Communion, Friday 24 June 2005 should forever be a day of profound shame.