As Protestant Divestment Drive Heats Up, Jews Express Their Ire

As a growing number of Protestant churches consider imposing economic sanctions against Israel, the Jewish community is threatening to abandon interfaith dialogue with mainstream Protestant groups. “Any Protestant denomination that would consider the weapon of economic sanctions to be unilaterally and prejudicially used against the State of Israel, or those who would hold the State of Israel to a standard different from any other sovereign state, creates an environment which makes constructive dialogue almost impossible,” mainstream Jewish defense groups and the three main religious streams wrote in an April 22 letter to Protestant leaders.

The letter is considered the strongest language that Jewish groups have used to date on the issue.

The letter “signals a change in the tone and the tenor of our discourse,” said Ethan Felson, assistant executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.

The missive comes after a flurry of recent activity by churches considering divestment some nine months after a Protestant group first made it a prominent issue.

That was last summer, when the Presbyterian Church USA passed a resolution considering a “selective, phased divestment” of companies that do business with Israel.

The resolution shocked Jewish officials, who in reaction scurried to step up interfaith relations. But it also created a point of departure for other Protestant denominations to mull divestment as a way, they believe, to promote Mideast peace.

In November 2004, the board of the Episcopal Church voted to consider corporate actions against companies that “contribute to the infrastructure of Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,” along with companies that “have connections to organizations responsible for violence against Israel.”

“The emphasis of this process is not likely to be divestment,” according to Maureen Shea, the church’s director of government relations.

Two weeks ago, the board of the United Methodist Church voted to conduct a yearlong study to consider divestment. Last week, the United Church of Christ released resolutions it will consider at its annual conference in Atlanta in July; two suggest divestment, while one urges Israel to dismantle its West Bank security barrier.

In a move Jewish groups consider positive, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted last week for “constructive investment” to partner with Israeli and Palestinian organizations that promote peace.

The Protestant pursuit of divestment is not limited to America: The Geneva-based World Council of Churches, a predominantly European consortium, passed a resolution in February encouraging churches to follow the initiative of the Presbyterian Church USA and consider divesting from Israel.

The council has member churches around the world. Many of the North American groups considering divestment are affiliated with it.

Many Jewish observers have been stunned by the swirl of activity.

“I think it’s one of the stranger things I’ve seen,” said David Elcott, U.S. director of interreligious affairs for the American Jewish Committee. “I don’t understand why this issue would come up now,” when Israel is taking steps for peace with the Palestinians.

Elcott said the Jewish community has been “incredibly consistent” in maintaining interfaith dialogue since the Presbyterian move.

Jewish officials cite several reasons for the divestment trend in the Protestant community:

Protestant churches are responding to Palestinian Christians and their supporters, who believe sanctions will force Israel to make concessions and will help the Christians’ standing with Palestinian Muslims.

Churches in the region have sent representatives to American churches to tell of Israel’s alleged injustices against Palestinian Christians. Meanwhile, U.S. church groups that have visited the region hear a primarily anti-Israel narrative.

Some feel Jewish groups have lagged in their maintenance of interfaith work. While Palestinian supporters are advocating their view, “we have not done a very good job of going into churches and advocating a counter point of view,” said Rabbi Gary Bretton-Granatoor, director of interfaith affairs for the Anti-Defamation League.

In addition, interfaith dialogue has focused on what binds the faiths, not what divides them, said Bretton-Granatoor. As a result, Protestants and Jews have not fully explored each other’s views on the Middle East.

“We have never stopped thinking about Israel as the very center of our faith, but the Christians don’t understand it,” he said. “To them, our attachment to Israel is 19th-century colonialism.”

Many mainstream Protestant churches, which skew to the left, subscribe to a world view called “liberation theology.” They aim to uplift the “weak and the downtrodden” and they believe that the Palestinians fill that role, said Rabbi Irving Greenberg, president of Jewish Life Network/Steinhardt Foundation.

Other Christian denominations have a different perspective. Evangelicals subscribe to a Christian Zionist ideology, which calls for the ingathering of Jews to Israel as a precursor of Armageddon.

Because Catholics are represented by the Vatican, they have diplomatic relations to make their case, and Catholic-Jewish relations are relatively strong. Last year, the Vatican issued a joint statement with Jewish officials calling anti-Zionism anti-Semitism.

Jewish groups aim to continue engaging the Protestant community on grass-roots and national levels and are seeking voices within the churches to oppose divestment.

A coalition of Jews and Protestants will meet May 13 in Washington, and an interfaith mission to Israel is planned for September.

“We have had our fingers crossed and we had done our work pretty well, I thought,” said Mark Pelavin, associate director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. But “it appears that we’re going to have to have a broader conversation, denomination by denomination.”

According to the JCPA’s Felson, “the divestment conversation casts such a shadow that dialogue on other issues really becomes secondary.”

Jewish groups are stressing their unified opposition to divestment, as indicated in the April 22 letter.

The move is, in part, a response to the Presbyterian Church USA, which several Jewish officials said excluded Jewish groups from observing national Presbyterian gatherings.

The only Jewish representative at such events has been Jewish Voice for Peace, a far-left group that supports divestment from Israel, Jewish officials said.

The Rev. Peter Pettit, a Lutheran and the director of the Institute for Jewish-Christian Understanding at Muhlenberg College, expressed gratitude for the April 22 letter.

“I appreciate the fact that the Jewish leadership felt they could write such a letter and not have it become an explosive sort of initiative,” he said. “I really don’t see it as a threat,” but as a “mark of maturity” in expressing the potential impact of the divestment drive.

He hopes, he said, that the Protestant community will “take seriously the perspective that the Jewish community has on the divestment issue.”

Katharine Rhodes Henderson, a Presbyterian minister who is executive vice president of the Auburn Theological Seminary in New York, said it’s still not clear how widespread the divestment move will become.

Henderson is one of 25 Presbyterians involved in Presbyterians Concerned for Christian-Jewish Relations, and is part of a New York City-based Presbyterian-Jewish group geared toward reconciliation.

Henderson says she and others are working on investment initiatives and discouraging other churches from divestment.

Now, “when there is movement on the ground,” is precisely the time to invest, Henderson said.

“What’s happening on the ground is giving people pause,” she said, citing the Methodist desire to study the issue further as a signal of such reconsideration.

Even the Presbyterians have yet to take any concrete steps to divest from companies that do business with Israel.

For its part, the Jewish community is speaking with one clear voice.

“There are certain issues that are red lines for communities,” said the AJCommittee’s Elcott. “For us, supporting divestment is an answer to the question, ‘Do you want to have a relationship with the Jews?’ “