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Jesus, right not tonight, is rich. "As He is, so are we to be in this world." It's God's will for you to be rich.
-- Markus Bishop, Praise the Lord Telethon, Nov. 2, 1998
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News: Presbyterians to divest from Israel
Posted on Sunday, July 18 @ 15:25:14 PDT by Virgil |
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By an overwhelming vote of its general assembly, the Presbyterian Church USA, boasting 3 million members, is siding with Palestinian Arabs and against Israel, choosing to divest from the Jewish state as it did only with apartheid South Africa.
With the decision, approved in a 431-62 vote at the 216th annual general assembly of the PCUSA, the denomination is believed to be the largest organization or institution to join the divestment campaign against Israel. It is the first Christian denomination to do so.
In 2001, the combined value of the church's foundation and pension fund was estimated at $7 billion.
Leaders of the liberal mainline Protestant church approved several other anti-Israel resolutions at their gathering in Richmond, Va., and also refused to halt funding for "messianic congregations" that target Jews for conversion.
The Presbyterian resolutions came just as Jewish organizations were hailing the results of a historic international interfaith meeting in Buenos Aires last week, where Roman Catholic officials for the first time signed on to a document equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
The assembly set the stage for the church to divest itself from companies that receive $1 million dollars or more in profits per year from investments in Israel or have invested $1 million dollars or more in Israel.
In a news release, the PCUSA liaison to the Middle East, Rev. Victor Makari, was quoted as saying: "If nothing else seems to have changed the policy of Israel toward Palestinians, we need to send a clear and strong message."
The church statement noted that "divestment is one of the strategies that U.S. churches used in the 1970s and '80s in a successful campaign to end apartheid in South Africa."
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Average Score: 3
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Re: Presbyterians to divest from Israel (Score: 1)
 by chrisliv on Thursday, July 29 @ 10:03:09 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | Yeah,
Separation is powerful, and non-violent.
Peace,
Christian |
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Re: Presbyterians to divest from Israel (Score: 1)
 by SuperSoulFighter on Thursday, July 29 @ 12:24:30 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | | It's wonderful to see the Presbyterians taking this stand, even if it IS motivated more from a political than doctrinal standpoint. I think one may eventually awaken the awareness of the true saints of God to the reality of the other (i.e. the fact that Israel requires punitive, disciplinary measures taken against its policies being indicative of the fact that they really AREN'T God's "special people" at all). We can only hope that this is the ultimate outcome. |
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- by Islamaphobe on Thursday, July 29 @ 17:35:04 PDT
- by chrisliv on Thursday, July 29 @ 17:57:16 PDT
- by SuperSoulFighter on Thursday, July 29 @ 22:50:35 PDT
Re: Presbyterians to divest from Israel (Score: 1)
by Zorro on Friday, July 30 @ 06:36:11 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | | Pretty cool. They've done the right thing! |
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Re: Presbyterians to divest from Israel (Score: 1)
by DRAGONBALL on Thursday, August 05 @ 08:47:49 PDT
(User Info | Send a Message) | THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE WAS TAKEN FROM THE MORNING CALL NEWS PAPER IN PA.
A concern and a prayer for Presbyterians
Sometimes it's hard to hold your head up when the very worst of your profession violates everything you hold dear and true.
That's the way we both felt recently when the Presbyterian Church (USA), at its annual General Assembly, approved, by a vote of 431-62, a proposal to study whether the church should divest its multibillion-dollar portfolio from all companies that do business with Israel because Israel, in their opinion, is just like the apartheid state of South Africa.
The PCUSA also voted NOT to end its work to convert Jews.
We are stunned, shocked and outraged by both votes. Words hardly convey the depth of our disappointment that people of God could so blatantly contradict the word of God. We want to pray to God for our Presbyterian brothers and sisters, and we want to urge them to face some deep questions and repent of their actions.
We pray: Do you not see that your vote to convert Jews is a vote to cut yourselves off from Jews and also from all Christians who have renounced active proselytizing among the Jewish people? We ask you to imagine how you'd feel if one out of every three Presbyterians had been murdered in a four-year period just 60 years ago and then members of some other religion attempted to reduce your numbers further by seeking your conversion to their faith.
Would you feel the warmth of God's love for these proselytizers? Is this the message you really want to send to the people Paul praises in Romans 9-11? We have always endorsed and blessed the free decision of any person to convert to another religion and to find his or her way to God along a path not followed by their ancestors, but the organized attempt to actively seek Jewish converts to Christianity after the Holocaust is obscene.
We've traveled around this country and have been deeply moved to see how many communities have given up active conversionary efforts in order to gain something even more precious and holy — the flowering of true interfaith efforts and friendship to teach tolerance, reduce prejudice, and find ways for everyone to work together to help those in our communities who are hungry and sleep in the dust. Rochester, New York, has such an agreement and other cities have active interfaith organizations none of which could exist in the corrosive spiritual environment of proselytizing.
On Long Island (New York), the Interfaith Nutrition Network operates 20 soup kitchens and four shelters. None of that good work would be possible if we did not honor each other's faith choices. We ask you to pray and reflect on this truth; you can seek a friend or a convert but you cannot seek both.
And we also pray: How, our brothers and sisters in faith, did you come to hate Israel? What you did goes far beyond a reasoned, prayerful and loving dissent over one or another policy of the State of Israel. Such disagreements among loyal and supportive friends are welcome even if they are harsh.
However, to compare Israel, a democratic state where a quarter of the citizens are Arabs and have full voting rights, including Arab women, and where no Arabs are held as slaves, to Apartheid South Africa where the black minority had no voting rights and were exploited and held in virtual slavery is bizarre, unfeeling, cruel, dishonest, sinful and anti-Semitic. Israel is the only democracy in that region and Apartheid South Africa was never a democracy.
These are simple, incontrovertible facts, yet they did not keep you from authorizing in God's name an action which foolishly equates these radically different states. To divest in order to kill an apartheid state was indeed a moral act, but to divest in order to kill a democratic victim of terrorism's worst attacks is a sin.
What led you to this desire to kill Israel? What led you to want
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